Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are here today thanks to the Liberal-National coalition's groundbreaking work in establishing the AUKUS program. Without the work of the previous Minister for Defence and now Leader of the Opposition, the Hon. Peter Dutton MP, we would not be here to progress the national building AUKUS program and the subsequent conversation around nuclear power. Let me be clear: the coalition stands with the Labor government and is committed to the establishment of nuclear powered submarines as a crucial part of our national defence strategy. The reality is that without the coalition leading the way we wouldn't be here today.

Labor likes to stand as the hero of AUKUS when really they are riding on our visionary coat-tails. Back in March 2021 the now Leader of the Opposition was sworn in as the Minister for Defence. I congratulated him at that time and spoke to him about the possibility of acquiring nuclear powered submarines, and I spoke to him again in June 2021. Less than two years ago there was nothing on the table at all. There was nothing to do with AUKUS. Nuclear power was not an option. Labor were still in the current reality of where they sit in relation to nuclear power based on land, which is that it's never going to happen and they'll never support it. But as soon as they saw former Prime Minister Morrison, along with their hero President Biden and the UK Prime Minister, they were quick to say: 'Us too! We'll get on board now!' The reality is that they never supported it. It's good that, in coming to government, they have continued with the coalition's AUKUS plan.

The capability of the AUKUS nuclear powered submarines will change the face of our naval fleet, with considerable performance advantages over conventional submarines. This multigenerational legacy project will not only deliver enhanced defence capabilities; it has the potential to boost defence industry innovation, manufacturing and jobs around Australia. But potential can only translate into reality with bold, ambitious and optimistic leadership. Sadly, the Albanese government is found wanting when it comes to being prepared to tackle some of the well-recognised hurdles that AUKUS presents. There are nuclear-industry related hurdles that must be addressed and overcome if we are to get to the finish line and deliver conventionally armed nuclear powered submarine capability as early as the 2030s.

The truth is that Labor and the Greens have made 'nuclear' a dirty word, along with anything related to it. We only have to look at this week's actions of the Minister for Climate Change and Energy and his social media posts, which were quickly pulled down when he realised that he was embarrassing the government. The reality is that for a long time the Labor party has considered nuclear a dirty word and this has left Australia starved of a foundation on which we can build our nuclear industry. Defence industry tells me they have significant concerns about the government's lack of clarity, planning or policy that will build and support the nuclear industry, workforce and skill base needed. They go even further: they have significant concerns around defence industry in general for the next five years, mainly because of a lack of new funding in the DSR, which the minister so rightly likes to come into question time and talk about.

Unfortunately, a continued campaign from the left in the Labor party to harvest fear and misinformation around nuclear energy has led to hesitation from our workforce and industry to invest into this viable option for our future. With no baseline experience, we are and will continue to be found wanting for experts, a workforce and even an industry baseline awareness needed to work out the practicalities from this bill. It is predicted that we will require 200 subject matter experts in Australia to make top-level decisions regarding the eight new SSN-AUKUS subs, with at least 20 years experience in nuclear technology each. Australia faces a significant hurdle in acquiring these experts, with virtually nobody in Australia having the required experience.

As a shadow minister, I say the coalition wishes the government well. We want to see them get this experience, but there are some real concerns. Additionally, we will require a workforce that includes senior scientists, electrical and mechanical engineers, technical managers, reactor operators and even health physicists. This workforce will ideally require between seven and 10 years experience each. When you add that 4,000-plus workers will need to be trained up in nuclear awareness to help to maintain the AUKUS submarines, it is clear that we are under-resourced at every level. With only one nuclear reactor plant in operation in the whole of Australia—the Lucas Heights facility in Sydney, which is used to produce nuclear medicine and deliver neutrons for a suite of scientific instruments used in research, opportunities for hands-on experience and training at a nuclear-aware level are limited.

These are real issues that the Labor government, the Albanese government, has failed to address or provide a plan for, so I ask today: how does this government plan to recruit and upskill our own people to that level in time? There is a whole chain of events that needs to come into play to satisfy our workforce and industry needs, and the simple reality is that we don't have enough people or the skills training basis. We currently don't have the infrastructure, compliance requirements, logistics strategy, native capability, educational base or legislative allowances to satisfy the nuclear industry, and with all of these the government is failing to unpack and clarify. Words in this chamber cannot build what we need. We need a plan, clarity and leadership.

However, nuclear power is pivotal not only to the future of our defence and AUKUS submarines but for the future of Australia's energy supply. If only the Labor government's energy policy had the staying power of a nuclear submarine. The advantages of nuclear propulsion powering our submarines echo the benefits to be found through use of nuclear power to revolutionise the energy supply base of our nation. In the second reading of this bill, the minister took the opportunity to clarify Labor's position of not supporting a nuclear energy base for our future. Let me take this opportunity to restate the bold leadership from the opposition in the coalition's consideration of next-generation, emission-free, small modular nuclear technology. We're not afraid of the conversation. The technologies are safe, reliable and cost-effective. Unlike Labor, who lead through fear, we lead through vision, and we have new leadership now under Peter Dutton and vision that reflects what we now know Australians want.

In fact, Labor and the Greens espouse that they are representing the views of their constituents and supporters but conveniently fail to mention that, according to several recent polls, they are off the mark, with 53 per cent of Australians agreeing with the statement 'Australia should build nuclear power plant to supply electricity and reduce carbon emissions as we move towards 2050.' This included 52 per cent of Labor voters and 44 per cent of Greens voters supporting construction. Yet those opposite refuse to have the mature conversation. Just as they were led to this vision, history will find them being led to visions by the coalition around emissions-free nuclear power.

The truth is that Labor continues to deceive the Australian people with its contradictory energy policy. On one hand, they stand in this House and promote nuclear power propulsion in their defence strategy, whilst at the same time demonising the benefits of transitioning to low-emissions use of nuclear power as an alternative energy source to get us to net zero emissions by 2050. Instead of informing Australians about the advantages that small modular emissions-free nuclear power could offer, they prefer to trade a viable energy alternative for political votes, harvested on a scare campaign, refusing to consider the benefits of onshore small and micromodular options. By doing so, Australia is left behind the rest of the world, as 50 countries are exploring or investing in next-generation technology, with 32 countries, including Canada, China, France, the United States and the United Kingdom, using zero-emissions nuclear power today, including to firm up renewables.

Reducing carbon emissions is our responsibility to this nation, and there is no debating that we all want to see emissions go down. The 2050 policy has bipartisan support. But the cutting of emissions cannot come at the expense of cutting energy supply, reliability and affordability. The coalition prioritised this, and between 2013 and 2021 cut Australia's emissions by 17 per cent while growing the economy and creating jobs. We must boldly invest in and commit to long-term reliable and safe energy alternatives. And whilst billions of dollars have been invested in alternatives like wind and solar, they're still generating only 12 per cent, and the cost around their high transmission lines will run into tens of billions of dollars, not to mention the environmental impact.

The scientific reality is that we must firm up the energy grid, and with the government against coal and nuclear, What remains? To distribute renewable energy, more than $100 billion will need to be spent on 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines, and these poles and wires will run through everywhere—a fact the Labor government failed to mention when singing the environmental virtues of their plan. The reality exposed by other countries that have failed to consider nuclear options should provide us with warning. People in countries like Germany, Italy and Denmark are now paying a heavy price, paying nearly double the electricity costs of Australia and six times the costs of Canada, which is using nuclear power as an alternative, as the member for Hinkler would know.

