Colin Boyce (Flynn, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution in respect to the interim report into nuclear power generation in Australia, particularly from the point of view of my electorate of Flynn, in Central Queensland, where there has been a proposal to possibly build a nuclear facility at the Callide Power Station near Biloela.

The whole energy debate is obviously front and centre. It is very topical. There are many different points of view. It is a rather polarising debate, with those that support traditional power generation, coal and gas, versus the renewable energy industry, wind turbines, solar panels, batteries, pumped hydro and so forth; and other alternative energy sources, such as the production of green hydrogen et cetera.

One of the biggest tragedies to me in this whole energy debate is that nearly 25 years ago there was a decision made in Parliament House to put a moratorium on nuclear energy in Australia. What that has led to is a whole generation of people in our education system who have not pursued the science and everything that is involved in respect to anything nuclear. That has put Australia in a very difficult position right now. We know that we have signed up to the AUKUS program, to have nuclear submarines here. We will have to train people to manage, to build and to operate. We will have to come up with the technologies to deal with the waste, the maintenance and everything in regard to having nuclear submarines. Having made that decision as Australians—our government has committed some $4 billion to Rolls-Royce to develop the nuclear reactors that will go in those submarine boats—doesn't it make practical, common sense to include industrial and domestic nuclear power? To me it does.

These arguments that are very exaggerated in respect to having nuclear energy are very topical and, as I said, very polarising. There are over 400 nuclear reactors around the world providing clean, efficient and reliable power to many industrialised countries. Many of those industrialised countries are revamping their nuclear systems and reinvesting in nuclear systems. For Australia to shut itself out from that possibility is, to me, a tragedy for future generations of Australians. We should be having sensible and logical debates about our energy future.

Here in Australia we do have a nuclear reactor, at Lucas Heights. It has been there since 1960 or thereabouts. It is recognised as a gold standard medical nuclear facility. There are scientists—and the medical profession in general—who go to Sydney, to Lucas heights, to pursue their profession, to perform studies in respect to medical nuclear technology. All of the waste that has been produced at Lucas Heights is stored onsite, and has been since it was started. There is an argument that, come 2030, Lucas Heights will run low on storage, and that is why the previous government developed a proposal to build a nuclear waste site at Kimba in South Australia, but that has now been vetoed. The point is that we've already got this technology. We're already dealing with it. We've already signed up to the AUKUS agreement with the possibility of having nuclear-powered submarines. Why can't we have this logical debate in respect of nuclear energy and let the experts make these decisions and feed into these conversations instead of to-ing and fro-ing with politicians such as me who really know nothing about it. We're only scratching the surface.

The former speaker talked about social licence. Up in Central Queensland, where I come from, as I said, there's a proposal by the coalition to build a facility there should we become the government. I have held many forums—a dozen, in fact—on this very subject, and, of all 3,000 people who responded to us, 68 per cent of them were in favour of pursuing nuclear technology. It's pretty much a must-have where I come from. The Flynn electorate in Central Queensland is one of the big economic engine rooms in Australia. We have the coal industry, the alumina industry and the coal-loading terminal at Gladstone, which is the world's fourth-largest coal-loading terminal. There is the gas industry, heavy industry of all sorts, the railways and all of that sort of thing. It needs a constant, reliable source of energy. People up there know you cannot run the alumina smelter and the two refineries there on wind turbines and solar panels; it simply won't work. You cannot run the electric train system to the Central Queensland coalmines, which deliver 70 million tonnes of coal to the Port of Gladstone, on wind turbines and solar panels. It's illogical even to suggest that you can. You need a system of batteries and pumped Hydro—an enormous investment—to make it even feasible to work.

This is another argument that has come up in this report: cost. What does it all cost? I know we're only coming up with ballpark figures, and the coalition has engaged Frontier Economic to do their estimations on it. They've come up with a figure of approximately $330 billion, and that's expensive. I recognise that. But so is renewable energy. Again, Frontier Economics came up with a figure of over $600 billion for renewables. I would argue that it's going to be a lot more than that, and I'll tell you why that is. In my electorate again, we are having these enormous wind turbines been built. I'm dealing with over eight proposals in my electorate alone. We know from facts that are there now—Lotus Creek, for example, is a $1.3 billion project for 46 turbines. If you do the math there, that's $28 million a turbine. I've done a lot of work with Steven Nowakowski mapping all of these turbines right around Australia. There are some 21,000 of them that we have identified and we have mapped. If you do some ballpark figures on that, use a nominal figures of $20 million per turbine and multiply that by 20,000 turbines, you're talking $400 billion dollars, and that's just for the wind turbines. When you start adding in the transmission lines, the pumped hydro, all of the network charges and everything that's got to happen to make it work—Princeton University in America and the University of Melbourne's estimation of $1.5 trillion by 2030, in my humble opinion, is more like the ballpark.

If we ask the government how much renewable energy will cost us, they won't tell us. They don't have a figure. I find it quite appalling to saddle Australians to these enormous projects, particularly when they've got issues like the Capacity Investment Scheme, where Australians will be asked to underwrite the power generation of these projects even if they don't produce any power. That's quite a ridiculous notion.

Nuclear energy, as I said, is widely accepted where I come from. I understand there is angst amongst communities everywhere. Everybody uses these silly little memes of three-eyed fish and so forth. What nonsense! What absolute nonsense! As I said, there are over 400 nuclear facilities around the world, providing the cleanest and most reliable power to the biggest industrial nations on the planet. We, as Australians, should be having sensible debates about what our future holds and how we are going to provide reliable and affordable energy for our consumers that has longevity attached to it.

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