Barnaby Joyce (New England, National Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The views of CSIRO are obviously well thought out, but they don't come from Mount Sinai; they come from a room and modelling. CSIRO is one source of views on nuclear power, but the Ontario Energy Board Regulated Price Plan is another. For them, the cost of wind is 50 per cent higher than the cost of nuclear, and the cost of solar is 400 per cent higher. Power prices are the cement that keeps the economic house together. If they are not viable, the economic house falls over. Net Zero Australia, which includes Princeton University, the University of Queensland and the University of Melbourne, has put the cost of a 2060 target at $7 trillion to $9 trillion. That is more than the redevelopment costs of western Europe after the Second World War, under the Marshall Plan. It is completely and utterly untenable. Examples of that are being seen now, with Snowy Hydro 2.0 blowing out from $2 billion to $12 billion. From talking to others, I know it will go higher. There is even consideration by some at the site that they should just stop it. Transmission lines, wind factories, solar factories—I know a little about lots but lots about politics, and the sentiment towards this renewable nirvana is completely and utterly changing. The battle will be lost over time, because that is exampled all around the world. At the National Party Federal Conference this weekend, these issues and others must be discussed for proper transparency.