At a time when cost of living is becoming the No. 1 issue for Australians under the Albanese government, there is no excuse for this government, who continue to use fear and misinformation to secure their political position, rather than present viable options to address the real impact of energy costs. Every dollar that the Albanese government continue to spend on their renewable energy plan is being passed on to the people in my electorate and other parts of Australia in the form of higher electricity bills. This week Prime Minister Albanese and his government presented the opportunity to Australia to be an energy superpower, and on this we agree. We do and always have had the potential to be a major player on the world stage when it comes to energy supply. However, we need to make choices and set priorities to get the best result.

However, sadly, under this government, instead of becoming an energy superpower, we are watching our opportunities fade as this government continues to neglect our own industry and innovation potential in favour of reliance on overseas imports and supply chains. As I said before, there is not a dollar extra in the DSR over the next four years, and defence industry are screaming for orders; they want to be fed. But we know that they won't be fed under the Albanese government. In addition, as states like Queensland place more and more limitations on our ability to mine natural resources like uranium, we will remain behind the eight ball when it truly comes to being an energy superpower. Our own wind and solar capabilities are dependent on import markets—cheap solar panel imports from China, cheap imports from China for wind farms. And these are the very countries it is not in our national interest to be funding.

We simply cannot continue to play games with our defence policy, nor our energy policy. Just like we are investing in nuclear power propulsion for our Defence Force capability, we must consider nuclear power as a viable option for the nation's energy capability. How can the government face the Australian people when it stands here today promoting the value of emissions-free nuclear powered submarines and yet fails to address the shared benefits that this energy source could provide in their everyday lives?

The challenge around base-load power is one that is well recognised across the world, and many other countries have responded sensibly and seriously with a zero-emissions nuclear energy policy. That's why we will continue to lead the discussion not only on nuclear propulsion for our submarines—we did so when we signed the AUKUS agreement under the former Prime Minister and the former defence minister—but also on next-generation zero-emissions small and micro nuclear technologies as a viable answer to Australia's energy needs

Our aspiration must be achievable and focused on the type of Australia we want our children to inherit mid-century: a nation that is cleaner and healthier but also richer, stronger and independent. The words of the Leader of the Opposition, 'That is policy pragmatism,' are true.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to rise to speak on the Defence Legislation Amendment (Naval Nuclear Propulsion) Bill 2023. Of course the coalition will be supporting this bill; after all, the AUKUS arrangement is a coalition arrangement. It's an agreement that we struck when in government. It is the right decision, and I'm very pleased to see that the federal Labor government continues to support what is an absolutely essential addition to our defence capability. As the Minister for Defence said in the second reading speech, Australia will now become one of only seven nations to operate nuclear powered submarines in the world—just seven. And yet we see that there are more than 32 that utilise this technology to deliver base-load electricity in their countries, and some 50 are already exploring investment in that same technology for the same purpose—but more on that as I continue this speech.

So what is it that we need to deliver these systems, these submarines, this defence capability, in our country? As the minister said, we need to develop 'the full suite of skills, facilities and institutions along with an appropriate regulatory and legislative architecture to be nuclear stewards'. We have been nuclear stewards for decades. The Lucas Heights reactor is a critical part of this country, particularly in the production of nuclear medicine isotopes. In fact, some 12,000 to 14,000 every single week are produced and utilised in this country for the purpose of saving people's lives—for PET scans, to identify cancers, for treatment. That use produces waste, and that waste has to be dealt with. As we all know, under nonproliferation and other treaties, each individual nation has to themselves deal with the waste from reactors, and we have done. The good people of Kimba in South Australia, in the majority, have accepted a facility to deal with that low-level radioactive waste, and it's the right decision, the right location and the right community. It needs to be done, and I'm very pleased that it's continuing, even though I believe it's back before the courts again, which is a great shame.

This bill lifts the moratorium on civil nuclear power because we are building these submarines in Adelaide. And guess what, Madam Deputy Speaker Chesters? If you're going to build a reactor, whether it's in a submarine or otherwise, you need to avoid the existing moratoriums in this country. But it's only for these submarines, not for anything else; apparently, it's only for submarines! We are going to build nuclear capacity because we are going to build nuclear submarines. We're going to build a nuclear industry, we are going to have a domestic nuclear industry in this country, because there is no other outcome. If we are going to build submarines with reactors, then we will have civilians who are trained specialists, whether they are physicists or engineers or others, who will be assisting Defence, and they will be based in this country, and we will build that capacity. Any other idea is just blatantly wrong—that nothing else will happen apart from this. The government itself has said there will be some 10,000 people required for building this capacity all around nuclear technology, all around an industry which is already well established around the world. It is incredibly safe. There are so very few incidents in nuclear reactors, it is just astounding. When you compare it to other risk environments, it is very low. As I have said, this is the right decision. If we look at what we need for the nuclear industry, we need to build nuclear capability, we have to lift the moratorium, we have to make sure we have the right people and we have to use the right technology, which of course comes as part of the AUKUS arrangements with the United States and England.

These are advanced reactors. To give those who might be listening to this broadcast some context—I am told this is not top secret; it is in the public arena already—the reactor in the Virginia class submarine, for example, is around the size of a 44-gallon drum. To give people some context if they are watching on the video, that is roughly the height of one of the chairs in the Federation Chamber. It is about the same width. It is a circular drum. That is not very big but it powers the entire submarine, makes it comfortable for submariners and it runs for 30 years before it needs to be replaced. And guess what? It will produce high-level radioactive waste which has to be dealt with by this country, in this country, by the government of the day.

So we will have an industry which is building civilian, technical and military capability and capacity. We are building reactors in Adelaide. We are dealing with high-level radioactive waste. We will utilise these facilities for many years. They will run for 30 years. Our power station will run for 80 years. In fact, it could run much longer if it is reconditioned and set again. So the idea that we can do this in Australia but we can't develop nuclear capacity to deliver electricity, baseload power, that will run for the 80 years with the same people. The shadow of hypocrisy follows federal Labor around and around.

If we look at what has happened in recent years, I am very pleased that Labor has changed its mind. Genuinely, I am, because this is the right decision for our nation and our future. But when the energy minister at the time, former Minister Taylor, in 2019 said the coalition has an open mind, the Labor Party went ballistic. We saw that. Even the current Treasurer now in the state of Queensland, Minister Dick, said 'How good is Queensland—beautiful one day, radioactive the next.' This was the type of reaction that is typical for Labor. Where is it going to be—Robina, Wide Bay? Even the now Prime Minister, Prime Minister Albanese, in 2019, said, 'If these people are serious they should be upfront with every single Australian about where they think these power plants should go.' In 2019 the now Prime Minister said 'Beautiful one day, nuclear the next.' Well, guess what? We're going to have nuclear-powered submarines and they will be in Adelaide and Brisbane and Sydney and Perth and Darwin. They will be around the country. The hypocrisy of Labor to say that you can't utilise it for the benefit of all Australians is just ridiculous. At the same time that Minister Dick was making the sorts of silly comments—Simpsons-like comments—guess what? There was a ship called the USS Ronald Reagan parked at Brisbane port. It has more than one nuclear reactor. It has multiple nuclear reactors. It was about 10 kilometres from where Minister Dick was making these comments. If you want politics to be a circus, keep sending the clowns. That is what I say.

