Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the Environment and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the member for Chisholm for her question. I know that she and her constituents, like most Australians, are great supporters of renewable energy. That's because the energy transition is real and it is happening already. We've already seen a 25 per cent increase in renewable energy in our power grid, and that's because renewable energy is cheaper. It's getting cheaper all the time. More renewables in the grid mean cheaper power bills for Australians.

As the member for Chisholm said, we are ticking off those renewable energy projects at record rates. We're outstripping coal and gas projects seven to one, and I have a record number of renewable energy projects before me in the approval pipeline. I've already approved 54 renewable energy projects in just over two years. That is enough to power more than three million Australian homes and, incidentally, it's more power than you'd get from eight large nuclear reactors. What we have before us is a choice between a renewable energy transition that's already underway or a nuclear fantasy that may never happen.

The Leader of the Opposition's plan—if you could call it that—is a recipe for delay and it's a recipe for higher bills. They had ten years in government, ten years of chaos and delay, with 22 energy policies. They didn't land one. Now we're expected to believe that 23 is a charm—23 is the one that's going to get them there. It is fanciful.

They were told during their time in government that 24 coal-fired power stations were closing. How did they prepare for that? The answer is: they didn't. They had almost a decade to prepare. They did nothing to prepare for those closures. Now we're supposed to believe that this uncosted press release of a policy is somehow going to fix the problem.

It's been estimated to cost $600 billion by the Smart Energy Council. The Nationals tell us that they know what it's going to cost. They're just not going to share that with the Australian taxpayers who are paying for it. The reason they won't share the costings is because they know Australian taxpayers would rather spend $600 billion on hospitals, roads and schools than on nuclear reactors. Nuclear energy is expensive and is getting more expensive all the time.

Renewables are already cheaper, and they are getting cheaper all the time. There is a reason that more than three million Australian households have put solar on the roof. It's because it's cheaper. We want to see lower emissions and lower costs. (Time expired)

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