Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Hansard source

The minister says we are having ‘a debate’. This is the debate. Do you know what the government wants? The government wants a debate on its terms. You want a debate—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President—and the government wants a debate that is theoretical only, one where it does not have to front up to the Australian people to actually disclose what its plans are.

Some of us on this side of the chamber—and, I suspect, many if not all but certainly most of the people that put you here—would probably want you to be up-front as well. What are your plans? What is your position? Would you support it? You do not want to say that before an election because you know that most of the people who put you here would not agree with it. That is the reality. You want a debate on your terms. You do not want to have to fess up. You do not want to come clean with the Australian people about the plans that you really have for nuclear power. It is extraordinary! We know from the documentation and the reports that have been provided that not only is nuclear power economically unviable; it would require a significant government subsidy. We know, of course, that the waste issue has never been resolved adequately. It has certainly not been resolved here in Australia.

I want to talk about the issue of climate change. I will firstly make the point that the Stern report, the members of the IPCC panel, the European Union and the UK government have all agreed that global carbon emissions must be reduced, by 60 per cent by 2050, to try to stabilise the earth’s climate system. Under John Howard’s plan, Australia’s greenhouse pollution will in fact increase by 29 per cent by 2050, even if we build a substantial number of nuclear reactors across Australia. The Switkowski report confirms that the Prime Minister’s nuclear power plan will not cut greenhouse gas emissions and that it is not a plan to avoid dangerous climate change. We have a supposed solution that government members want to debate on their terms, because one dare not have the temerity to ask them whether they in fact support a nuclear power facility in their electorate. The government wants a debate about nuclear power as a solution to climate change when, firstly, it is economically unviable, according to the comments of the finance minister, and, secondly, the report commissioned by the Prime Minister demonstrates quite clearly that emissions will increase even with a move to nuclear power.

The reluctance to rule out supporting a nuclear power facility in their electorate seems to be particularly evident among those in this chamber. I notice that some of the minister’s colleagues in the House of Representatives—is it 18 to date; I may be wrong, Minister—have said they would not support one in their electorate. One wonders why we have a range of MPs, members of the House of Representatives, who are prepared to say they do not want one in their electorate but we do not have senators who are actually prepared to say, ‘I’m not prepared to support one in my state or my territory.’ I am happy to say that, and I am sure all Labor senators would be happy to say, ‘We do not want to support a nuclear power facility in our state. We do not want to support a nuclear power facility in Australia. We want to tackle climate change but we want to do it in a way that is both economically sensible and will have an effect on greenhouse gas emissions and that looks to a future with a reduced carbon impact.’

I beg your pardon, Minister; I think 16 of the 87 coalition MPs have indicated an unwillingness to support a nuclear facility, a nuclear reactor, in their electorate: Ms Bishop, Mr Somlyay, Mr Slipper, Mr Hunt, Mrs Gash, Mr McGauran, Mr Wakelin, Mr Lindsay, Mr Schultz, Mr Entsch, Mr Scott, Mr Broadbent, Mr Andrews, Mr Hardgrave, Mrs Gambaro and Mr Turnbull. That is quite a list, but not a single senator on the government side is prepared to stand up, for the state or territory that put them here, and say, ‘No, I am not supportive of a nuclear power facility in the state or territory from which I come,’ or to even say what they would require before they would permit one. Let us be generous to the government and say, ‘So you are not prepared to give a commitment to the electors about whether or not you would support one. Are you at least prepared to indicate what your process would be?’—nothing on that either.

In fact, we asked that question in question time this week. We made the point that the former environment minister, Minister Campbell, who has since been moved on—some might say he was downed by a parrot—had put in place a code for the community consultation and involvement that would have to occur in a decision to establish a wind farm. We asked the government if they would agree to such a process if they were putting in place a nuclear reactor. There was no answer on that, either. If we were going to have a nuclear reactor in New South Wales or Queensland—where the senators in the chamber are from—would you demand that the people of New South Wales and the people of Queensland have some say in whether they choose to go down that path?

The reality is that nuclear power is not the answer. Australia needs to go on a low-carbon diet, not a nuclear binge. If global greenhouse pollution were to rise by 29 per cent by 2050—under John Howard’s plan to build a significant number of nuclear reactors we would still get an increase in greenhouse gas emissions—the world would probably experience a four degree rise in global temperatures. We know from the CSIRO that such a rise in global temperatures would seriously damage our environment and our economy. It would be likely to damage if not destroy the Great Barrier Reef, it would impinge upon water flows to cities and the Murray-Darling Basin by around 48 per cent, it would increase the bushfire danger across Australia and it would move the dengue fever transmission zone down to Brisbane and possibly Sydney. That is an extraordinary indicator. I was born in Malaysia and I go back there regularly to see my family. Dengue fever is something one associates with the tropics. CSIRO is saying that, among other things, one of the impacts of climate change would be a move southwards of dengue fever.

The CSIRO reports and the Stern review state that global emissions must be cut by 60 per cent by 2050 if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. Where is the government’s plan to do this? Even if we adopt holus-bolus some of what the government is suggesting in relation to nuclear power, we are still looking at a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The Stern review has made it very clear that delaying action would cost massively more than taking action, and the world has only 10 years in which to act.

Climate change is a serious threat, and posturing about expensive and toxic nuclear energy, which is more than 10 years away, is a distraction this country simply cannot afford. The reality is that nuclear power is more expensive than energy efficiency and renewable technology, which are available today, and Australia needs to cut its greenhouse pollution now, not in 10 or 20 years. The delay that is outlined in the government’s own documentation regarding this issue would simply exacerbate 11 years of inaction under the Howard government.