There is an opportunity here that Australia desperately needs. I mean, points have been made by the member for Petrie. If the federal Labor government seriously thinks that they will build 28,000 kilometres of transmission in this country with all of the easements that are required, with all of the things that will go to court, with all the native title and environmental approvals by 2030, they're kidding yourselves. It will not happen. It simply will not happen.

The power generation that could potentially be utilised from nuclear is established around the world. The technology continues to advance whether it is small modular reactors or others, because that is what this is. It is a small modular reactor that fits in a very sophisticated tin can that will go 200 metres under the surface for the Australian submariners defending our nation, running for 30 years without being refuelled, but you can't put one on a block of concrete in one of the most stable countries in the world to use it to generate electricity? That is just farcical, absolutely farcical.

The Leader of the Opposition has stated unequivocally that we support the nuclear industry in this country, that we support AUKUS, that we support the building of these submarines for utilisation for our nation and in our interests because it is the right decision. But you won't utilise the same technology and the same group of people and the same issue across the country to generate electricity.

This is how simple it is: a nuclear reactor boils water to create steam; that steam runs a turbine; that turbine turns a generator to create electricity. It's exactly the same, whether it's coal-fired power or it's run on chook manure or you stick in wood—whatever. You are simply boiling water to generate electricity in a traditional generator, and the big advantage of those generators compared to what's proposed by federal Labor is that they have inherent characteristics which you have to pay for in intermittent wind and solar. They have system strength, and that is incredibly important to maintaining the network and its stability. They are in one place, so you can hook them up with big transmission lines and distribute it through transmission and out to people's houses. If you add that on to what Labor is proposing around electric vehicles, for example, even AEMO has said you could need a 60 per cent increase in generation capacity, transmission and distribution.

So, Madam Deputy Speaker Chesters, think about your house—and I'm not picking on you; it's everybody's houses. You will have to upgrade every single supply point, from your switchboard. and even from your garage for the fast-charge generator, all the way back to the substation, and all the way back to the generator. It is an enormous undertaking. It will cost hundreds of billions of dollars. Or you can build a baseload power station using technology that federal Labor now has to deliver and has committed to. It is no different. It's exactly the same. It can be done. The only thing that needs to be determined is where you put them.

In my view, and this is just my view, it has to go to a community that supports it. Do I think that there are communities out there that want a $10 billion facility and potentially want to get free electricity for everyone who lives in sight of that nuclear reactor and power generation plant and want a high-paying job? Absolutely, I do. They will be out there, and they will be available, and they'll want to use it.

Look at existing coal-fired power stations. As they come to the end of their natural lives—that's what happens with equipment if you don't maintain it and replace it; that's just nature—they already have enormous storages of water for their ash systems, they already have connections for transmission, they have existing easements and they already have existing approvals. They are brownfield sites. Now, clearly, there will need to be assessments of whether they are earthquake prone or pose any other risk, but those risks can be assessed. Those locations can be identified. There are communities that would welcome those types of investment with open arms.

I can tell you now that those who don't have open arms are the people of regional Australia who are being told that literally millions of hectares of the land that they utilise, particularly to generate food, will be covered with solar panels that last 20 years, assuming they don't get hit by a cyclone and they don't get hit by hail. You may think that's unlikely. There's a facility at Gympie, in the member for Wide Bay's electorate, that wasn't even connected. In one hailstorm 20 per cent of the facility was lost. A hundred thousand panels were destroyed before they even got put on.

That brings me to waste. As we've already outlined, federal Labor has to deliver a high-level radioactive waste facility because, when these submarines come to their end of life, it is a necessity for that to be dealt with; it's that simple. For all those people in Australia who think this isn't going to happen, it has to, because the decision has been made: Australia is getting a nuclear industry. It is very, very straightforward.

You can look at the United States. From memory, this is on the United States Department of Energy's website. They provide electricity from nuclear facilities to around 70 million people. Each year, to provide power to 70 million people, those facilities—keep in mind that this is older technology that has been in place for some decades—deliver approximately half an Olympic-sized swimming pool of waste. It is so dense. There is so little of it to produce so much energy. By comparison—this is from the Parliamentary Library—if we look at wind turbines, the estimate is that by 2050 there will be 43 million tonnes of wind turbine blade waste alone. That is just turbine blades. That is 43 million tonnes that can't be recycled. They are made of a composite, which is a carbon-fibre composite combined with a pile of other things, that is stuck on very high towers. That has to be dealt with. It costs a fortune. There will be 43 million tonnes of it.

Or you can utilise technology that this nation has to have as part of this arrangement for things that have to be put in place because they are necessary to having nuclear powered submarines run by Australia, defending our country. Every single stage of the cycle will now be addressed, because they must be as part of this agreement. There are no other options. The comparisons are endless. Every single wind turbine needs about 50 acres of footprint and 600 tonnes of concrete in the base, and they are still intermittent and you still have to build another entire system which backs it up 100 per cent because a wind turbine runs roughly 33 per cent of the time and solar panel utilisation is about 22 per cent of the time. So covering this country in a tarpaulin of something which is intermittent and making it so that we will rely on the weather for the security of our country, our businesses, our homes and the things that we need at a time when we need this country to be strong is the wrong decision.

2050 is a very long way away. We need to make sure we are keeping manufacturing in this country, not having it leave and go international because companies simply cannot afford to be here. If they are not internationally competitive, they are not competitive. If they don't have affordable gas, don't have affordable electricity, don't have an available workforce and can't utilise those things in this country, they will leave. It is that simple.

I will go back to where I started. The coalition supports this legislation. The coalition supports the AUKUS agreement. It is one that we struck. It is the right decision for our nation. It is the right decision for our national security. But not using this technology for the benefit of all Australia is the wrong decision. I think we see hypocrisy from people like the minister here and what the former Prime Minister said. I reckon the South Australian Premier had it right. He got his finger slapped, but he had it right. We should be utilising this for all Australians.

David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Defence Legislation Amendment (Naval Nuclear Propulsion) Bill 2023 is a very important bill and it has my full support. It makes amendments to the ARPANS Act and the EPBC Act. Why is this being done? People in my electorate and around the country want to know what this is all about. Basically, we have agreed to become owner-operators of nuclear-powered conventionally armed submarines. That triggered the need for a lot of new regulatory processes. Those which are currently in place prevent any nuclear power plants operating in this country. So the bill amends these two acts which have specific provisions preventing the building and construction of a nuclear power plant, a nuclear enrichment plant, a fabrication plant and a reprocessing plant.

