Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It's great to get this opportunity to take you for a little wander around the world, which I want to do right here. I want to take you for a wander around the nuclear world and enlighten people about how Australia is now an outlier—a ridiculous outlier.

Let's start with who uses nuclear power in North America. Remember, North America has Death Valley; it's got hot areas; it's got sunny areas; it's got windy areas; it's got everything—every asset that they attribute to Australia. Well, Canada uses nuclear power. In fact, even Ontario's power is about half the price of the power that we have. The United States has nuclear power. And Mexico has nuclear power. So we have a clean sweep in America—not in Central America but in America.

You might say, 'Well, that's unusual, or not unique,' so let's go for a wander around Europe. Who uses nuclear power? Spain uses it; France uses it; Belgium does. These are the people that actually have nuclear reactors. The ones with nuclear reactors that produce electricity from them are Spain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Slovenia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, Finland and Sweden. And then you might say, 'Oh, hang on—you've left Germany out.' No; they use nuclear power from France. What France is doing at the moment is: their power is around about our price, and people think, 'What's the trick there?' Well, they are making a bucketload of money out of the Germans, because the Germans are using the French nuclear power, and so they're absolutely creaming it in France. And the Germans are trying to refurbish their coal-fired power plants.

But then you might think, 'Maybe it's just a European thing or an American thing.' So this is the one that's interesting. Oh, by the way, going back to Europe: the other countries that are developing it are Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Italy. They're actually in the process of developing it. So you've almost got a clean sweep through Europe. You've almost got clean sweep through North America. And you've virtually got a clean sweep through Europe. There are only a couple of countries that do not use nuclear power. Ireland is one, and possibly Portugal, but they could be using it from Spain. There's Denmark, but maybe they actually pick it up from France as well; they could be picking it up from the Netherlands; and then, when Poland gets going, they could be picking it up from Poland.

Let's go to Africa. Now, I think that we've probably got some advantages over Africa.

An honourable member: They can't afford it.

Oh, no; you're dead right! This is the myth: 'You can't afford it, it's so expensive.' Well, there are a few countries that apparently believe they can afford it! South Africa already has it, and these are the countries that are now developing it: Senegal, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Niger, Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia. So I hope the penny is just starting to drop, somewhere, that the world has changed! The world is moving on, and it's leaving us behind with Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola and a couple of other countries that are just like us—Angola is just like us; it's not looking at it either. Oh, and Somalia—we've got a friend in Somalia; they're not looking at it. So this is ludicrous.

Let's go to the Middle East. The countries there that use it are Iran, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates.

Of course Russia uses it. We don't even need to say Russia.

But these are the countries that are now developing it: Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt and of course the United Arab Emirates. Oh, by the way, the United Arab Emirates have got four plants. It took them eight years to get the first one up and running. It was operational, producing electrons for the grid, within eight years.

What's so frustrating about this is that there's a lot of Australian expertise that actually assists in this. From helping them to draw up the legislation to world's best gold-standard practice, Australians are actually in that process—technicians. The one place these Australians can't work is here, because we don't actually have it! But maybe it's just in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and North America.

So let's go to South-East Asia. China, of course, in the next 15 years, will be in the process of developing 150 new nuclear reactors. I'll repeat that: in the next 15 years they're looking to go into the production and the planning of another 150 new nuclear reactors. And they're using it as a mechanism, with Russia, to leverage their influence in other countries, where they're saying, 'We'll provide you with the technology to do this.' This is why a lot of those countries in Africa are on board. If we want to have a moral movement of effect in the world, wouldn't we be saying, 'Use our technology,' so that we could put our fingerprints on this?

Let's go through South-East Asia. Japan uses it; South Korea uses it; China uses it; India uses it—in fact, they're expanding it. In fact, South Korea and Japan are at the forefront of the technology of developing nuclear reactors that they sell to other countries. But then let's go to the people who are developing it: Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. They're all in the process of development; they're way ahead of us.

There are two countries—away from Angola and Somalia—known in the world that have gone nowhere near this: New Zealand and Australia. We are out there. We are really out there. Even Greta Thunberg supports nuclear energy. It is this ridiculous position that we have got ourselves into, in this country, where we are sort of Luddites. We are sitting back decades—we are literally sitting back in the last century—in our view of this technology. And the world has moved on.

There's a really simple thing about most of these nuclear reactors. Enrichment for plutonium for atomic weapons—which is very dangerous—is 98 per cent. With these nuclear reactors, we're talking about nothing—most of it is not beyond five per cent. It's a completely different technology that so many people are just unaware of. The people who are most unaware of it—who are the most, basically, nuclear-power illiterate—are us. We have a nuclear reactor bang smack in the middle of Sydney, and incredibly smart people, but as to the production of nuclear power, we're the ones that are illiterate. The reports we rely on to underwrite our ignorance are Australian reports, but Australia doesn't produce nuclear energy. We should be using the Finnish reports, or the French reports, or the Canadian reports, or the American reports, or the Chinese reports, or the Russian reports, or the Estonian reports, or the Spanish reports, or the Brazilian reports, or the Argentinian reports, or the Mexican reports—reports from all these other parts of the world.

Our role—we're seeing it right now. Right now, or in a few hours, they're going to start—or they've already started voting in America, actually. They started in New Hampshire—

An honourable member interjecting—

All six of them. But what we've got to understand is that Australia has one role. To be quite frank, the rise of totalitarianism in comparison to democracy is vastly more evident and vastly more powerful than it was before the Second World War. There is absolutely no doubt about it. If you look at the totalitarian countries, like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea—who are sending their troops over to Ukraine now, so this is real—they're vastly more powerful than the comparative power of the fascists before the start of the Second World War. What does that mean for us? It means don't panic, but become as powerful as possible, as quickly as possible. Every section of what you do must be at the top. You must be at the top in education. You must be at the top in agriculture. You must be at the top in manufacturing. You must be at the top in nuclear technology and power. You must be at the top. This is one of the areas where we've just got to accept the reality of where the world is, and get on board.

I'll give you another little epiphany. Sweden has 14 offshore swindle factories—windfarms, or whatever you want to call them. Anyway, they're closing 13 of them down. They're out of it. It's not working for them. They've got massive environmental concerns about them. They've got massive strategic concerns about them, especially with submariners and strategic issues as to how sonar works and the problems that has caused. I don't want our nation to be up to our throat in an obsolete technology, so that reality can just come and belt us on the head and say, 'Why on earth did you do that?' The answer was right before you. It was right in front of you, but your own a wilful ignorance took your nation to a weaker spot.

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