Michael Ronaldson (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Special Minister of State) Share this | Hansard source

In following the remarks made by Senator Boyce, can I say that I find it utterly bizarre that we are in the process of debating a number of bills known as the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme bills and that we are not including any discussion of nuclear energy in this whole debate. It absolutely beggars belief that we can have these debates without talking about nuclear power.

Looking at the international experience, I think that 75 per cent of France’s electricity is generated from nuclear power stations—75 per cent, possibly more. There are a number of nuclear power stations in the UK and I think the UK Labor government has just announced that they have decided to commission another 10. So why are we not talking about the big elephant in the room, as I referred to it during my contribution to the ETS debate this afternoon? Why are we not talking about the option? How, as Senator Boyce said, can we justify, with any intellectual rigour, exporting the raw product ourselves without looking at the potential outcome of the use of that raw product? It absolutely beggars belief.

I do not believe that there are not the numbers in the Labor Party who believe that we should have this debate and that we should do something about it. If you look at the potential global CO2 reductions which could be achieved by the widespread use of nuclear power, it beggars belief that we are not having a sensible discussion about it. It beggars belief that, at Copenhagen, there will not be a discussion about this very issue. You would think that the smartest brains in the world—who, apparently, will be at Copenhagen—would be able to come to some world agreement about storage of waste, about who is prepared to make contributions to the storage of waste and about the best place for the waste to be stored. These are the very discussions that should be taking place but if you are not prepared to move the elephant from the room and put it into the public debate and if you are not prepared to include nuclear as part of a global solution, then what an extraordinarily wasted opportunity it will be.

We talk about legacies. We talk about what we are going to leave to our kids, our grandkids and their kids. Surely, if we are going to leave them the sort of legacy that we can be proud of, we should put everything into the mix and put everything on the table. We do not allow the elephant to remain in the room, because while it is in the room it is ensuring that we do not have the sorts of outcomes that we should. I fully endorse the comments of Senator Boyce.