But we are already a nuclear nation and we are 80 per cent of the way there. We could so rapidly transfer to having a civil nuclear industry which will make this whole AUKUS endeavour feasible. It would cut the time in half. It would actually allow it to happen. I will just outline some of the details of the legislation. Basically, section 10 of the ARPANS Act and sections 37, 140, 146 and 305 of the EPBC Act have those provisions preventing all those things that we need to support this. Any nation that is going to run nuclear subs needs a civil nuclear industry. Not only would we be the only country in the OECD not running civil nuclear plants; we would then have the distinct qualification of running nuclear subs but having nothing behind them. It is quite schizoid to think that we are going to embark on this endeavour with these provisions in place.

Everyone in the country, pretty much, supports AUKUS. There is a small minority that don't. People were worried about the announcement. It was off the news pages in two days. Australia is ready for nuclear. I give talks all around the country and people turn up in droves. They want to know more. They are not afraid of it unless they have been through years and years of indoctrination, with unrealistic fears equating nuclear power plants with glowing, red-hot sources of massive amounts of radiation and that waste is this huge, massive problem that no-one knows what to do about. That is not the case. There are hundreds of power plants around the world that are operating safely. There have been bad experiences in the past. Chernobyl was a Russian RBMK reactor, a very unstable reactor design from the late fifties and early sixties. It was poorly maintained and run by political diktat. Surprise, surprise: it had a meltdown. It was a disaster for those people there. Fukushima was a disaster but not because of any isotopes that were spread by the physical explosion of hydrogen gas inside the reactor vessel. Because there was intense heat from the meltdown because there was no cooling water, it formed hydrogen in the reactor vessel and blew up. It was a hydrogen gas explosion, and the people who died did at Fukushima not die from isotopes and radiation; they died from the tsunami.

But I go back to this issue. We support the AUKUS program. It was initiated by the former coalition government. We have to meet deadlines to get Rotational Force-West up and running along with the facilities at Stirling, and this bit of legislation is the most appropriate quick thing to do. In both the former Turnbull and Morrison governments for a good period of time, I used to oversee ARPANSA, which is the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency. It's full of very complex regulations for our nuclear medicine sites dotted around the country, which no-one is afraid of, because they go there to get their cancer cured. We have all the systems in place for nuclear powered ships and subs to visit here already, but we need a nuclear regulator for the new subs. This will temporarily put ARPANSA in that place until a nuclear-submarine-specific regulation authority is established with separate legislation. It will be housed in the defence department. It's obviously a good system because that's how America has done it. They have had their regulator inside the defence establishment since the 1950s.

The other thing is that we are doing this because we know it will make us much more safe. It will make the Indo Pacific safer because this will give our defence capability strength. The reach of our forward capabilities will make us much more secure. But the irony of it is that it is just limiting these changes to allow them only in the defence space. What we need for our nation to be strong is sovereignty in our energy system, which we are throwing away and spending trillions of dollars to do. We are turning our energy system into a brittle, weather dependent, randomly generated, complex and variable system that needs rebuilding constantly from now on and ever after, because the renewable-alone energy transition is not feasible. We are not the first-of-its-kind country to do this transition, but, sadly for Australia, we are now the only-of-its-kind country that persists with this mirage that it's possible.

Billions of euros have been spent in Europe trying to transition countries to a renewable based system. Trillions of English pounds, trillions of US dollars have been spent, and they have all come to a screaming halt with unaffordable electricity and blackouts, like in California. One used to think that everything worked in California, but they have had regular blackouts because they got rid of their power stations. You know how woke California is and how Democrat and green focused it was. In the last lot of legislative settings the year before, California voted—157-3, I think the vote was—to actually fire up and continue operating their Diabolo Canyon nuclear reactor because they couldn't live with the blackouts anymore. There are windfarms lying idle in California because they realised they're not affordable.

Having a weather-dependent renewable energy system, which is what AEMO's plan is, is turning our system into a weather-dependent system. It's also dependent on the day-night cycle. The plans that are in AEMO's plan will cost far more than what they say. Many engineers, many bodies, including the University of Melbourne, Princeton University and the University of Queensland, have analysed what would be required for net zero using renewables and batteries alone. Well, let me tell you, it's going to cost us between seven and eight per cent of our GDP every year, forever. That is an enormous amount of money. Depending on the cost of batteries, it might be $5 trillion or up to $7 trillion. Other studies have been released by the University of Queensland. There are not enough mines and critical minerals in the world to even allow the deployment of renewables, either in wind turbines or in solar panels, in the first iteration up to 2030. In fact, from some of the figures that I read last night, we would have to use 7,000 years of mineral deposits to get all these renewables built, and the batteries. It's incredible, but we are doing it.

As I said, we are already a nuclear nation. We have run three nuclear reactors in Lucas Heights. Nuclear isotopes are developed and delivered around the South Pacific and even into the west coast of America from Lucas Heights. When the facility is up and running it supplies 27 per cent of the world's medical isotopes. Other reactors like that are now being planned for Korea and other parts of Asia. But we have huge expertise in this. We have over 1,200 scientists—or at least until some research cuts we did—working for ANSTO. We have a great regulator, ARPANSA. We have universities with engineering faculties that deliver world-class training. And nuclear power plants don't require specific nuclear physics engineers to run them, although you do have to have some.

Even in the recent Emirates build of four large nuclear reactors, in the space of time that I've been in this parliament—yes, I saw sand dunes that had bulldozers building the walls and the sites, after I got into this building—since 2013 they have built four large 1,400-megawatt reactors. And the Koreans built them. They know what to do. They hadn't stopped building nuclear reactors like America and the UK had. They have a supply chain, They have all this technology happening all the time. And do you know what? It cost them $22 billion. There was a cost overrun. There was a delay because of COVID and the GFC. But they have built four big reactors—almost the same as all the energy in New South Wales, the baseload energy—from 2013 to now, in the space of 10 years. They started from nothing in 2009. They didn't have any history of nuclear energy. Their universities didn't have the depth and the experience we have.

We have a huge diaspora of people around the world who would come back and be involved in this. We know what to do with waste management. We recycle ours, and we have agreements in place for it. We have earmarked places for final repositories. And we could become like Canada. They have 76,000 people working in their nuclear industry. They've been involved since the fifties, and 46 per cent of those jobs are high-paying jobs. But what does it allow? It allows Canada to have electricity which, when I was there, was a third of the cost that we are paying in Australia—a third—and they don't have blackouts, because they have huge amounts of baseload. They also have huge amounts of hydro. But in Ontario they have 65 per cent of their energy coming from nuclear power plants. They're like France.

So I really think the government needs to have a change in their attitude. Unfortunately, they've been misinformed, with their Rewiring the Nation and their transition plans. They got documents like the GenCost report. They got a lot of AEMO documents which I feel have led them up the garden path, given them this false idea that you could seriously do what everyone else has tried and failed. All our highly trained engineers are saying: 'You are trying to turn a variable frequency and voltage direct current, inverting it into alternating current, but at various frequencies and voltages that make the machines and all the systems that get attached to them go faulty, trigger blackouts and be weather dependent.' We're going to spend trillions of dollars. We will need to build not just Snowy Hydro 2.0 but also 14 others to backup what is being planned, and that is randomly variable. The cost of the batteries alone will be trillions of dollars and—wait for it—the plan that AEMO has put out is relying on your batteries in your house to be sucked back in. We really need to be mature and say, 'We've been given bad advice, let's reassess this.'

