Sean Edwards (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

And now they are buying coal fired power. You failed to embrace the imperative in this. You claim to stand for zero carbon emissions. I ask the Greens political party: what is the only power source that will provide baseload energy to this country at an internationally competitive rate? There is only one answer, and it is nuclear power generation. I repeat: zero carbon emissions and the only thing that will provide the baseload energy. My home state of South Australia has the third highest power costs in the world. We are trying to invigorate that state. How on earth can we do that when we are competing with other countries that are nuclear countries? How are we ever going to be able to contemplate doing that?

The royal commission could not have been more unequivocal in leaving the door open. The royal commission was not an entrepreneurial vehicle. That is my job. My job is to provide government with an option to provide nuclear power and to speak to the countries that will become customers of this country. We are geographically placed on an island in a part of the world that is geologically stable and geopolitically stable. That combination, Senator Ludlam, puts us in the best position in the world to take advantage of this most lucrative opportunity. You deny the people of South Australia through your scaremongering, your fear and loathing, your politics of envy or whatever you want to call it. It is scientific bluster because you have not put one bit of evidence on the table that suggests that the royal commission is wrong in saying that the risks are manageable. With the record that we have, Senator Ludlam, you are doing this country a great disservice when you denigrate our science capacity—CSIRO, ANSTO and everything like that. I cannot wait to see the scientists front up at the next budget estimates to take your questions.

You are out of your depth. You should spend some time in this place. You should go around the world. You should go into these places. These facilities are pristine in every respect—the way they are governed, the way they are regulated and the way they are operated. But you have not, Senator Ludlam, because you will not. Lucas Heights will accept a visit from any of you at any point in time. What do you have against saving people's lives? What do you want to sustain? There are 100 sites around this country holding medical waste, and all we want to do is put that in a safe container.

Senator Ludlam said that we are going to put nuclear waste in canisters that are going to leak. That implies to everybody listening that nuclear waste has leaked. I ask Senator Ludlam to come up with proof that nuclear waste storage around the world has at any time ever leaked. You provide that information to the royal commission. You flesh out your scientific evidence for why your contribution previous to mine is credible in any way, shape or form. It is not. We just heard scaremongering in that contribution. That was the most profoundly irresponsible contribution I have ever heard Senator Ludlam make in this debate.

There are no voices of science or of economics that have come out since those royal commission preliminary findings. This has suffered scrutiny all over the world. Everybody in the science world and in the nuclear science world is interested in this. If there were one flaw in the science or one flaw in the economics, don't you think we would have heard about it already? All we have is the Australia Institute, who are employed by the South Australian Conservation Foundation, saying, 'Maybe this was a stitch up from the start.' That was the only voice we had heard until today when we have had this. I encourage every scientist and every person involved in nuclear science that understands the economics of nuclear science and what it can do for this country to take Senator Ludlam's contribution, pick it apart and copy me in on the email of where he has gone wrong, where he is not right and why he should come back into this chamber and address the contentions he has made.