Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Why is the rollout of renewables and storage in this decade so important? What other energy policies have been proposed?

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

I thank my honourable friend for her question and of course her very strong climate leadership in her electorate and here in Canberra. The honourable member knows, as do experts in the Australian Energy Regulator and the Australian Energy Market Operator and so many others, that rolling out renewables and storage over this decade is critical, not just for reducing emissions in this vital decade but also because it's the cheapest form of energy available and therefore puts downward pressure on bills. It's important for jobs and jobs creation. It's also very important for reliability. As coal-fired power stations get older, we need to replace them. As I said, that is why it's important that our 5.9 gigawatts of new renewable energy over the last year and record storage deployment has been rolled out.

The honourable member asked me about alternative approaches. The alternative approach that's been proposed by those opposite is nuclear. Nuclear might have some other challenges in rolling out across the country. The Leader of the Opposition's been saying recently that business needs to speak up, business needs to talk out. The Leader of the Opposition said, 'I think CEOs have a moral obligation to speak up about what's happening in the economy.' Well, based on the previous answer, he believes that unless they disagree with him—and I might have some bad news for the Leader of the Opposition. The chief executive of one of Australia's largest energy companies, AGL, was asked about nuclear recently. He said, 'The cost, build time and public opinion are all prohibitive,' on nuclear. Then one of the country's largest energy users, Tomago Aluminium, in the Hunter, was asked about nuclear. Mr Selvaraja of Rio Tinto said:

As far as we can see … all validated and independent data that exists on costs say that it (nuclear) is a very expensive source of energy. And I think in Australia, certainly, we've got low cost wind and solar, and we were going to run with that.

So you've got one of the country's largest energy suppliers and one of the country's largest energy users saying it takes too long.

That's before we even get to where they will go. We've heard those 12 brave souls say not in their electorate. We've also seen speculation that there'll be a nuclear power station at Anglesea in Victoria, but the Leader of the Opposition's office cleared that up. In the Surf Coast Times on the weekend—I read it every weekend—the Leader of the Opposition's office issued a statement, which said:

Attempts to suggest the Coalition has any sort of nuclear plan are irresponsible and incorrect.

There we go! Any sort of nuclear plan is irresponsible and incorrect. Maybe they got it right, because they got a thought bubble, but they certainly don't have a plan.

Milton Dick (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I give the call to—

Opposition members interjecting—

Order! Members on my left. The member for New England is continuously interjecting. He's now warned, so no more interjections from the member for New England.