This bill is fine. We will supported to the hilt. We need it for the defence of the nation. But we really need an electricity grid and reliable and affordable energy to get manufacturing and a vibrant industrial base back in this country, otherwise cities and businesses will fail and cities will blackout. We'll be like Adelaide eventually—if we keep on going with this madness, that is the eventual result. Our competitors, opponents and people who have expansionary plans are laughing all the way to the bank. We sell them all our minerals wholesale at cheap prices and they send us expensive stuff that works for 10, 15 or 20 years, destroys our competitiveness and leaves businesses overseas. We really need to reconsider. To defend the nation, we need electricity and a grid that's cheap and reliable. (Time expired)

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Defence Legislation Amendment (Naval Nuclear Propulsion) Bill 2023. There's no greater responsibility that a government has than to defend its people—to defend Australians. I was and still am very proud to have been part of a government that delivered—that created AUKUS. I want to particularly single out former prime minister Scott Morrison, former defence minister Peter Dutton, now opposition leader, and the former former defence minister, Senator Linda Reynolds. This was an arrangement that so much work had gone into to create. It was absolutely vital that it was done in a secretive way. I know that it upset the French, and that's regrettable, but AUKUS is a vitally important arrangement—a trilateral arrangement between Australia, the US and the UK.

Its principal pillar is that of the supply of as many as eight nuclear powered submarines to Australia. Why is that important? It's a $368 billion project. In all fairness, I will give credit where credit is due to the current Prime Minister. He could have baulked at this and said. 'We don't want a bar of this.' I'm conscious and cognisant of the Labor Party's extreme reticence in relation to nuclear energy. He didn't. He played team Australia, as he should have as the opposition leader at the time. He didn't have to, but he did a good thing. This $368 billion project is the single largest defence expenditure ever undertaken by our country. I'm reluctant to say it will probably be one of the largest ever, but who knows what will happen in the future? In relation to the nuclear powered submarines, a lot of Australians I've talked to about this issue have a not unusual reticence when they hear that figure of $368 billion. It is a significant sum of money. Many Australians say: why do we need to spend that sort of money? Nuclear powered submarines are the apex predator of defence military equipment.

I want to single out the hardworking men and women of the Royal Australian Navy. Those of you who are submariners who are working on shore, you may be listening to this. If you're at sea and you are submerged, you won't be listening to this, but I do want to single you out for your service. I have had the immense privilege of going to sea for three days on HMAS Collins, so I got a bit of a look at the work that you do. It was incredibly insightful for me to see the incredible work that you do in what are pretty trying and austere conditions. I want you to know that, as the now deputy chair of the defence committee, I have an immense degree of pride in the work that you do.

Our Collins class submarines—all six of them—really got a bad rap over decades. But, to the credit of the men and women of the Royal Australian Navy, we have turned them into very, very effective pieces of equipment. In fact, it is said that they are in the top two conventionally powered submarines in the world. It's a toss-up between Japan's conventionally powered submarines and the Collins class across the world, no doubt because of the great work that's done by our men and women of the Royal Australian Navy. Thank you for your service. There's a lot of work to be done to prepare you and your future comrades to be able to effectively crew the new nuclear powered submarines.

Why are nuclear powered submarines so important? One of the greatest limitations around diesel electric submarines is that, depending on how fast you're going, every 12 to 24 hours, those submarines need to surface—to snort—in order to recharge their batteries. Of course, when they snort, they're firing up their diesel engines and you might as well be playing a brass band. It is then when they are at their most vulnerable. Of course, we want to ensure that our submariners of the Royal Australian Navy have the best equipment to enable them to do the incredible work that they do. It is beyond doubt that the best kit we could put them in—the best kit that we can give them to ensure stability in the Indo-Pacific and to give pause for thought—is nuclear powered submarines. Modern nuclear powered submarines like the Virginia class and the Astute class have an enclosed nuclear reactor which will last the lifetime of that boat. We will get eight nuclear powered submarines—three Virginia class and potentially another two, with the rest to be the new AUKUS class.

These new nuclear powered submarines can go to sea for indefinite periods. The only thing that will prevent them from doing so and will require them to come back to shore is for food for the crew, for the sanity of the crew and for armament replacement. Effectively, a nuclear powered submarine can go to sea and stay at sea, submerged, for six months if the crew can last that long.

That is the power of a nuclear powered submarine. It is the apex predator of the world's military equipment. And why is that important? When you look at, for instance, the People's Liberation Army Navy of China, they have as many as around 80 submarines and hundreds of surface fleet. We saw in the Falkland Islands war that, effectively, the Royal Navy was able to keep the Argentine Navy within the ports because they didn't want to risk losing another surface ship. That is the power of a submarine. That is the power of a nuclear powered submarine that can stay submerged for long periods of time, essentially undetected. Our adversaries will not know where they are. And, yes, whilst our adversaries' boats far outweigh and outnumber the boats that we will have and the surface vessels that we have, we have to give those who might seek to do us harm pause for thought: 'Is it worth us committing an asset to a particular area if there is a risk of an Australian nuclear powered submarine being there?' It's that pause for thought which assists us as a country to keep our country safe.

There would not be person in this building who would want to see this country at war with any other country, least of all with China—not a person in this building. But we have to understand that we live in very dangerous times. Who would have thought just 18 months ago that Europe would be at war? The expansion of the People's Liberation Army of China is very, very significant—and of their navy. They now reputedly have one of the largest, if not the largest, navy surface fleet in the world. They are growing their military at an unprecedented rate in an unexplained way. They will not say why, yet they still do it. And they still say that China seeks peace. That's all well and good, and I hope they do seek peace.

The reality is that Australia needs to be in a position to be able to defend itself. One of the things I have learned in this role is that sovereign capability is increasingly important. We are an island nation a long way from anywhere and we need to be investing in our own ability to defend ourselves. This bill will enable us to do the preparatory work. It will enable ARPANSA to perform its vital work as the nuclear regulator in the initial stages of getting these AUKUS boats into the water. There's a lot of water to go under the bridge, if you'll pardon the pun, but we have to start. There is no time like the present. There is a great degree of urgency. The Collins-class submarines, as effective as they are, are not getting any younger. We need to replace them, and this is a massive, massive project—a project that is like a moonshot for Australia.

We are so incredibly fortunate in this country to have two very close allies like the United States and the United Kingdom, with the United States sharing its crown jewels: its nuclear powered propulsion technology for submarines. This had only ever been done once before for another country, and that was in the United Kingdom in around 1959. The United States had not shared that technology with any other country. We'd asked them plenty of times, and the answer had always been no. But as time change, people change and perceptions change, and the United States and the United Kingdom now recognise that it is in their best interests and the best interests of the security of the Indo-Pacific to ensure that Australia has these nuclear powered submarines.

So to those Australians who, rightly, are concerned about our spending $368 billion: I get that. It's trite to say it's a lot of money. But at what cost is our democracy? At what cost is the freedom and liberty of 25 million Australians? Clearly $368 million is a king's ransom, but the lives, the freedom and the democratic principles of this great country require us to defend those 25 million people, and having these submarines in our military kit will enable us to do just that.

