Tania Lawrence (Hasluck, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to continue my remarks on the Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 and the Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024.

The Net Zero Economy Authority is committed to finding ways to provide these workers with the training and skills necessary to thrive in emerging sectors, thereby securing their livelihoods and contributing to the overall economic resilience of our nation. I have spoken to many of these workers, both at home in the electorate and here at my parliamentary office.

There are so many workers across these traditional emission-intensive industries who take great pride in their work, as well they should. Communities over many generations have been built around the mines, processing plants and factories that have kept our lights on, kept our houses warm and driven Australia's economy to the level of prosperity we enjoy today. We owe a great debt of gratitude to these workers, and they deserve nothing less than a government that respects their right to continue in meaningful work, to maintain their dignity and to share in the pride of participating in a project that is bigger than oneself.

Lessons on managing the green energy transition can be drawn from around the world, where various countries have developed effective strategies to balance environmental goals with economic and social needs. A notable example is in Germany, where the concept of the Energiewende—Germany's transition to renewable energy—emerged 20 years ago. The German experience underscores the importance of adaptability and foresight. The nation's peak union body now advocates for a just transition which encompasses education and training, reskilling initiatives and support for early retirement where necessary. This approach is deeply rooted in co-governance, reflecting the principle of 'nothing about us without us'.

This philosophy has influenced other nations. In the United States, the Department of Labor promotes a just transition by ensuring the creation of quality green jobs while upholding workers' rights. This comprehensive strategy in the US includes involving workers in decision-making, providing essential training and new skill sets, offering social protection and investing in affected communities. President Biden further solidified this commitment by establishing the US government Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization. Canada has followed suit, introducing the Sustainable Jobs Bill to prepare workers for a transition to a lower-carbon economy. The European Union has the Just Transition Mechanism. Similarly, Iceland has made a green and just labour market transition a priority during its presidency of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2023. New Zealand has also taken proactive steps by establishing the Just Transitions Unit to coordinate and support the country's shift towards a low-emissions economy.

These international examples illustrate the critical importance of a just transition—one that not only aims for environmental sustainability but also ensures that the workers and their communities are supported and empowered throughout the process. Concrete examples already exist, locally. The Just Transition framework has informed the Western Australian Labor government's approach to renewal in Collie, inland from Bunbury, in the south-west corner of WA. The retirement of the Collie coal-fired power station is occurring in a phased, managed approach over the years to 2029. Last year, the state's Labor government announced a transition package for the town worth over half a billion dollars to both attract the industries of the future and decommission the existing industry, both of which will mean ongoing employment and local skills training. Things are already happening in Collie, with the confidence that government leadership and resolve can engender. In recent months, Green Steel of WA has sought development approval to construct a $400 million green steel recycling mill in Collie and is looking to commence operations in 2026. It aims to produce 450,000 tonnes of green steel each year, and is expected to generate up to 500 jobs during the construction phase and create 200 highly skilled, long-term positions for local workers most impacted by the energy transition.

At the same time, Neoen is constructing the Collie Battery, a four-hour duration battery which will be able to charge and discharge 20 per cent of the average demand of the South West connected grid. Once complete, it will be Australia's biggest battery. There is already a nearby solar farm, and more will be encouraged by these developments.

One of the defining features of the Net Zero Economy Authority is its commitment to collaboration. The authority will work closely with federal agencies, state and territory governments, local governments, existing regional bodies, unions, industry stakeholders, investors and First Nations groups, among many others. This inclusive and collaborative approach is designed to ensure that the transition to a net zero economy is comprehensive, equitable and leaves no-one behind.

Engaging with federal agencies will enable the authority to leverage existing resources and expertise, ensuring that efforts are not duplicated and that our policies are all aligned. By working with the state and territory governments, the authority can tailor its strategies to the specific needs and strengths of different regions, ensuring that local conditions and priorities are taken into account, while at the same time sharing the authority's experiences of those measures that have been helpful in other regions.

Local governments and regional bodies are crucial partners in this project, as they are the front line of implementing policies and engaging with communities. Unions and industry groups will provide invaluable insights into the needs and the concerns of workers and businesses, ensuring that the transition is just and fair. Furthermore, involving First Nations groups is essential to incorporate traditional knowledge and ensure that the rights and interests of Indigenous communities are respected and promoted throughout the transition process. This collaborative approach will help build broad based support for the net zero agenda and ensure that the benefits of the transition are widely shared.

The Net Zero Economy Authority will be able to support the development of renewable project industrial precincts. These precincts involve clustering industrial businesses in one location and powering them with 100 per cent renewable energy. In addition to supporting workers, the Net Zero Economy Authority will play a crucial role in coordinating programs and policies across different levels of government to help the regions and communities attract and take advantage of the new clean energy industries. This coordination is vital to ensure that the benefits of the transition are widely shared, fostering economic growth and development in all parts of the country. Moreover, the authority will assist investors and companies in identifying and embracing the opportunities within the net zero transformation. By doing so, it aims to stimulate innovation, drive investment and accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices across all sectors of the economy.

