Matt Burnell (Spence, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This MPI talks about risk. I'd call it Risky Businessactually, and it's like a scene from the movie because today the member for Fairfax slid into the chamber in his socks, his air guitar firmly in hand, to live out his great nuclear fantasy—to let go of reality and to let his feelings, not facts, take control. He is definitely playing that old time rock'n'roll, trying to sell a policy drag kicking and screaming from decades ago which will take decades more to actually work because it hasn't been thought through.

Just to clarify, I'm not saying the member for Fairfax is anything like Tom Cruise. He and his colleagues are more like Tom and Jerry, beating science over the head with an oversized mallet because it doesn't match their policy, making statements to say Australia is wholly reliant on renewables when there is no evidence anywhere to suggest that and playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Australian people, which I'm happy to lay out in front of you today.

I note the member for Fairfax liked to do a bit of reading when he walked into the chamber at the start of the MPI. It was so important that he actually left the chamber during the member for Hunter's rebuttal speech—absolutely amazing!

I want to start with the opposition's famous nuclear policy, 'Our plan for zero-emissions nuclear as part of a cheaper, cleaner and consistent energy future'. That's their policy; it's six pages of nothing. It was announced on 19 June 2024. Yes, that's a bit over six months ago. Like the people that I met in Nanango last week for a committee inquiry hearing in Queensland, I am feeling a little bit miffed that they didn't get the opportunity to get a bit more detail, given that it's been six months since the announcement of this policy.

I want to go to a couple of points in this policy. It's got a little bit of information in it, albeit not a lot. It says, 'A balanced energy mix'. We're being told that we've got a renewables-only policy plan, but this is directly from the Liberal and National parties' policy:

This means our energy mix today of renewables + gas + coal will shift to a future energy mix of renewables + gas + nuclear.

That's really interesting. Where will they be built? Well, those opposite have identified seven locations, saying:

These are the only locations in scope and the Coalition has ruled out all other locations.

That's part of their policy. Can you believe that? They haven't done any geoscience whatsoever. They haven't been out there and done site surveys, but all other locations are ruled out. That ponders the question: what happens if one of these sites gets ruled out after a geological site survey because it's not stable? Mmm. Then we'll go from seven locations down to six or five. And we're only talking about four per cent of the energy mix required by 2050 possibly being supplied under this policy. It just beggars belief!

I'm going to go to another part in this. It's interesting reading this. I encourage, if you can find this—it is really difficult to find this policy. This is the first announcement policy paper that was delivered back on 19 June 2024. It took my staff quite some time to be able to dig up the original policy because it had gone missing on their website. I'm not sure why you would hide something that you are so proud of, but anyway.

The timeline for establishing a civil nuclear program in Australia, including building two establishment projects, is 10 to 12 years from the government making a decision to zero-emissions nuclear electricity first entering the grid. Why is that important? First of all, the experts that we've heard from have clearly told us that, in the best case scenario, it is 10 to 15 years for the construction phase. When you look across the globe, that is clearly what the timelines are showing—that 10 to 15 years, closer to 15, is actually the more reliable. But we heard from another expert, Clare Savage, who has extensive— (Time expired)

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