Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's always good for members, particularly first-term members, to go back to their maiden speech and have a look at the values and principles and ideas that they came to this place with. I did that in relation to a number of issues like this one. I said at the time:

Climate change is a complex challenge for our country … we as a planet need to reduce our emissions.

The need to act is not in question. How we do it, without causing huge economic damage to our nation and its people, is the question. It is the how, not the if. Done in a reckless manner, with unrealistic time lines out of step with our global competitors, we could face a situation where industry moves emissions overseas. Australia's economic strength would be reduced but global emissions would not. It's a reality we need to face.

I also said that I think we need to keep our mind open to the range of technologies that can get us there, and:

… just transition means that the justice, human rights and dignity of those most affected by any change need to be protected, and often these are people in regional areas.

As far as their renewables-only energy policy goes, Labor has been saying for years that the price tag for their plan to achieve a net zero electricity market is $122 billion; that is applying their approach. That's now been exposed as wrong by a report done by Frontier Economics, who estimate that it will now cost not $122 billion but at least $642 billion. We've got to have a serious conversation about that in this place. Not only that; the system will have real instability as a result of having too much intermittent power generation.

The questions that have been asked about the renewables-only plan, at the top of my mind, have not been sufficiently answered: How is renewable energy going to be firmed? What happens to renewable energy facilities at end of life—and end of life for a lot of these projects is estimated to be between 25 and 35 or 40 years? How much does the decommissioning cost? How much does the rebuild cost? How does that impact the system cost? What happens to the components that cannot be recycled?

The stakes are really high in this debate. Writing in the Australian yesterday, respected columnist Robert Gottliebsen said:

… nothing in the nation's history matches the looming renewable energy conversion financial disaster.

He points out, as many others have, that, due to the lifespan of renewables, after 2050 we might have to scrap everything and start again.

The minister is fond of saying that the sun and the wind might not send a bill. I advise the minister that, whilst the sun and the wind might not send a bill, the panel installers, the turbine manufacturers and the decommissioning operators all will send bills—big bills—and they will potentially send them every 30 years. I'm amazed that we have an ideological and not a pragmatic approach to the best way to get to net zero. Nuclear is acknowledged the world over as the only existing technology—with the exception of hydro, but that's geography specific—that can deliver net zero emissions energy 24/7.

Why, when almost every other developed economy is increasing nuclear, are we being too pig-headed to embrace it? It can't be on safety grounds because the government has agreed to AUKUS—so we'll have nuclear reactors moored in Australian harbours, metres away from Australian naval personnel. Now they are starting to argue that it's on cost.

Well, if the cost is so prohibitive, why are our economic competitors embracing it? Now that we have a real comparison with the true cost of Labor's renewable plan we can have a more honest discussion about which is the best way to go. And the real cost for the renewables-only plan is well over $600 billion. The 'mere' dispatchability of the power 24/7 needs to be considered as well. Renewables can't do that, but nuclear can.

This was just reported today:

The Albanese government has rebuffed an invitation from allies the United Kingdom and the United States—

amongst other countries, and a generous invitation, I might add—

to join a global movement to speed up the spread of civilian nuclear energy …

Talk about being out of touch with the world! The blinkers are on, and their heads are in the sand.

But that's the high-level energy debate. What about the poor Australian who was promised their household electricity bills would be reduced by $275? That's not going to happen in the next six weeks, so we're not going to get there in 2025. Their bills have soared, and not only have their energy costs increased; the renewables-only policy of Labor threatens to move their places of employment and omissions offshore. That's bad for Australia's economy and bad for global emissions.

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