To close, I echo the words of the Prime Minister on this bill: our government is absolutely determined to make this moment count, to make our future here in Australia, and this legislation is an important part of that.

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

The Net Zero Economy Authority Bill 2024 and the Net Zero Economy Authority (Transitional Provisions) Bill 2024 are green-sounding, motherhood-statement-type bills, the latest and greatest of many that this government is introducing, trying to portray a change of our baseload energy system into a mythical, utopian green renewable based energy system. The legislation will coordinate the destruction of our energy system, coordinate policy and planning across government, and facilitate both government and private participation in investment—which is usually code for 'price signals', commonly known as subsidies—and support for affected workers. It will support First Nations Australians to participate in the transition—I'm just not too sure how solar panels and wind farms will do that—and deliver educational and promotional initiatives as Australia transitions to a net zero economy.

People have to understand what is in store for us. A lot of very smart people and economic modellers—including people from the University of Melbourne, Princeton University, the University of Queensland, the Nous Group and many other eminent scientists and environmental economists—published, two years ago, the Net zero Australia study. They added up the cost of what will be required for us to transition, orchestrated by this authority.

We are going to overbuild renewables many times. Our current 25-gigawatt system will be replaced with 400 to 500 gigawatts of solar and wind generation, up to 23,000 kilometres of extra poles and wires, 58 million solar panels and 35,000 wind turbines, with the consumption of many millions of acres of either grazing pasture country or pristine bushlands on hilltops as well as an explosion of pumped hydro schemes in Queensland and New South Wales. It is going cheap—only $7 trillion to $9 trillion! That is not a transition; that is absolute lunacy! We don't mind that renewables have their place in the system, but to try and build a whole system based on weather dependent, randomly variable generators is absolute madness. We have already closed 7,300 megawatts of 24/7 reliable power, with the closure of many power stations.

This series of bills does not deliver a just transition. It's going to affect all of us. It's not just going to affect people in a coalmine or working at a power station—but they are the first cab off the rank. We are all in this together because the whole economy of the nation depends on electricity. We are destroying our cheap electricity system. It is already multiple times more expensive than it was when we had predominantly baseload with a sprinkling of renewables. In flipping it on its head, we are losing the affordability and the reliability; affordability and cheap electricity have gone out the window. We're also inadvertently threatening our food security for seafood, with wind turbines and wind farms plonked smack in the middle of many prominent fishing grounds off the New South Wales coast, off the Illawarra and off Port Stephens. Because we are misallocating capital on a gigantic scale and we have electricity that is very expensive, we are driving inflation. The blood and the circulation of any industrial economy depends on your electricity system. We have already lost over half a million manufacturing jobs in this country, and we're not even halfway—we are a quarter of the way—to the so-called net zero transition.

A lot of people haven't connected the dots, and it's up to us in this House to explain to people what this means. It will be a cataclysmic loss of our energy security. We already have many systems in place that these new bodies will add to or be confused with. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency are already doing many of the things this authority, which will be given another fresh lot of appropriations, will do as well. It is very much a duplicated, unnecessary authority, but the problem with it is the whole premise of what it's meant to be doing; that is the crazy thing. As I said, most people are very happy to have solar panels on their roof and do their bit for the environment, but when you base the whole grid on weather dependent night-and-day-happening energy systems as well as batteries, as well as pumped hydro schemes, as well as millions of acres of pristine bushland and good farming grazing country and cropping country being covered with solar panels and wind farms—and the vast majority are not made in this country; they are imported from China and some from Europe, but the market for all these renewable generators is being swamped by cheap renewables coming out of China.

The other thing is there is no mention anywhere of funding the cheapest, the cleanest and the most green energy system that the world has got, that the rest of the world is transitioning to at a rate of knots—that is, nuclear energy. Nuclear energy has the smallest carbon footprint of any scalable energy generation system. If you're mining uranium for a nuclear power plant, without open-cut mining, it actually has a lower carbon footprint than solar and wind. It has energy density thousands of times higher than a solar panel or a wind turbine, and it works around the clock. The leftover spent fuel is a valuable resource that can be recycled, as opposed to burying acres and square miles of used wind turbine blades. Wind turbine generators have a five- or six-year life before they need major refurbishment and those last much longer than their stated life for when they're operating at sea. We only have to see the problems that Germany, Europe, England, the UK, Texas and California have—all those countries that have been on this transition have found out the hard way. Yet here we are, 10 years behind them and mimicking exactly what they've done. They have found out and are backtracking, realising that they need to triple nuclear energy generation in Europe and in America.

