Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for his question about a business leader who he says speaks on behalf of the entire trade union movement. I'll give you the big tip here: the union movement campaign will be very strong against your nuclear power plant, because what they know is that your plan will destroy jobs. Your plan will lead to higher power prices. Your plan will undermine manufacturing in this country. You do not have a plan for anything between now and the 2040s.

What we have is a shortage right now. Eight power stations had shut down by the time we came to office—Redbank, Wallerawang, Anglesea, Northern Power, Playford, Morwell, Hazelwood and Muja AB—all on your watch. On their watch there were 24 separate announcements of power station closures. What they used to do was respond to that by handing a lump of coal around their front bench, thinking that that was funny. I'll give you another big tip: don't try that with uranium. What you did was make a joke of it. You pretended that coal was the future for 10 years while you did nothing. While power stations closed and energy supply went backwards, you refused to support alternative plans. You spoke about a gas led recovery and then nothing happened. You now say you're going to have a nuclear recovery. This is the same mob that replaced fibre in the NBN with copper—

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