Terry Young (Longman, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was very pleased to see this last week Mr Peter Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition, come out with the start of our nuclear policy. It's great news. A lot of people in my electorate are very, very excited about this when I speak to them. The best thing about it was that it was able to quash the complete lies that had been spread by the other side about how there was going to be a nuclear reactor on Bribie Island—quite humorous—a sand island where there's no existing coal-fired power station. Anyway, I think the greatest challenge that we're going to find in this whole debate is going to be, though they say they want a mature debate, finding someone mature on the other side. It may be a bit of a challenge, Member for Mitchell. The other challenge that we're going to have is finding organisations who aren't biased by their ideologies or finding organisations that don't have a vested financial interest in nuclear energy—or renewable energy for that matter. It's going to be one of the greatest challenges that we face.

Can I say: of the people I've spoken to in the great electorate of Longman, the majority are excited about it. At the end of the day, they want to have a mature discussion about this because they couldn't care less what energy source we use, as long as it's clean, as long as it's reliable and as long as it's affordable. Nuclear ticks all those boxes. The Australian people aren't mugs, they're not fools, and they will not have the wool pulled over their eyes on this.