Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Most people know that water plays a crucial role. Put simply, by Associate Professor Obbard from the University of New South Wales, Nuclear Innovation Centre, 'The job of water is to somehow pump all the heat out of the reactor and do something useful with it to make electricity.'

I'm sure the member for Fairfax, when he came up with this wonderful plan that he took to his leader, did something as simple as googling those words 'nuclear power water'. That's what I did. In fact, I did it today, and this is what came up: 'Nuclear power plants require significant amounts of water for cooling, primarily to condense steam back into water after it has powered turbines but also to cool the reactor core. While the water is used extensively, it is not consumed but rather recycled and is used in a closed-loop system.' They typically use 13 billion to 24 billion litres per year or about 35 million to 65 million litres per day.

To put that in context, as someone that used to be on the Olympic Games committee, an Olympic-sized swimming pool is about 2.5 million litres. So the nuclear reactors use 14 to 26 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water per day. That water will not be used for farming. We know that the two proposed sites for nuclear power plants in Queensland—I went there with chair of the committee—are the coal-fired power stations at Callide and Tarong.

I had visited Tarong many years before, when I was a mines adviser in the Queensland state government. Callide currently has an allocation of 20,000 megalitres a year from the Callide Dam. It's estimated that a nuclear power plant would require at least double this amount and maybe even more. It's similar story at Tarong, which will require an additional 55 per cent more water than the current coal-fired power station uses. The dams that both power stations draw their water from also supply drinking water to little towns like Gladstone, Kingaroy and Biloela. These dams have another vital use. They supply water for irrigation for agriculture and the replenishment of aquifers in these areas.

I know that there is one member from the National Party present in the chamber. I do note that the member for Fairfax sits here in the Liberal Party room; he doesn't sit in the National Party room. I also know a little bit of political history, and when I was growing up in the bush, I was represented in my town by a party called the Country Party. The Country Party looked after farmers, and they were also made up of farmers. They were never the Liberal lapdogs. The Country Party in Queensland stood up for themselves and they stood up for farmers in particular. The old Country Party would never abandon the bush. They would never screw over farmers in pursuit of a nuclear fantasy around Callide and Tarong to appease their inner-city liberals. The MP for Fairfax talked about regional economic hubs. I listened to what he had to say. There's no place for farmers. They're giving up on the bush.

The coalition's plan rests on the assumption that there is water available in the first place. The Callide Dam is currently at 16.5 per cent capacity. It's fed by Awoonga Dam, which is currently under 50 per cent capacity. This is no surprise when you consider that since 1964, which isn't that long ago, the Banana shire LGA, which contains Callide, has had 11 periods of drought as declared by the Queensland government. The Queensland government started recording drought declaration status in 1964, and the records show that in the same timeframe the area encompassing Tarong has had 12 periods of declared drought. Why would you choose the areas that have been drought declared basically every other year and say, 'Let's put a water-intensive nuclear power station there.' It's unbelievable.

This has obviously been designed by a Liberal, and not by a National who understands farmers and the bush. I'd certainly like to know what the LNP's backup plans are for Callide and Tarong when the dams dry up and more droughts are declared, as they invariably will be. For the townsfolk that want water to drink—bad luck. For the townsfolk who want to have a shower or a bath—bad luck. For local farmers that have a business that's hooked in to these water supplies—bad luck. However, like so much of the honourable opposition leader's nuclear plans, the backups are unspecified, uncertain and murky. No responsible government would gamble Australian taxpayer money—and such vast sums of it—on such an unreliable prospect. I didn't go to all of the other sites, but my understanding is that several of them have water constraints as well, as the chair can attest to—even the deputy chair can attest to that as well if he has been listening.

Although I'm sure the LNP would rather that we didn't, we also need to talk about the risk of a nuclear accident—vast quantities of water could be required to avoid a reactor meltdown. As the director of the Queensland Conservation Council states:

There simply is not enough water available in the proposed locations to run nuclear facilities, and no plan for where to store irradiated water required for heat reduction in the case of an emergency.

We heard great evidence from the people of Biloela and the people that came to the Nanango hearings. I understand from the people in the committee that there was great awareness and people all throughout Australia were prepared to engage with the idea. When the House Select Committee on Nuclear Energy published the interim report of their inquiry, we'd heard testimony over 19 days of public hearings across the country, including in each of the regions where the coalition plans to build nuclear power plants. The inquiry also considered more than 850 written submissions, and found:

The impact of nuclear power generation on Australia's water supplies has been inadequately considered by the Coalition in its proposal.

Meanwhile, the Albanese Labor government is getting on with harnessing the natural resources we are blessed with to generate renewable energy. During droughts—guess what—the sun shines more, and during droughts, the wind can still blow. That's the beauty of it! We've approved 77 renewable energy projects which will generate enough power for 10 million Australian homes. That's 15 gigawatts more than the Dutton plan will deliver in 20 or 30 years for $600 billion. The opposition leader's Commonwealth nuclear public servants haven't been hired yet. I don't think anybody needs to start working on their CVs right at the moment. This is not a science driven solution; it is a political wedge. Private capital won't touch it with a bargepole. Private capital knows that it would be better off putting it on race 7 at Eagle Farm rather than backing this fantasy.

So, while the Coalition exists in fantasy land, Labor is implementing a strong and responsible plan for Australia's current and future energy needs right now. Labor is working with the coal-fired power stations, working with the gas-fired power stations and working with renewable energy projects to make sure that we've got a manufacturing sector right now, not some fantasy that'll come along in 40 years. Labor is working with these people right now to ensure that we have a manufacturing sector and also that we look after the farmers in the bush and make sure their water supplies are secured. I might be from the bush and representing the city now, but I understand how to look after farmers; the Nationals seem to have forgotten that.

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