James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When God was giving out continents, not many countries got one to themselves, and we're very lucky to be this great, vast island nation. But it underscores the very important challenge of defending such great abundance, particularly as we have no land border with another nation. The capability of the Royal Australian Navy is at the front line of that and is absolutely vital to our national security interests. That doesn't only include the circumstance—hopefully never eventuating—of conflict with another nation but also the proper management of our maritime borders and all the other search-and-rescue capabilities and many other capabilities that the armed forces of our nation, underpinned by the Royal Australian Navy, task and perform. Most importantly, the submarine capability is one that transforms the potency of the Royal Australian Navy and the ability for us to, first and foremost, defend our nation, because it puts an unbelievable capability, in an undetected form, hundreds if not thousands of kilometres from the Australian coastline. That dramatically changes the dynamic with any potential adversary looking at Australia with any form of aggression.

Being from Adelaide, I of course followed the submarine debate for a long time. The Collins program, which we're very proud of, was conceived around the time of my birth—I'm 40 now—and those six submarines were constructed in Adelaide. There were the naysayers, of course, around that decision to develop a sovereign submarine construction capability through the Collins, which replaced the Oberon class, which of course was built in the United Kingdom. And the submarines before the Collins were all really linked to acquisition opportunities from the United Kingdom. So, the Collins demonstrated the great capability that Australian defence industry could develop and has developed and maintained to produce the most complicated maritime capability, which is that of a submarine.

Of course, back in the Rudd-Gillard era, the identification of the need to replace the Collins fleet and decision to do that were, regrettably, obfuscated. When the Abbot government was elected in 2013, it became very clear that some rapid decision-making was required, because, of course, the Collins, which is an excellent, capable, conventional diesel electric hunter-killer submarine, has, like any maritime asset, a useful life from a technological point of view and from a maintenance point of view. It was constructed in Adelaide, and the full-cycle docking occurs in South Australia as well, so each boat comes out every 10 years for about two years. The pressure hull is opened up, and really the submarine is completely rebuilt in the shipyards in South Australia.

We did indeed intend to go down the path of acquiring a new, sovereign designed and constructed, conventional diesel electric submarine in Adelaide when that was the only technological option for us. Much has been said and written about the relationship with the French government and DCNS, who became Naval Group, but, were it not for the opportunity of nuclear technology, that would have been an excellent program that would have provided an excellent capability. The best conventional submarine capability available to any Navy in the world would have been built in Adelaide by the partnership with Naval Group.

But the former prime minister, Scott Morrison, is to be commended for absolutely transforming the capability options of our Navy through discussions with the United States and the United Kingdom, culminating in the September 2021 announcement of the new AUKUS partnership and AUKUS framework—which, by the way, is way more than just nuclear propulsion technology for the Royal Australian Navy. Nonetheless, the absolute centrepiece of it, from our point of view, is being given access to nuclear propulsion technology, which is, effectively, the most closely guarded piece of defence technology that the United States possesses. Of course, only one other nation, the United Kingdom, had this technology shared with them, and that was way back in the 1950s. Some 70 years later, we are being welcomed into a very trusted partnership and framework with the United States and with the United Kingdom to give us the capability of eight submarines with this nuclear propulsion technology.

The member for Fisher very eloquently outlined what the strategic value of nuclear propulsion is, and it is absolutely transformative, particularly for our vast continent with, currently, a Collins submarine fleet based in Western Australia. That is a long way from potential areas of action and activity—and that's a good thing; it's nice to come back to a home port that is relatively remote from potential aggression. But it also means that, particularly for Australia, our submarines use a lot of their resources, a lot of their diesel fuel, getting to the places they want to be and coming back home from them.

The unbelievable element of nuclear power is the almost infinite power source that it provides. As the member for Fisher mentioned, the limitation on a submarine's range suddenly becomes that of human endurance, human mental health considerations, the ability to take provisions for the sustainment of human life or the amount of missiles and torpedoes that can be accommodated—and, hopefully, not used very regularly, if at all, apart from in testing and exercises. So it dramatically changes the capability. We are very grateful for that. I think, of all the great things that our recent period in government delivered, that will be at least the equal best part of the legacy of those years that we leave to this nation, particularly from a national security point of view.

This bill is about providing the legislative change that is necessary to accommodate the first stages of this AUKUS opportunity. We know that dramatic upgrades in Western Australia are necessary to sustain nuclear powered submarines that will be on rotation from the United States and the United Kingdom while we work through the ultimate objective of the Royal Australian Navy. That objective is acquiring submarines and, most importantly to me as an Adelaide MP, having submarines that we build in Australia. In Adelaide they will be built at the Osborne shipyard complex. It is important that we build them here and sustain them here so we have a sovereign capability that underpins our ability to defend ourselves without relying on anyone else. We all understand that a lot of other legislation will need to be considered into the future to allow us to achieve that potential. It's very important that as a parliament we appropriately scrutinise but also move at an appropriate pace through those changes so that this capability is in no way delayed for the Royal Australian Navy, in the interests of defending our nation. Moving this bill through the parliament is something we very much support and will be as cooperative as possible on.

In conclusion, I will say that this demonstrates that we can embrace nuclear well beyond the propulsion of submarines. This is a very expensive capability that we're acquiring, and some of the costs include putting in place the necessary oversight, regulatory framework and independent statutory agency capability to oversee nuclear reactors going into the bellies of submarines at some point in the future. There is also potential for these same small nuclear reactors to provide other benefits to our nation, in the economy and in power generation point.

I commend Premier Peter Malinauskas in my home state of South Australia, who has been very open-minded and very contradictory of some of the scaremongering around nuclear from the Prime Minister and the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Jay Weatherill was a very prominent Labor left politician who became South Australian premier. A bit like Nixon in China, maybe he was the only one that could put on the table the open-minded approach to nuclear that resulted in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission. That royal commission was undertaken by former rear admiral Kevin Scarce, who is also the former Governor of South Australia. It looked at all the parts of the nuclear fuel cycle. In South Australia we have the largest uranium deposits on the planet. We effectively send that relatively unprocessed uranium immediately off for export. The royal commission looked at other ways of potentially being further involved in the supply chain fuel cycle and, of course, opportunities for the storage of nuclear waste, which the Weatherill Labor government sought to embrace.

Defence Minister Marles has indicated that, within the next 12 months or so, the government will identify a site for the storage of nuclear waste from the eight reactors that we're acquiring as part of this AUKUS program that we will be responsible for, which will produce nuclear waste. It will be interesting to learn the site of that facility, which we are told will be on defence land. I suspect there is a good chance that it will be in the state of South Australia, particularly thanks to Jay Weatherill's Labor government bragging about South Australia's capability to host half the world's nuclear waste, which was the proposition in that royal commission. So Labor in South Australia have done the hard work of advertising South Australia's suitability for nuclear waste, so that might have helped the government make a decision in that direction. We will find out in due course but that underpins one of the spurious criticisms that is often thrown up about management of nuclear waste. We will need to manage the nuclear waste from the bellies of these submarines, and those submarines will be lashed to the wharves of Port Adelaide while they are undertaking their final fit out and sea trials and all the rest, when they come in for complex maintenance, just like when they come into the wharves in Fremantle, and potentially if there is a fleet base east for nuclear submarines to be determined in the near future as well.

