Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

What a great opportunity for the House to consider the choice before them at the next election when it comes to energy policy for this country. The member for Fairfax talked about false prophets and false prophecies. I was going to say that he didn't talk about his own policies at all during the MPI, but he did when he mentioned false prophets and false prophecies.

The other thing I was going to say about the shadow minister is that we normally know less about his policies at the end of one of his interviews than at the beginning. We see that regularly. We saw it on at 7.30 last week. We saw it on Insiders on the weekend. He opens more questions than he answers when it comes to his own energy policies, and that's deliberate, because the answers are no good. The answers are no good because nuclear is the most expensive form of energy and it's the slowest to roll out.

But the shadow minister poses questions about the cost of our renewable transformation. He did so during question time today, and, in that instance, he showed his fundamental misunderstanding of the choices before the Australian people. He asked, about the $121 billion, which is the cost which has been identified by AEMO, the independent market operator, for the transformation to renewable energy, 'Does it include distribution?' He seems to think we need more telegraph poles if the energy comes from solar panels and wind turbines than if it does from nuclear reactors. The cost is exactly the same for distribution, regardless of the form of energy that is used. Regardless of whether it's coal, gas, renewables or nuclear, we don't need more telegraph poles. He's fundamentally showing that he misunderstands the choice before the Australian people, and he's showing he misunderstands the work by AEMO. He's normally bagging the work by AEMO. When he's not bagging it, he's misunderstanding it.

The honourable member talks about costs under this government. He did not mention that when they left office the price of power, the price of electricity, in the wholesale market was $376 a megawatt hour and it is $75 a megawatt hour now. He didn't mention that was a target that his predecessor, as minister for energy—his predecessor, my predecessor—the member for Hume set to get the megawatt hour price at the wholesale level down and he failed to do so. He certainly did not mention that, just before the last election, the then minister for energy was so worried about the impact of their government's nine years of neglect, with four gigawatts of dispatchable power leaving the grid and only one gigawatt coming on, that he had to change the law to hide 20 per cent increases to energy prices until after the election.

Again, we have a contest about alternatives. We have our plan for our renewable energy. The opposition are having trouble working out whether they think there is too much renewable energy happening or not enough. They really have to pick a lane. They say there is so much renewable energy. The Leader of the National Party says this rush to renewable energy, there is too much of it happening. They need to cap it. They need to intervene to stop this renewable energy happening. At other times the shadow minister says there is not enough renewable energy to replace the coal leaving the grid. These are the coal closures that were announced under them, and they had no plan to fix it. Their proposal was to fund a new coal-fired generator in Collinsville, which didn't happen, and that was it.

They had the UNGI scheme, which should have been called the 'unfortunately no generation involved scheme', because it did generated not one electron of new power. That is what we inherited when we came to office. What we're doing instead is seeing renewable energy in our grid up 25 per cent since we came to office, 8.5 gigawatts since we came to office, which they could not do.

Let's come to the question before the Australian people at the next election about the choice between the plans. The shadow minister raises cost and reliability. Well, we know that nuclear is the most expensive form of power available. GenCost by AEMO and the CSIRO has shown that time after time. The member for Fairfax has quite outrageously and improperly called it 'Labor's GenCost'. It is not Labor's GenCost; it is not a Liberal GenCost; it is the GenCost of the CSIRO and AEMO. It was prepared when those opposite were in office. I am sure that they did not interfere, that they didn't seek to write the report—they couldn't if they tried. It showed nuclear energy was the most expensive then and it shows that now.

What is the member for Fairfax's big get out of jail card? He says that it is about the cost of construction and that that is the cost for investors; it is not about consumers. Apparently nuclear energy is the only form of energy in the world—the only form of any commodity—that can be really expensive to build but nobody has to make a profit back because of that capital expense. He fundamentally ignores the evidence. It is a fact-free and evidence-free zone when it comes to the cost of nuclear energy for those opposite.