It's happening in Africa; there has just been a huge nuclear conference there, and Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa and many other countries are all planning massive nuclear expansion. Many Asian economies have realised that; Japan has brought back online 11 of its mothballed nuclear power stations. France is expanding and Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands—all these countries which have been involved in nuclear, and some of them who have paused in the last 10 or 12 years, are reactivating their plans because they know it's scalable and that it's cheap when you have a system based on baseload systems as the predominant source of electricity.

The other thing that I'll mention is that one of the outlined jobs is to identify power station employees that are employed by a corporation, either private or corporate. This authority is going to get all their details and somehow, mysteriously, give them an equivalent job. But the best job for people working in a power station is to put them into a similar job in a nuclear power station. That's because a nuclear power station is almost exactly the same as a coal-fired power station. It's only the pressure vessel which is different, where, through the wonder of fission, the nuclear material hits and boils water. Nuclear power stations are basically big kettles, but instead of firing granular coal in to boil the water, they just have enriched uranium sitting there. It's enriched up to only four to five per cent, it gets to a critical mass, it starts to glow red-hot and boils water. That's the wonder of fission; you don't have to do anything, you just have to get a critical amount of it in one spot. Then that boiling water and steam run in a separate circuit and there's a heat-transfer system. Then—hey, presto!—it's just like a gas-fired power station. It spins the turbines; that's what happens with the steam and boiling water out of nuclear fission.

Government Members:

Government members interjecting—

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

People have to understand—and I'm very happy to explain it to the members over there how it works—that for a solar farm or a wind farm, there are short-term temporary jobs. When the construction is finished there are very few intermittent jobs, and most of the jobs in the green economy that those opposite are saying Australia will deliver won't be delivered in our country. They'll be delivered over in China or in Asia, where they make all these turbines. It's such a misdirected piece of policy, and I beg members on the other side: we'll give you tutorials free of cost to understand what you're missing on.

To the member for Watson, sitting down at the despatch box—I'm happy to come along anytime and explain to you the wonders of fission.

Another thing that many people have had some misunderstandings about is the idea that you get radiation from a nuclear power station. I'd like to let you know that I've confidently stood over Australia's nuclear facility with only fresh water in front of me. I didn't have any lead on me anywhere and I got zero radiation. The good member for Warringah, a member of the Teal association of parties, came too and didn't get irradiated, either. We have 1,200 people employed in scientific pursuit led by nuclear power, and that's ANSTO. We have been early signatories to all the International Atomic Energy Agency committees and treaties for non-proliferation. We are a very nuclear-capable nation.

In America, they have used economics to do their transition. In fact, America are seen as the big ogre dependent on oil and gas. Well, in a way, they have transformed our economy. They have transformed so many of their old, coal-fired power stations to power stations that are fired by coal-seam gas or natural gas, and they have reduced their footprint by 40 per cent in absolute terms, whereas we've had to use very dodgy accounting to see our reductions. They count all our national parks and all those other bits and pieces as what we've done. We could transition, but to exclude nuclear from it is just an absolutely futile endeavour. What we will be doing is overbuilding renewables that have a very short lifespan. We'll be destroying agriculture. In America, they are planning to transition 66 coal plants to nuclear. Their department of energy has done a study and found that bringing a nuclear power plant into an economy delivers 650 permanent jobs, gives US$275 million dollars in extra economic outcomes in that area and reduces greenhouse gases by 86 per cent, and they have cheap electricity again.

Members on the other side: open your eyes, start reading. If we want to transition away from our coal-based energy generation, we need to include nuclear. There will still be a place for the renewables that are there, because all the rules and subsidies are shutting our coal plants down, but we can't base our whole economy on it. It is absolute madness. Having an authority with government money to enable it is— (Time expired)

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

on indulgence—I congratulate you on the role, Deputy Speaker Andrews, as well. I'm not jumping for the tutorial, which may surprise the honourable member, but given that I have a motion on the Notice Paper to manage this debate, I thought I should advise members as to how late I expect tonight's sitting to go. At the moment, the list of speakers would imply that we will finish this debate at around 6:30. That being the case, there's obviously no need to move a resolution keeping the House here until 10 pm. I will leave the resolution there. If any point we get a sudden increase in the number of speakers, which means that we won't be able to otherwise resolve the issue tonight, then at that point I would move the motion that's on the Notice Paper. People—including the attendants, who have a lot at stake in this—it is reasonable to presume on the current speaking list that we have that we will finish at the ordinary time today, with the ordinary rules. That notice will be moved only if that changes. I would advise the House immediately if I were to be told that by the whips, but I don't expect to be.

Debate interrupted.