Apparently, cities can safely have nuclear submarines docked, but we equally have a government that is rubbishing the opportunity of nuclear in other areas, particularly around generation. In my state of South Australia, the likely location of nuclear reactors for the generation of electricity purposes would probably be where the previous coal-fired power plant was in Port Augusta, around 45 kilometres north of metropolitan Adelaide. The transmission lines are in place; the land obviously exists.

As we debate and pass legislation like this, it demonstrates that we can embrace the opportunity of properly considering how nuclear can deliver for this nation, not just through a dramatic enhancement of the capability of our Royal Australian Navy submarine force but perhaps also in other ways as we address challenges like getting to net zero by 2050. With that contribution, I commend the bill to the House.

Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Defence Legislation Amendment (Naval Nuclear Propulsion) Bill 2023. At the outset, I'd like to commend the speeches of both the honourable member for Fisher and the honourable member for Sturt on this same bill. This bill represents the first of many legislative reforms required to implement the commitment of the former coalition Morrison government, adopted by the Labor government as part of the AUKUS security partnership between Australia and our good friends, the United States of America and the United Kingdom.

I commend this government for continuing the work initiated by the former coalition government on the AUKUS partnership for the defence and national security of Australia. By way of background, the AUKUS partnership was announced in September 2021 to promote 'a free and open Indo Pacific that is secure and stable'. The joint statement released by Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom in March of this year provided as follows:

For more than a century, our three nations have stood shoulder to shoulder, along with other allies and partners, to help sustain peace, stability, and prosperity around the world, including in the Indo-Pacific. We believe in a world that protects freedom and respects human rights, the rule of law, the independence of sovereign states, and the rules-based international order. The steps we are announcing today will help us to advance these mutually beneficial objectives in the decades to come.

The first major initiative of AUKUS was the historic trilateral decision to support Australia acquiring conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarines, which are generally referred to as SSNs. This involves the manufacture of at least eight nuclear-powered submarines to be built in Adelaide. Australia must be sovereign-ready before it can operate a nuclear-powered submarine. This means Australia must achieve the capacity to be a sovereign owner, operator, maintainer and regulator of this game-changing capability. A series of steps will be required throughout the next decade, with the support of the United Kingdom and United States, to achieve this as early as possible. Australia's target date for achieving the sovereign-ready milestone is the early 2030s. The Minister for Defence, Minister Marles, described this bill as the first legislative step or tranche in the acquisition of the SSNs.

By way of operation, the bill seeks to amend the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act, as well as the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, to clarify that the current moratorium on civil nuclear power does not prevent the relevant regulators under that other legislation from exercising their regulatory powers and performing functions in respect of conventionally-armed nuclear-powered submarines. In other words, amendments will not disrupt Australia's moratorium on civil nuclear power, and, as my friend the honourable member for Sturt has mentioned, I will have something more to say about that towards the end.

This bill is in the nation's best interests. It concerns the future of our national security and reflects the AUKUS partnership. The one issue that has been raised clearly is the issue of nuclear waste. The AUKUS nuclear power submarine pathway, in its recent report, said:

Australia's nuclear-powered submarines will generate a small amount of low-level radioactive waste, such as personal protective equipment, as part of routine maintenance and operations. There could also be a small amount of intermediate-level radioactive waste generated during these activities. Australia will manage all operational waste from its own submarines … Developing Australia's workforce and know-how to manage radioactive waste from nuclear-powered submarines is an important part of building Australia's stewardship credentials.

I am proud of the role that my electorate will play in assisting the government to deliver the AUKUS arrangements—that is, the role that ANSTO in Lucas Heights, with its demonstrated expertise in nuclear research, science and technology, will play to support the federal government to deliver the nuclear-powered submarines.

Referred to as 'nuclear stewardship' is the responsible planning, operation, application, management and leadership of nuclear facilities and technologies to ensure that the highest levels of safety, security, safeguards and sustainability are achieved to maximise utilisation, benefit and assurance for the people of Australia. For more than 60 years, ANSTO has managed a nuclear reactor and applied nuclear science and technology to benefit Australia. Today, ANSTO operates Australia's only nuclear reactor, known as the OPAL, which is a multipurpose reactor, one of the most advanced reactors in the world. ANSTO has ensured the safe management of Australia's nuclear facilities, which enable leading research, the advanced manufacturing of nuclear medicines and irradiation of silicon ingots for industry globally.

Through ANSTO, Australia is highly regarded, with international networks, including the International Atomic Energy Agency and its already well-established research partnerships within both the UK and the USA. Over the next 18 months, ANSTO will work with the submarine task force project to determine the optimal pathway for the delivery of a nuclear-powered submarine capability for Australia. This will involve working with our partners in the United Kingdom and the United States to intensively examine the requirements that underpin nuclear stewardship. The United Kingdom and the United States have set and maintained exemplary safety records in the operation of naval nuclear reactors for decades. Australia will leverage this experience and our own expertise in safely operating nuclear research reactors at Lucas Heights over more than 60 years to further build on that safety record.

In terms of nuclear waste, ANSTO is already storing nuclear waste—safely. I've had the privilege of touring ANSTO and have witnessed the storage capacity. For those on the opposite side who have intractably and irresponsibly refused to countenance investigating nuclear technology, I would, with respect, suggest that they take the opportunity to tour the ANSTO facilities to actually understand the work that is being performed there with some of the leading nuclear scientists and technical experts in the world. The potential that nuclear technology has to solve many of our current climate and energy issues must be properly investigated.

We have the opportunity in this place—indeed, as members of parliament we have the obligation—to consider every possible avenue available to us, in 2023, to safeguard Australians' futures. It is what we have been elected to do. I still fail to understand why, on the other side, from the Prime Minister down, there is a mule-headed type of stubbornness towards investigating what nuclear technology could mean for us in reaching net zero by 2050 and for us to address our current energy crisis. In conclusion, for all the reasons I've outlined, I commend this bill to the House.

Ted O'Brien (Fairfax, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to the Defence Legislation Amendment (Naval Nuclear Propulsion) Bill 2023. This is undoubtedly the first of many bills that will come before this parliament to enable the introduction of nuclear propelled submarines into the Australian fleet as part of the AUKUS arrangement between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.

AUKUS is a coalition legacy, and I say that with great pride. It is the biggest military program Australia has embarked upon since the Second World War as well as the biggest and most complex manufacturing program we've ever embarked upon as a nation, surpassing even the postwar automotive program and the Snowy scheme. AUKUS must succeed. Indeed, the future of our nation and the stability and security of our region depend on it. I also want to credit the now Labor government for supporting the AUKUS arrangement and for carrying it forward. The coalition stands with them to facilitate the passage of this bill through the parliament.

The bill itself will amend provisions of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act, known as ARPANSA, and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, known as the EPBCA. These amendments to ARPANSA and the EPBCA will ensure that the relevant regulators can exercise their power if and when required in relation to Australia's nuclear propelled submarines without the risk of litigation. The coalition wants to see work begin without delay, especially in South Australia and Western Australia, to prepare our nation for the arrival of nuclear submarines. So it should come as no surprise that the coalition is offering bipartisan support for this bill, and I join with my colleagues, including the shadow minister for defence, in calling on all members of this legislature to support this bill and to do so on one simple premise: that it's in our country's best interest.