We have had many claims from those opposite that we should do nuclear because it is going to keep the costs down like the rest of the world. Well, let's just see. The member for Fairfax talked about NuScale. It is the big poster child of renewable energy. NuScale is the small modular reactor. He pointed to it. He visited it. He has talked about it ad nauseum. He doesn't talk about it so much anymore because it didn't happen. It was cancelled because the cost blew out from $3.6 billion for 720 megawatts to $9.3 billion for just 462 megawatts and it was cancelled. They keep telling us SMRs—small modular reactors—are coming.

We saw the shadow minister—and really I have to pay credit to his agility—on 7:30 last week. He was asked a pretty straightforward question: 'Small modular reactors form part of your policy. How many Rolls-Royces small modular reactors are there in operation in the world?' He said, 'They are advancing very quickly.' He had four goes and, in the end, Sarah Ferguson answered it for him: there are none, not one commercial small modular reactor, anywhere in the world. The opposition keep saying, 'They are coming.' To be fair, the Liberal Party has had many chances to implement small modular reactors. They keep saying they are coming.

One of the shadow minister's predecessors, as shadow minister, said, 'You would know that new-generation reactors with maximum safety features are now coming into use. They are small, from 250 to 400 megawatts, fully automated and overcome the many safety problems associated with a large-scale reactors of the past.' Who said that? It was the shadow minister for the environment in 1989. Since 1989 they have been talking about small modular reactors.

Of course, we have big reactors as well. The Leader of the Opposition said he was against them, they weren't going to happen, he was going to oppose it, and now they are going to build five—less than 12 months later. And what's the best-case practice there? Hinkley C in the United Kingdom, where the people of the United Kingdom were promised it would be 'cooking turkeys by Christmas 2017' at a cost of A$17 billion Australian, is now estimated to finish in 2031 at a cost of A$92 billion. These are the sorts of experiences we're seeing overseas.

Again, we hear the shadow minister and the opposition saying that 19 out of 20 countries in the G20 have nuclear or are proposing it. It's not true: Germany has cancelled its entire nuclear fleet and says it isn't returning. Other countries, including Italy, have no nuclear.

And, of course, they say the rest of the world is happening! I'll tell you what happened last year with nuclear generation: it fell by 1.7 gigawatts. Around the world, nuclear generation is down because nuclear reactors are closing. Do you know what's up? Renewable energy, by 507 gigawatts. So nuclear is down by 1.7 and renewable energy is up by 507 gigawatts. Solar and wind already generate more electricity than nuclear. In 2025, wind alone will exceed nuclear and, in 2026, solar alone will exceed nuclear, because this is the sensible course of action taken by governments around the world.

And when it comes to reliability, let's just talk about what the opposition's real proposal is here. The Leader of the National Party, I'll give him credit, is at least honest about it. The member for Fairfax doesn't say it, but the Leader of the National Party does. What they want to do is sweat the coal assets for longer—to keep them in the grid for longer. Rely on coal-fired power for longer—that's what they want to do. And the thing about coal-fired power, as it ages, is that it's increasingly unreliable. It's old, it breaks down more; it breaks down so often and unexpectedly that it causes a reliability challenge for our grid. It happens regularly in our grid; it's happening today as we speak. Those opposite would make our energy system less reliable by relying on it more. And, of course, emissions would be much higher for longer, but they would rely on coal-fired power for longer, which would reduce reliability in our grid.

Every claim the opposition makes about nuclear power evaporates at the first sign of scrutiny. The honourable member talks about Ontario. He says that power is so much cheaper in Ontario. He doesn't talk about the $6 billion in annual energy rebates which make power cheaper in Ontario at a cost to the Ontario taxpayers. He says that Ontario's power is cheap, but he doesn't look at Quebec next door, where over 90 per cent of power is generated from renewable hydro, and they only pay half as much as the people of Ontario.

The Leader of the Opposition said that waste is not an issue—it's only one can of Coke worth of waste from a small modular reactor. Well, the Leader of the Opposition was completely wrong. It's about 286 cans of Coke from modular reactors in terms of that comparison. That's more like a tennis court. What we have are 12,500 cans of Coke highly radioactive waste each year from a small modular reactor. If the Leader of the Opposition doesn't understand his own policy, how can we trust him to implement it? (Time expired)

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