Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, I am just reporting on the advice to the government—and I think it is widely accepted—that, of the known technologies available to a country like Australia to produce near zero or zero emissions power at baseload level, we are looking to clean coal and nuclear. We are happy to see research in relation to solar thermal, and I gather there is a fair bit of research going on. I think Senator Campbell was involved in ensuring that the Australian government supported research on that source of power, but the advice to me is that it is certainly not proven that solar thermal is capable at this stage of providing the sort of baseload power which Australia would require. As I was saying before being rudely interrupted, I am not allowed to use the ‘h’ word, but the Greens are as guilty as the Labor Party of being two-faced on this question in scaremongering on the issue of climate change but ruling out the most significant known source of baseload power with respect to nuclear power, being the only available alternative source of zero emissions power.