Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

That was an extraordinary contribution from a member of the government talking about lazy policy. I do not think I have ever seen such lazy policy as this government has exhibited on climate change. Its basic premise is to do nothing for the next 20 years and hope it goes away. What is going to go away is our economy, if that kind of thinking prevails.

The starting point to this motion of Senator Wong’s today is the government’s own report on the viability of nuclear power for Australia, Uranium mining, processing and nuclear energy—opportunities for Australia? otherwise known as the Switkowski report. A key conclusion of this report was that nuclear energy would not be economically viable without a carbon price signal. According to the report, on average, nuclear power would be 20 to 50 per cent more expensive to produce than coal in Australia but could become competitive with fossil fuel based generation with the introduction of low to moderate pricing of carbon dioxide emissions.

Whether we are talking about nuclear energy or some other low or zero emission technology, a price signal is going to be needed. There is no question about that. One of the reasons is that coal is very cheap in this country; it is artificially cheap, you might argue. It has been the beneficiary of government subsidies for more than a century. There are old coal-fired power stations that have already depreciated their capital cost and therefore the only costs that they are forced to pay are running costs, such as fuel and maintenance.

Exceptions to that rule that alternatives need a carbon price signal would be solar thermals, such as the solar hot water services that many more of us are putting on our rooftops—although nowhere near enough; the penetration is still extremely low in this country—and electricity that is generated by hydro and bio-energy. These are already competitive in price with coal. There are parts of the world where coal and wind power are also lineball. However, the point of the issue is not that coal is too cheap, but the inevitable move to a carbon constrained future in order to avert dangerous climate change. In other words, there is the inevitable need to move away from greenhouse intense coal generation and replace the existing electricity infrastructure with low and zero emission generation technology.

What are the comparative economics of the nuclear energy future versus the renewable energy future? The Switkowski report is thorough in its comparative analysis; however, some prerequisites of a nuclear future are not costed in that report. They are the costs, management and liability associated with the storage of nuclear waste for a minimum of 1,000 years. The government says that storage has been taken into account, but it has not been for the length of time we know is necessary for safety and surveillance over this material. The cost of risk mitigation of a potential nuclear accident is not included and, importantly, nor is the cost of dismantling the energy market in order to accommodate nuclear power.

The reform of the current energy market rules delivered cost savings through competition, but all that would have to be undone with nuclear power coming into the system. The government has already decided Australia’s energy future is a nuclear one, having nobbled renewable energy by systematically removing current commercialisation programs and the access of renewable energy to the market. More seriously, the Prime Minister peddles the misconception that renewable energy cannot meet baseload. I have heard this repeated ad infinitum. I challenge the Prime Minister when he says nuclear and clean coal are the only two technologies that can provide baseload. This is wrong and he knows it.

Electrical power systems are complicated, and the Prime Minister is using that complexity to create fear of the lights going out in ordinary Australians’ households. The lights will not go out if we move to renewable energy. If anything, they will go out because of the decades of underinvestment in infrastructure and the inflexibility of an outdated 19th century centralised energy system and, if I could call it this, Soviet style five-year plans and economic regulation.

What is needed is a diversified energy portfolio, and load management to accommodate that. It is about providing energy at the point, time and size it is needed through distributed generation. A move away from complete reliance on large central baseload generation with transmission lines crossing the country is necessary. What are also necessary are a fair go and a level playing field for energy efficiency and renewable energy. That level playing field would introduce a carbon price signal through emissions trading schemes or another carbon price signal. It would need to remove current regulatory barriers for energy efficiency and renewable energy and provide the same level of subsidy to energy efficiency and renewable energy as that nuclear power system is obviously going to need. It would need to provide a level playing field and Australia’s energy future would be truly clean and green—that is, it would be renewable.

I think we can also say that so far Australians have not been given proper choices. They have not been asked if, for the same cost, would they prefer a renewable energy future or a nuclear energy way forward. The motion also talks about the delay in establishing nuclear power and how that would exacerbate the 11 years of inaction under the Howard government. It has actually not been 11 years of inaction; it has been 11 years of very tentative action. The Democrats have been responsible for almost half a billion dollars being allocated to greenhouse gas abatement, and I am proud of that achievement. The government, however, watered it down, as it waters down almost every other positive initiative in this direction, like the mandated renewable energy target. That was set out to be a two per cent extra renewable energy component of our energy system and is now more like 0.5 per cent. In any case, the target was largely taken up in the first three years.

The Switkowski report foreshadows 12 to 25 nuclear reactors in operation by 2050. For the record, it is estimated that if the go-ahead for a nuclear power station were to be given tomorrow it would still take 15 years before the first nuclear power station would be commissioned—and that is 2025. By 2025, with business as usual, Australia’s greenhouse emissions and energy demand will have grown unchecked and resulted in Australia’s greenhouse emissions exceeding 130 per cent of 1990 levels. That is another reason why nuclear power is another bad and too expensive bet.

As the Stern report to the UK government on the economics of climate change demonstrated, action is needed now. Stern found that the impact of doing nothing will cost at least 10 times more than the cost of fixing the climate change problem. The costs of destabilising the climate are significant but manageable. Delaying action would be dangerous and much more costly. The next 10 years are critical for action to reduce greenhouse emissions. Stern concluded that further ‘action on climate change is required across all countries’ but that it need not cap growth aspirations of wealthier or even poorer countries. Climate change demands an international response based on shared understanding of long-term goals and agreement on frameworks for action.

