Jerome Laxale (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd just like to pay tribute to the work of the member for Hunter in chairing this nuclear energy inquiry—yet another inquiry into the viability of nuclear energy in Australia. I think the member for Hunter did an extraordinary job on a very tight schedule. We do travel a lot, and it was a pretty hectic schedule, going all around the country, listening to plenty of submissions, hearing from a lot of experts and delivering what I believe to be a really robust interim report, which is absolutely crystal clear. Its findings say this: nuclear energy is too slow, it's too expensive and it's too risky. If the findings weren't in before, they're in now. The facts are here. The expert advice is consistent.

Australians deserve honesty, not a half-baked nuclear fantasy conjured up to distract from a decade of climate inaction by the Liberals and Nationals. Their policy proposal for nuclear is not a serious policy proposal, and, because of that, the Liberals and Nationals are not serious political parties. Their nuclear policy is a dangerous delaying tactic. It's a Trojan Horse for extending the life of coal-fired power stations. And it's a plan that would raise power bills, not lower them.

The chair of the committee, the member for Hunter, summed it up best. He said it could be well into the 2040s before we might see nuclear energy generated in Australia—well into the 2040s. That's 15 years from now, at a minimum. And that's if everything goes right, which, we know, with nuclear, it rarely does. Just ask the UK, where Hinkley Point C is now nearly a decade overdue and 20 billion pounds over budget, or the US, where Georgia's Vogtle nuclear plant has doubled in cost and is seven years late.

This is a problem—a real problem—that those opposite do not acknowledge. Australia does not have the time to wait for nuclear power, because under the former coalition government, let's not forget, the operators of 24 coal-fired power plants announced their plants' closures. Ninety per cent of our coal-fired power is forecast to retire by 2035. That's just 10 years away. To make matters worse, during their 10 years in government they did next to nothing about this. They didn't introduce a nuclear plan when they were actually in government, and then they left us with four gigawatts less power in the system while only introducing one gigawatt of new power. That's a deficit of three gigawatts. With power exiting the system, with coal-fired power shutting in the next decade, we need new power in the system now, not in 20 years—the time we'd be waiting for their expensive and risky nuclear reactors.

In the interim, prices will go up. And what's going to happen with power in between? Are the lights going to go out? What's going to happen to manufacturing? What's going to happen to industry? Their plan is not just reckless; it's a fantasy.

Independent experts at the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator have made these facts plain and simple for us to read. Their latest GenCost report confirms that reliable renewables, firmed solar and wind, are the cheapest form of energy. They price it from $83 to $120 per megawatt hour by 2030. In contrast, the same report shows nuclear power, even the so-called small modular reactors, would cost up to $382 per megawatt hour to produce electricity. That's up to eight times more than renewables. Even if nuclear weren't prohibitively expensive, it still wouldn't work because nuclear power simply isn't compatible with renewables. It is inflexible, needs to run constantly, can't ramp up or down quickly and can't respond to fluctuations in solar or wind output. That makes it a poor fit for a modern grid that needs clean, variable sources of energy in it.

By contrast, firmed renewables backed by batteries, pumped hydro and flexible gas can respond in real time. They are adaptable and scalable, and they are already being built. We heard the minister for the environment say the other day that in our term of government we've added 15 gigawatts of renewable energy generation into the grid, which is more than the Liberals plan for their seven nuclear reactors. We're doing it; it's happening right now. So trying to force nuclear into a renewables backed grid is like trying to jam a square peg into a round hole. It's inefficient, drives up system costs and makes it harder to deliver the flexible energy that Australians need.

Nuclear doesn't complement renewables; it competes with them, and it will destroy them. Every dollar spent on nuclear is a dollar taken away from proven technologies that are cheaper, faster, dispatchable and already working. That doesn't even factor in the enormous first-of-a-kind cost Australia would have to pay because we do not have a nuclear power industry here. We'd be spending $16 billion per reactor—money that would come straight from cuts, higher bills, increased taxes, or a combination of all of those things.

We've been here before. The same people who told us that climate change didn't matter are now saying that nuclear is the answer to it. The same people who delivered zero large-scale generation projects in nearly a decade now want us to trust them when they are in opposition with nuclear reactors. They didn't support renewables when they had the chance. They're not serious about climate action now, and their nuclear push is not about getting energy into the system in the short term. It's about an ideology; it's about delaying action, and it's about locking in fossil fuels for another generation. Don't take it from me; take it from the Leader of the Nationals who admitted on radio that their plan is to sweat out coal assets into nuclear. In other words, they want to run ageing coal power stations as long as possible—they are unreliable and breakdown; some are always out of action—and for us to cross our fingers because nuclear, they promise, will show up one day in two or three decades time. That's not a plan. That's a cover to extend the life of fossil fuels in our energy grid.

Renewable energy is the path forward to solving our energy challenges. It's not a theory or a hope. It's happening right now, delivering for households, businesses and communities across the country. It's not only the cheapest source of new power generation; it's also the quickest to dispatch. It's one of the safest to operate, and it's the most sustainable in reducing emissions. When backed by storage and gas, which we can turn on or off when we don't need it, this smart investment in the grid is capable of delivering reliable and resilient power across the country, particularly for our manufacturers.

This report shows that we don't need to gamble on this technology in 20 to 30 years time. We already have the tools to lower power bills, we have the tools to cut emissions, and we have the plan to get enough energy back into our system. Since we came to office in 2022, we've overseen a 25 per cent increase in renewable electricity generation in the national electricity market. It's helping to push down emissions, and, as AEMO have said many times, it's helping to put downward pressure on wholesale power prices. Emissions from the grid are now at record lows, and they will continue to go lower under Labor.

We're building the transmission we need through our Rewiring the Nation program. We're investing in batteries, both in grid-scale and in communities, just like in Bennelong at North Epping. Through our Capacity Investment Scheme, we are unlocking over 32 gigawatts of new, clean dispatchable energy. It's happening. Last year, there was 5.9 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, enough to power 1.7 million homes. We approved over 80 renewable energy projects, enough to power 10 million Australian homes. In New South Wales alone, we have backed six dispatchable energy projects, and in Victoria and South Australia investor interest has been so strong we've received 32 times more bids than we needed. Households are buying in on this, too, with more than three 330,000 rooftop solar installations in Australia last year. If it works on the small scale, it's going to work on a large scale as well, isn't it? The more we invest in this, the more returns our communities will get in lowering emissions and putting more of the cheapest form of new power in the grid.

Then you get into the fact that nuclear is illegal in many states—there is a huge impediment there—because it comes with baggage. There's the waste, the safety concerns and the distinct lack of social licence to do it. They never mentioned once in their 22 energy policies they would do nuclear; they're just doing it now because of their ideology. We reject it.

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