James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to welcome the very important contribution that's recently been made to the public policy debate by Frontier Economics. Their founder, Danny Price, is a very highly respected and regarded energy economist who released an important analysis into the cost of the current trajectory of Labor's policies when it comes to energy in this country. Regrettably but not surprisingly, it has revealed a very frightening difference between what Mr Price believes will be the cost of Labor implementing their energy plans and what Labor claim that cost will be. It's a pretty significant number: half a trillion dollars. That's $500 billion. The government says it will be $122 billion. Mr Price says it will be more than $600 billion. That is a very dramatic revelation when it comes to the path that we are currently taking under this government's policies in regard to energy.

Mr Price is a valued adviser to Labor governments, particularly in my home state of South Australia. He has advised the Weatherill government and now the Malinauskas government on a number of energy policy issues, and they consider his views to be absolutely expert. Well, his expert view is that, under this government if we continue with its policies, we'll be spending an extra half a trillion dollars on its plan to get to net zero by 2050. Thankfully there is an alternative to the current approach. It is what the coalition has been articulating when it comes to engaging the opportunity of embracing nuclear power for civilian energy generation in this country.

Of course we're already embracing nuclear when it comes to naval shipbuilding with the AUKUS agreement, which is a fantastic opportunity to acquire the best capability that has been technologically pioneered by the United States and now in partnership with the United Kingdom. We are the third nation to have access to this technology. In Adelaide, where my electorate of Sturt is located, we will be building eight submarines with nuclear reactors in their bellies out at Port Adelaide, a mere 15 kilometres from the Adelaide CBD. The government supports nuclear when it comes to submarines. They support eight nuclear reactors in the city limits of Adelaide, but they for some reason don't support embracing the logical next step, which is to also have civilian nuclear generation properly distributed across the country to replace our retiring coal fleet.

Coal has been a very reliable and very affordable source of electricity for this nation for a long, long time. Particularly our two major cities, Sydney and Melbourne, have benefited from having very substantial coal deposits very close to those cities that were abundant and very easy to dig out of the ground to power coal fired plants in the Hunter Valley or in the Latrobe Valley to provide cheap and reliable energy. We know we can't continue to burn coal. We know that we have to get to net zero by 2050. So there is a very sensible technological solution to reliable base-load power replacing the coal fleet that we've got, and that is nuclear. Nuclear is zero emissions. Of course we have a lot of uranium in this country.

We've got a long, proud history in the nuclear sector, but we haven't needed to embrace civilian generation until now. I have some very significant scientists from my electorate that have been pioneers in nuclear, particularly Sir Mark Oliphant, who was very instrumental in nuclear physics through his career. So it is logical for this nation to embrace the next opportunity for nuclear, which is building a civilian nuclear generation fleet of nuclear reactors in this country to replace the retiring coal fleet that we have to ensure that we've got reliability from a source that is abundant within our own country. That is something that we, the coalition, are proudly taking to the next election: a proper and serious plan to get to net zero. We know what Labor are like when it comes to costings, and they've been exposed again with this half-a-trillion-dollar hole in their policy. We will take nuclear to the next election and give that opportunity to the people of this country.