In economic terms the Stern report emphasises that climate change is ‘the greatest market failure the world has ever seen’. It also interacts with other market imperfections; therefore, while a range of options exist to cut emissions, deliberate government policy action is required to result in abatement. Acting now, acting early by providing early policy direction, will mean the cost of responding to climate change is reduced. I call to task both the government and the ALP on this point because their inaction on the hard policy issues of energy efficiency and renewable energy has been problematic. What is required is coordinated action at all levels of government policy: coordinating building regulation; coordinating energy market reform; and removing the disincentives for distributed generation, renewable energy and energy efficiency. This should be supported by clear targets and market mechanisms, such as carbon emissions trading, renewable energy trading and energy efficiency trading—in other words, the black, the green and the white certificate trading.

We also need complementary regulatory policies for minimum energy performance standards for all buildings—that is, commercial and domestic houses; minimum energy performance standards for appliances and equipment; mandatory installation of solar hot water systems and rainwater tanks; new approaches to urban infrastructure for water and electricity, including minimum fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles; increased deployment of solar power; and distributed generation through the dual markets of continuing the photovoltaic rebate scheme and introducing feed-in tariffs.

Part of this motion calls on the government to publish details of any plans, including possible locations, for nuclear reactors and high-level nuclear waste dumps in Australia. We support this call for the government to publish those details. The local community has the right to know. But the Australian Democrats are going one step further on this: we say that the local community must give their consent and their support before facilities are granted permits to proceed. For that reason I put forward amendments to the Non-Proliferation Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 requiring: consultation to take place between the Commonwealth, state and local governments before a nuclear facility could be established, which would need to be demonstrated; and majority support and consent for the nuclear facility by the local community, gained through a plebiscite.

For the record, the Labor Party did not support those amendments, giving the reason that this would undermine the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that makes nuclear facilities illegal. We do not agree with that. It is very clear to me that the government could, in our next week of sitting, change the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act in ways that would remove the illegality of a nuclear facility. The government has shown contempt for the EPBC Act on numerous occasions, so it is quite feasible to imagine that in this case it would do likewise.

Before concluding, I thought it would be useful to draw on some work by the leading campaigner on nuclear matters, Dr Helen Caldicott, in an article she wrote recently about another aspect of nuclear—which I think most people are very afraid of, and they have reasonable reason to be afraid. Senator Chapman suggested that this is all fearmongering. However, I think that there are real risks associated with living in proximity to a nuclear power reactor. Dr Caldicott says:

... nuclear reactors routinely emit large amounts of radioactive materials, including the fat-soluble noble gases xenon, krypton and argon. Deemed ‘inert’ by the nuclear industry, they are readily inhaled by populations near reactors and absorbed into the bloodstream where they concentrate in the fat pads of the abdomen and upper thighs, exposing ovaries and testicles to mutagenic gamma radiation (like X-rays).

Tritium, radioactive hydrogen, is also regularly discharged from reactors. Combining with oxygen, it forms tritiated water, which passes readily through skin, lungs and gut. Contrary to industry propaganda, tritium is a dangerous carcinogenic element producing cancers, congenital malformations and genetic deformities in low doses in animals, and by extrapolation in humans.

But, as she points out:

Above all, nuclear waste is the industry's Achilles heel. The US has no viable solution for radioactive waste storage. A total of 60,000 tonnes are temporarily stored in so-called swimming pools beside nuclear reactors, awaiting final disposal. Yucca Mountain in Nevada, transected by 32 earthquake faults, has been identified as the final geological repository. Made of permeable pumice, it is unsuitable as a radioactive geological waste receptacle and recent fraudulent projections of the mountain's ability to retard leakage by the United States Geological Survey have rendered this project to be almost untenable.

Already, radioactive elements in many nuclear-powered countries are leaking into underground water systems, rivers, and oceans, progressively concentrating at each level of the food chain. Strontium 90, which causes bone cancer and leukaemia, and cesium 137, which induces rare muscle and brain cancers, are radioactive for 600 years. Food and human breast milk will become increasingly radioactive near numerous waste sites. Cancers will inevitably increase in frequency in exposed populations, as will genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis in their descendants.

Each typical 1000-megawatt reactor makes 200 kilograms of plutonium a year. Less than one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. Handled like iron by the body, it causes liver, lung and bone cancer and leukaemia. Crossing the placenta to induce congential deformities, it has a predilection for the testicle, where inevitably it will cause genetic abnormalities. With a radiological life of 240,000 years, released in the ecosphere it will affect biological systems forever.

The government can pooh-pooh that kind of advice, but it is my understanding that this is pretty accurate. I doubt very much that we will see any studies being done on the risk to people who live near nuclear reactors. Until we see serious studies being done—not studies done by the industry—we will not know what risks people in this country will be exposed to.

It is critical that we have a lot of debate on this issue. It seems that the government imagines that nuclear power is just going to slip in somehow and that we will all be convinced that this is the only answer to greenhouse, but it is not. There are many problems associated with nuclear power, not least the one which is about delayed action: the fact that it will be many, many years before we will have an alternative to coal in the form of nuclear power. In the meantime, well-known technologies have been tried and are clean, and that is the path we should be heading down.