I recall that when Senator Minchin was asked in question time about the failure of the government to address the issue of climate change—its failure to undertake economic analysis of it, to consider what needs to be done and to look at alternative forms of energy, energy efficiency and a whole range of things that we need to do to tackle climate change—he pointed to a range of environment department reports. But do you know what is most telling? This government has never commissioned—perhaps it has done so now, but certainly it had not as at the last estimates hearings, which were two weeks ago—a report on an analysis of the economic impact of climate change. This is a government that considers itself to be a great economic manager—a reputation which in the last couple of weeks has been significantly dented by poor financial decision making such as we saw in relation to the water package. This is a government that trumpets its credentials as a good economic manager.

The Stern report likened the economic impact of climate change on the globe to the impact of the world wars and the Great Depression. That is the nature and scale of the economic impact, not only on this country but on the global economy. This government has not undertaken work to analyse the potential economic impact on Australia. Treasury has never been asked to do that. How can a government claim that it is tackling an issue—that it understands how important climate change is to our environment and economy—when it has not even considered the economic impact on Australia?

What has happened instead is that the government have commenced a debate about nuclear power. As I said, it is a debate they want to have on their own terms. They want to have a theoretical debate without being up-front about what they are proposing, without members saying whether they are prepared to have a nuclear facility in their electorates and without saying what process might be in place. In fact, today they shut down debate in the House of Representatives. This is a government that say they want a debate. Mr Garrett attempted to move a motion in relation to climate change. I cannot recall exactly how many minutes he was allowed to speak before the government shut him down, but shut him down they did. If you want a debate, why don’t you have one? If you want a debate, why do you use your numbers in the lower house to stop debate on this issue? Wouldn’t you be happy to debate the matter?

The reality is that you do not want to debate the difficult things. You do not want to debate the fact that, within your own ranks, you have people coming out and saying they do not want a reactor in their local area. Frankly, you have internal divisions about whether this is the right way to go. You have coalition MPs who are running a million miles from a plan to build nuclear reactors in Australia. The fact is that Australians do not want nuclear reactors in their backyard. They do not want them in Western Sydney, in Adelaide, in Townsville, in Cairns or in Brisbane. They do not want them. They are not a climate change solution. Will we see real action from the government or will we simply see more obfuscation and more attempts to have what is really a phoney debate? It is a debate that is all about trying to distract attention from the fact that for 11 years this government has failed to understand the scale of the threat that climate change poses to our economy and our environment.

I hear people sighing over on the other side because they do not agree with us. Well, show us what you have done. After I came into the parliament in 2002, I did the ECITA Committee estimates for the environment department and I recall being told over and over again by members of the Public Service that there was ‘rephasing’ in the various programs run by the Australian Greenhouse Office. You might recall that the Australian Greenhouse Office was set up by Minister Hill as, I think, an executive agency or a statutory agency. The government subsequently downgraded that. They had a range of programs which, over the years, kept being ‘rephased’, which is the magical word that the government use when they allocate money to a program that is unable to be spent because they have not got around to doing it or because the program has not been running properly or for whatever reason.

So the government points to a whole range of programs run by the environment department. But, if you analyse very carefully the underspend in those, you will see that the government simply has not been doing its job properly. It has not been funding and driving a range of programs to try to prepare Australia for a carbon-light future; it has not been driving a range of programs to try to reduce carbon emissions.

Perhaps one of the most obvious examples of this is the way this government has tried to run a scare campaign when it comes to carbon emissions trading. How many times did we hear Mr Macfarlane, Senator Minchin and others in the government try to whip up a scare campaign about how much this will cost and how it was a dreadful thing et cetera? ‘We could not have carbon emissions trading; that would be a very bad thing.’ Well, a carbon trading scheme is a way in which you could introduce a market mechanism to try to reduce carbon emissions. It is a good thing to use market mechanisms to drive sustainable outcomes. One would have thought that a government that says, ‘We like markets,’ would see the sense in that. The government sets the parameters and you ensure that private enterprise can use the market to drive a more sustainable outcome to reduce their carbon emissions.

The reality is that the government is behind business on this issue. That is how much the Howard government is off the pace when it comes to tackling climate change. Not only have you had the Business Roundtable on Climate Change for almost a year, I think, calling for some sort of carbon trading scheme; you even have the Energy Supply Association calling for such a scheme—energy suppliers, people who would be affected by an emissions trading scheme, saying, ‘This is what we should be doing.’

So which group of people in Australia is really the only significant group that does not see the benefit in this? It is the Howard government. This is a market mechanism which could actually drive a more sustainable outcome. I notice, though, that in some of the language you are trying to segue from that position because you recognise it is unsustainable, and even the Prime Minister’s own task force has alluded to the possibility of a national scheme ahead of an international scheme.

I want to end by repeating paragraph (b) of my motion. I call on the government and the Senate calls on the government ‘to publish the details of any plans, including possible locations, for nuclear reactors and high-level nuclear waste dumps in Australia’. Let’s see what you want to do. If you want to have the debate, why don’t you come into this place and be very clear with the Australian people—the people who put you here—as to what your plans are and whether you as a senator elected by a state or territory are prepared to support a nuclear power facility in your home state. I invite you to do that. If you are prepared to support one, at least be honest enough to say it. Senator Chapman is speaking next; why don’t you tell us whether you would support one? (Time expired)