James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I second the motion. I welcome the opportunity that the member for Fairfax brings to this chamber to improve and create a genuine mechanism for us to have a proper parliamentary inquiry into the great opportunity that civilian energy generation provides to the Australian economy. I start by commiserating with the Minister for Climate Change and Energy because he spent months, if not years, bellowing at the opposition about his presumed confidence in the facts around nuclear, and his own government is now saying we need to have an inquiry to reconsider everything he said to us in every single question time any time that he's been asked about nuclear. That is extremely humiliating to him, and I feel for him. It's interesting that he's not even in the chamber for a debate on this issue, but I suppose he is still being consoled and resuscitated from the humiliation of his own government saying, 'Despite what you've been saying in the parliament and despite the confidence that you've portrayed about your views on nuclear and your supposed confidence in the facts on nuclear, we are going to ask the House of Representatives to undertake an inquiry reconsidering everything that you, as our minister with these portfolio responsibilities in this area, have said to the House.' So I deeply commiserate with the minister there.

I thank the Minister for Social Services for being the one to move this, because she's a Labor member from South Australia. The Labor Party in South Australia, particularly her faction, have been the great leaders of changing the Labor Party's position on nuclear for a long, long, long, long time. There was a time when the Labor Party would be in here demonising nuclear from safety angles, but they can't do that anymore, because they signed up to AUKUS. Their greatest argument against nuclear for decades and decades—which the Labor right, and particularly the South Australia Labor right, sought to fight within their own caucus and amongst their own rank-and-file branch membership—was this fiction that nuclear was dangerous and could be demonised from a safety point of view. When we announced our position on nuclear, some members of the government caucus sought to make those safety arguments, and, of course, they were immediately pulled into line by those in the government who said: 'You know that we're bringing nuclear to Australia anyway? You know that there'll be eight nuclear reactors in the bellies of submarines lashed to the walls out at Port Adelaide. You can't actually demonise nuclear because we're part of a government that is purchasing eight nuclear reactors, putting them in submarines and saying that it is safe to have Australian submariners work adjacent to these nuclear reactors while they're out serving our nation and defending our nation's interests.'

The Labor Party has come a long way on safety, but now they need a new argument against nuclear because they can't use the safety one, and they have been trying this bogus one to demonise the economics of nuclear when nuclear is an embraced technology across the planet. At least now we have an opportunity to have a sensible process to reconsider the rubbish lines and the faux criticism that's been put forward so far. So establishing a committee makes a lot of sense, but I will say that the member for Fairfax, in seeking to amend the terms of reference to this committee, is ensuring that we actually achieve a very genuine, proper, comprehensive outcome when it comes to assessing the great opportunity that nuclear provides to our economy.

If the government don't accept this very sensible proposition from the member for Fairfax, then they will be revealing the fact that what they are seeking to do here is to concoct a process that is not hoping to be genuine—that is not hoping to achieve an outcome of a proper body of work that shows the pros and cons of the opportunities of civilian nuclear generation in this country—but instead is a base political tactic where they are seeking to establish a committee that they can control, to stack it and control the outcome of it because it would be majority controlled by government members, and setting terms of reference that don't allow us to look at all the comprehensive important issues to be considered. What we would therefore have, rather than an opportunity to genuinely move this debate forward, would be something that is a low-rent political tactic from the government.

That is only if they vote down the sensible amendments that the member for Fairfax is putting forward here. I'm sure that won't happen, because I'm sure the government are genuine. I'm sure they want a genuine process, and I'm sure, therefore, that they don't require to have the numbers on the committee to control its outcome, because if the facts are on their side they should have nothing to fear. They should have nothing to fear from the broadest terms of reference for this committee whatsoever, because apparently this is a process that will get the answers. Why would they fear having a proper, open, genuine process that they don't control? We're about to find out. I look forward to the next speaker from the government indicating that, having reviewed the member Fairfax's sensible proposition, they very happily support it, because the most important thing here is to achieve a process and a mechanism to get proper genuine answers. Regrettably, if they don't support it, it will mean that from the very beginning the whole thing was a complete sham. It will have absolutely no credibility, will be a complete stunt and will be a worthless waste of the resources of the parliament. Let's have proper conversation and debate about nuclear. Let's amend the terms of reference that are being proposed so that we can have a proper genuine process.

I'm a South Australian, and in South Australia we've had a long history of leading the nation when it comes to nuclear technology not just in this country but beyond. I'm very proud of Sir William and Sir Lawrence Bragg, the pioneers of the X-ray. Sir Lawrence went to school in my electorate, and the great nuclear physicist Sir Mark Oliphant was born in my electorate. I recommend Australians having a better understanding of the great heritage and contribution of Australian scientists in the nuclear physics field and also the contribution that South Australia has made to the nuclear industry. We had the great debate in the seventies about opening up the Olympic Dam mine. A former Labor member for Sturt, Norm Foster, was expelled from the Labor Party for crossing the floor in the upper house to support the Olympic Dam indenture bill, which allowed that mine to go ahead.

The Labor Party have come a long way from the days in the seventies when we weren't even allowed to dig uranium out of the ground. It was Jay Weatherill, the Labor Premier, who undertook a royal commission into building the planet's biggest high-level nuclear waste repository in South Australia. It was his ambition, as a Labor Premier of South Australia, to store half of the world's high-level nuclear waste in South Australia. He undertook a royal commission and built a business case. His own party abandoned him on it, of course, but he took the Labor Party forward quite significantly on the issue of dropping the blinkers and the ideological dogma against nuclear. Even recently, the current Labor Premier of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas—probably getting into a reasonable amount of trouble from his colleagues here in Canberra—has been very ambitious for the nuclear future of his home state.

The AUKUS agreement provides a great opportunity for South Australia to be at the centre of taking the next step forward in participating in nuclear industries, with the construction of nuclear submarines in Adelaide. How logical is it, therefore, to take the next step? We dig uranium out of the ground in South Australia. Labor wants half the world's high-level nuclear waste to be stored in the ground in South Australia. We are building nuclear submarines in South Australia, which will of course have nuclear reactors installed in them. Why would we not have a proper, comprehensive, engaged analysis of how we can embrace the next opportunity of the nuclear industry, which is zero-emissions civilian nuclear generation, to complement our electricity grid to provide baseload power security as we transition to net zero by 2050? That's the obvious opportunity that we have. That's the sensible policy leadership that the coalition has been providing on this issue in our term in opposition. There's an opportunity, through the creation of a genuine process, thanks to the amended terms of reference from the member for Fairfax that we have before us, to continue the process of properly revealing the facts and the great opportunity of a civilian nuclear industry in this country.

It's now over to the government to show that they're genuine about having a process that is dedicated to uncovering the facts and the opportunities of nuclear by supporting the sensible amendments from the member for Fairfax. And it's for us all, as a parliament, to take the next step forward in embracing the opportunity that the nuclear industry provides to our nation. I commend the amendment to the House.

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