Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week we saw the Leader of the Opposition come up with this peculiar thought bubble, which is gambling Australia's energy and economic security, promising untested, uncosted and experimental nuclear reactors across the country. It just doesn't stack up economically. That's what we've heard. That's what the figures are showing. People that know me know I'm not some ideological warrior opposing this. In fact, I would support it if it stacked up economically, but it just doesn't. It simply cannot compete with wind and solar. It just can't. It's too expensive and that's the problem.

The opposition has to come clean with the Australian public to say that this will not bring prices down for energy. In fact, it will increase prices. We've seen the United States, in the state of Georgia, generate expansion for nuclear reactors. That has expanded and blown out in costs. It's at around the $17 billion mark. That money has to be recouped. That capital that's going to go in, that they're proposing, has to be recouped. Guess who's going to pay for that? People who are paying their energy costs. Every mum and dad out there will pay increased costs with this bat crazy idea that they've come up. Now the opposition wants to add these costs to the energy bills of Australians. You've got to recover the costs of the capital. There's no such thing as a magic pudding. If there were, we'd have no problems in the world. We will oppose this particular idea.