Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this morning in this place to raise the hypocrisy in Western Australia right now. We have a Western Australian government that is awash with corruption and collusion at the same time as its population is deeply concerned with the topics of global warming, greenhouse gases, shortage of water et cetera. Yet within the Western Australian government lies a conviction that we should have nothing to do with uranium or nuclear energy.

The simple fact is that Western Australia has something like $40 billion worth of uranium and its miners and resource developers are prevented from developing that resource and making money and providing more jobs for the economy of Western Australia. With nuclear energy being used in Western Australia as a result of our supply of uranium, we could be producing energy well in excess of our immediate electrical needs, we could be desalinating water somewhere near the coast of Perth with cheap clean energy, and we could be producing hydrogen from that same water to fuel all of the vehicles mobile in the cities of the Western Australian area. We could solve in a very meaningful way the creation of greenhouse gas today from the burning of fossil fuels by the use of nuclear energy.

If there is a case of economics and a question of whether it would cost more or less, let commercial activity determine that, but do not let us hide our heads in the sand, deciding that to mention the word ‘nuclear’ three times in the one day will make you glow in the dark, which is the opinion right now of the Western Australian government! As I say, they are awash with corruption and collusion, but they cannot see that the people of Western Australia need a break. We need to bring the debate back to the real issues here. We need to insist on the facts and get those facts out there. We need to debate on merit not myth. The difference between Chernobyl and modern power producers today is like comparing the model T Ford with the latest Commodore. It is not realistic.

The Carpenter government needs to move on and weed out this corruption and collusion in departments in the Western Australian government and agree with those who are concerned about the environment in which they live. They should firstly permit the mining of uranium and then consider the possibilities of a cleaner environment through the use of nuclear energy, producing water at a very low cost and producing hydrogen at a very low cost—and hydrogen is the fuel of mobility for the future—which will give us the ability to provide ourselves with clean, unpolluted cities. It is time that the Carpenter government took notice of what is happening in the rest of the world and once and for all got their heads out of the sand and moved into the modern era. (Time expired)