Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. How is the Albanese Labor government working with states, territories and local members to deliver reliable and affordable electricity, and what other approaches have been proposed?

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The honourable member for Newcastle asked me in part about working with members of parliament, and she's a terrific one—an absolutely terrific one. Working with the states and territories is important as well. Our cooperation with states and territories is one of the reasons we saw a record 5.9 gigawatts of renewable energy installed into the grid last year. It's also one of the reasons the Investor Group on Climate Change today released figures showing that those investors citing regulatory uncertainty as a barrier to investment have dropped by 30 percentage points since we came to office. That's cooperation with the states and territories.

The same report showed that, out of 14 options for investing in energy in Australia, the most popular for investors was renewable energy and the least popular was nuclear energy. The report said: 'This is due to nuclear energy's very high cost and lack of maturity and deployment in next-generation technologies.'

I was asked by the honourable member for Newcastle about approaches that have been proposed. Of course, we know that those opposite proposed nuclear. The Leader of the Opposition said last week to his party room there were four problems: cost, safety, disposal and location. We've just added a fifth, which is lack of investor certainty and lack of investor interest. I can add a sixth, which is the states.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Honourable members opposite yell out 'There's a ban.' Yes, there is; there's a federal ban. What they don't talk about so much is that there's also a ban on nuclear energy in the three mainland eastern states, Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. Recently, we've seen leaders of the opposition, leaders of the Liberal Party, asked whether they would lift the ban. Mr Crisafulli, when asked if he supported the federal Liberal nuclear policy, said, 'No, we don't.' Mr Pesutto said, 'The ban can't be removed in the short term and won't be.' So those opposite need to explain how they'll overcome a ban in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.

I'm also asked about local members. Today we've seen 12 local members of great conviction say they fully support nuclear policy as long as it's not in their electorates. I won't go through them all. The member for Hinkler had an interesting reason: 'I have some technical reasons that would make it unlikely. We don't have a power station, we don't have the infrastructure, and we have earthquakes.' My favourite was the member for Menzies, who said, 'No reasonable person would suggest putting them right where people live.'

So we're narrowing it down. It's going to be six electorates with a power station, infrastructure, no earthquakes and no people. I know there's a redistribution coming, but I doubt it's going to produce six electorates with nobody living in them. That would be an unusual result for a redistribution. The sooner we get some detail from the opposition, sooner their policy will fall apart.