Sam Birrell (Nicholls, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

During the summer break, the member for Warringah was being interviewed on Sky News just prior to my interview. Her words, along with slogans from the energy minister, highlight the shallowness of the energy debate in Australia and the air of unreality that some members exist in. She said:

The old-fashioned concept of base load power is proving to be more and more a thing of the past.

She said it's 'an antiquated idea'. I was standing in an apple orchard for my cross and I asked how those apples would be refrigerated 24/7 without baseload power. Thousands of workers in my electorate depend on it.

This, along with inane comments by the energy minister such as, 'The sun and the wind don't send bills,' attempt to dumb down a complex issue. It's hugely expensive and disruptive to harness and distribute this energy, and it is, by its nature, intermittent. It's necessary for us to analyse very real problems with the life cycle emissions of renewable infrastructure projects, with emissions not reducing but shifting offshore due to reckless policies, and with how industries that require 24/7 or baseload power will receive that power at a price that enables them to remain competitive and operating in Australia. There are no convincing answers in relation to these problems, only an integrated system plan that has more holes in it than the colander in my kitchen.

We in the regions are, therefore and understandably, very frightened of a minority Labor government controlled by the Greens and teals, who tend towards the luxury of what they want to believe and not the scientific, engineering and economic realities that we face as a nation.