Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

As much as I like the member for Spence, as per many of the other contributions from those opposite in this debate, there was little substance in his response to this debate. Let's have a look at what we're actually talking about. We're talking about the Frontier Economics report and their assessment that Labor's energy plan will cost in the order of $652 billion and will be a disaster in the making. It would cost five times more than what the government has previously admitted to. That is an enormous cost to the Australian economy, but it got me thinking.

I remember reading a piece of research done not so long ago on an economy in Europe that has decided to follow the path that those opposite in government wish to pursue, so I thought I'd dig that little piece of research out. This was a piece of research done by a professor of civil engineering from Norway's NTNU, and it was an assessment of the consequences of Germany's switch away from nuclear power, in this case, as their affordable and reliable source of base-load power, to their ambitious green renewable energy target, under their energy turnaround policies. It was interesting to read that the analysis by this professor suggests that somewhere in the order of $330 billion of costs to the German economy have resulted from this switch away from nuclear power to their so-called green energy revolution. That is an enormous cost. If those opposite—actually, I will correct the record. It's some 600 billion euros that it's cost them, and that doesn't cover all the costs. But that covers things like construction costs, expensive grid upgrades, subsidies et cetera, and what has the German economy got to show for it? Some of the highest energy prices in the world. This is the path that those opposite want to take us down.

Here's a real-world example of your policies in full action, and I would estimate that the cost will be far greater than the $642 billion that Frontier Economics outlined in their report. We had this government come to the last election saying they were going to lower electricity prices. Well, that has not happened. When I talk to my businesses across my electorate, particularly those that use gas—I was speaking to one the other day—their gas bill has gone from $125,000 to $350,000, a 180 per cent increase. They're talking about closing their doors as a consequence.

When you look at that $642 billion figure, I'd say that's just the bottom end of the range when we take in the broad economic costs of higher electricity prices, higher gas prices and our inability to then compete in a global marketplace and manufacture the goods that we need in this country to have a degree of sovereign capability and sovereign reliability. The interesting thing in the real-life example of Germany, as I've outlined, is they still need nuclear power via the umbilical cord from France. We don't have that luxury. We're a standalone economy. (Time expired)

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