I also support the shadow minister for defence in his call for a statutory parliamentary joint committee for AUKUS that has similar secrecy provisions to that of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. AUKUS is a multigenerational venture that will span many parliaments, and the formation of such a committee would provide a forum for debate, hearings and discussions behind closed doors, beyond the ears and eyes of our strategic adversaries, while also protecting AUKUS from unnecessary changes at times when the government of Australia changes.

There are additional points I would like to make, and they relate to the prospect of Australia introducing next-generation zero-emissions nuclear energy and how doing so would complement the AUKUS arrangement. Zero-emissions nuclear energy is of course typically discussed in the context of energy, and for good reason. But what the Albanese government has thus far failed to grasp is that a civil nuclear program offers benefits beyond providing cleaner, greener, cheaper and more secure energy—benefits that would assist a nuclear submarine program such as that which is to be delivered under AUKUS. Put more plainly, a civil nuclear program in Australia would benefit AUKUS and our plans to introduce a sovereign fleet of nuclear propelled submarines.

Let me put this in context. Australia will become one of only seven nations to operate nuclear propelled submarines, as a result of the AUKUS deal. This means that we join heavyweights such as the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and India. However, there's one enormous difference between those countries and ours. They all have civil nuclear energy industries. Australia does not. These nations operate 273 nuclear power reactors between them, and they are busily constructing 39 new reactors. The size of their workforces ranges from as few as 64½ thousand in the case of the UK to as many as 200,000 in the case of France. The presence of vibrant civil nuclear industries in these six nations that also operate nuclear propelled submarines isn't some historical footnote; rather, it has proven to be an important ingredient in the formula for maintaining well-functioning nuclear ecosystems in these countries. You see, Deputy Speaker Sharkie, the nuclear reactors that are installed in submarines are basically smaller versions of reactors in power plants, and so it's not hard to appreciate that there is synergy between them. Foundational skills in engineering, physics and mathematics are required, regardless of whether one works in the field of nuclear energy or nuclear submarines.

Earlier this year I visited the US and travelled from east to west discussing next-generation clean energy, and that included nuclear. Having met countless people from the civil nuclear industry in the States, I was blown away by the number of people who were former submariners. For them, having both a civil nuclear industry and a nuclear submarine industry has allowed them to have lifelong careers. The civil nuclear industry allows for post-service job opportunities for submariners and other technicians, all of whom are highly trained and skilled in nuclear technology.

When it comes to Australia and our need to attract and train our own workforce for our own sovereign submarines, there's a need for speed. We will be receiving our first Virginia-class nuclear propelled submarines within the decade. The Royal Australian Navy is already short of submariners for its six Collins-class boats, each of which requires a crew of around 58. Compare that to the Virginia class, which demands a crew of around 132. This is one of the reasons we need this bill passed quickly. We need to get moving. Australia will need to build a committed and capable workforce to operate its own fleet of nuclear propelled submarines. I believe that task will be made all the more difficult in the absence of a civil nuclear industry because it limits the value proposition to entice potential submariners, who need only look to other countries to see that they offer an expanded array of lifelong career paths by virtue of their civil nuclear industries.

But of course it's not all about the submariners. Making AUKUS a success will also require an expansion of Australian industry and skill, especially with the hundreds of thousands of components needed for building and maintaining the nuclear submarines. We will need industrial assistance from our AUKUS partners, of course, but we also need to enhance our own sovereign manufacturing capability, and this will be made easier if such a task is not for the purpose of just the procurement and maintenance of submarines alone but for a broader set of industries that will leverage next-generation nuclear technologies for generations to come.

How the government will maximise the success of AUKUS without a civil nuclear industry will be a matter that the Prime Minister will have to explain. It is unfortunate for Australia, but Prime Minister Albanese has a longstanding ideological opposition to Australia embracing zero-emissions nuclear energy. I suspect the hardheads of the Australian Labor Party know such a position is simply not sustainable. This is for several reasons, and AUKUS is one. But it is looking unlikely for now. As AUKUS moves into its implementation phase, the Prime Minister looks as though he will not be prioritising pragmatism over ideology.

And it's not just the Prime Minister who is refusing to take off the ideological goggles. The Minister for Climate Change and Energy, believe it or not, is worse. This minister sits on Australia's peak national security decision-making body. That is cabinet's national security committee, the NSC. And yet, despite him sitting on NSC, on 12 May, nearly two weeks ago, that minister released a video arguing that Australia is decades away from developing expertise and capability to manage energy-generating nuclear reactors. But here's the thing. The reactors in nuclear propelled submarines that we need to start managing within a decade are also energy generating. So here we have a member of the NSC not just diminishing Australia's reputation in respect to nuclear technology but openly publishing a view to the world, which includes to the United States and the United Kingdom, our AUKUS partners no less, that Australia is not up to the task. This is an absolute disgrace.

Another point that the minister argued was that Australia will struggle to store used nuclear fuel and waste from energy generated in reactors. Again, what message does this send to our AUKUS partners when one of our obligations under the AUKUS arrangement is to manage these reactors? We're not sending the waste offshore. Here again we have this minister, one of the most senior ministers in the Australian government, a member of NSC, publishing views that Australia will struggle to manage nuclear waste. How is that acceptable? How is he still a member of NSC? What message does that send to our AUKUS partners? It is a disgrace.

Let me summarise. Does the Coalition support AUKUS? Absolutely we do. We are proud that AUKUS is a coalition legacy and we are genuinely happy that the new Labor government is backing AUKUS and carrying it on. That is why we stand with them on this bill to give bipartisan support to ensure the passage of this bill, and that we get on with the job. However, we cannot have this bill debated in this parliament without calling out the rank hypocrisy of the Australian Labor Party, including the Prime Minister and, especially, the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, when it comes to their views on next-generation nuclear technology. What the minister has published should be retracted, and I question why the Prime Minister is still having that minister a member of the NSC.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

WAITE (—) (): I thank all members who contributed to this important debate on the Defence Legislation Amendment (Naval Nuclear Propulsion) Bill 2023. Australia is in one of the most dynamic geostrategic regions in the world. The Defence Strategic Review was a major investigation into our nation's defence posture, force and preparedness. The government's response prompted our Defence Force's first re-tasking in over 35 years. We've also identified six priority areas for response to the Defence Strategic Review, and our first priority area is to develop conventionally armed nuclear powered submarine capabilities. This is a significant undertaking for our nation and the Australian Defence Force, and this bill is an important first step in realising that aim.

The bill clarifies that the moratorium on civil nuclear power, as described under the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act and the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, does not apply to conventionally armed nuclear powered submarines. The amendments made by this bill will enable existing regulators to perform their functions and duties, if and when called upon, in support of Australia's acquisition of conventionally armed nuclear powered submarines and their supporting infrastructure. This is a significant undertaking for our nation and it requires leadership and support within this parliament.

I thank the opposition for supporting this bill and I recognise the statements made by the shadow minister in his contribution to this debate, particularly his indication that the coalition support this bill in full and without amendment. We look forward to working with the opposition and indeed all members of parliament on this and future tranches of important AUKUS-related legislation. I commend the bill to the House.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Ordered that this bill be reported to the House without amendment.