Sussan Ley (Farrer, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Women) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Acting Prime Minister. Is the Acting Prime Minister aware of a recent report from the US Department of Energy which shows that a renewables plus nuclear electricity grid is 37 per cent cheaper than a renewables-only grid. What is it that experts in the US and 19 out of 20 of the world's top economies know that the Acting Prime Minister does not know?

Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What they know is that, in writing the report, they are assessing an economy which already has a civil nuclear industry in place, and where the sunk costs have already been put in place literally decades ago. This seems to be the fact that has completely escaped those opposite. In order for us to get to a point of having a civil nuclear industry, we would need to go through the process of establishing it, which is deeply costly, which will take 20 years, and at the end of that we get four per cent into our grid. Four per cent—that's it. And, in the process, we'll increase energy bills for the households of Australia by $1,200. That's what we understand. That is not the same as the calculation which exists in the United States, the United Kingdom or France, where they all have a civil nuclear industry already established and those costs have already been sunk and are not priced into the future. The reality of what we face is that you can't go out there and just magic the reactors. You've actually got to go and build them. That costs money, and the people who will pay for it are the Australian public.