Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Howard government likes to emphasise that it and security go hand in hand, yet in reality they are far apart. Issues of work security, wage security and long-term employment security in the electorate of Kingsford Smith are critical and the government’s Work Choices legislation bears down upon that electorate with considerable force.

Likewise, on the issue of climate change and the impact that it is having on the environment, today’s report by the CSIRO that states that there is unprecedented growth in carbon dioxide emissions, churning out at record rates of CO in the atmosphere, emphasises this very fact. Yet Mr Howard’s response is to go ‘clean and green and nuclear,’ as he describes it—a costly waste-producing and insecurity-increasing technology. Mr Howard claims that he supports the Switkowski report, that we should look at the matter seriously and that there are prospects for 25 nuclear power stations in Australia. Be that as it may, that is not how the people of Kingsford Smith feel.

This week the people of Queensland, under Premier Beattie, legislated to ban nuclear power plants. But, regrettably, as we have seen in the past, the Commonwealth can override the states on this particular issue. Especially where there is Commonwealth land and a ready supply of water, and particularly where a prospective site might be close to large populations, there are locations that announce themselves as possible locations for a nuclear power plant. I refer to one such location: Malabar Headland in the electorate of Kingsford Smith—already identified as a possible site for a desalination plant. It readily lends itself to any prospective plan that a federal government might have to impose nuclear power plants on the people of Kingsford Smith.

I want to emphasise at this point that the people of Kingsford Smith do not wish to see a nuclear power plant in their electorate. They want to see sensible, prudent and environmentally sane responses to climate change, but in no way whatsoever are they keen to have a nuclear power plant located at Malabar Headland. I call upon the government to specifically rule out the location of Malabar Headland as a prospective site for any nuclear power plant. It is time that we recognise that the solution for greenhouse gas emissions lies in investing in a range of renewables, in energy efficiency, in a suite of alternative energy sources, in gas cogeneration and in clean coal. All of those are now available. All of those are available to meet our existing energy demands and, in addition, not increase the amount of emissions which go into the atmosphere and contribute to harmful climate change.

But to consider in any way that we can meet the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by embarking on the expensive, time-consuming and risky exercise of creating a number of sites for the construction of nuclear power plants up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia is fanciful and irresponsible. For the people of Kingsford Smith, we need to hear from this government about nuclear power plants— (Time expired)