Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to rise on this motion today about the Albanese government's inability to control the price of energy. It's not really surprising that that has happened. The earlier speech we heard from them was basically made up more of invective and personal insults than any detail. We saw that type of behaviour as well in estimates, where I got to question Senator McAllister about how many transmission lines we were going to need in order to meet the 43 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide by 2030. Of course, she had no idea. The numbers given were somewhere between 5,000 kilometres and 28,000 kilometres. There was an article a year or two ago in the Australian Financial Review that said that building 900 kilometres of transmission lines would cost $2.4 billion. That was back in 2020. So, if you wanted to build 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines, that would cost a cool little $75 billion in 2020 prices. I would suspect that would probably be closer to $100 billion now, just to build the transmission lines. So, if you think energy prices have gone up a lot already, get set for them to go even higher. That's what will happen under the Albanese government, who have absolutely no idea on the price of basically turning the energy grid into being backed by 82 per cent of renewable energy.

I am glad Senator Green referred to the CSIRO because I have spoken to the CSIRO many times and they have actually said that there are 40 different models to get to net zero. Can you believe that? Forty different models! These people want you to believe that the science is settled, but there are apparently 40 different models to work out how to get to net zero. Let me tell you something: if you've got to rely on a model to get to net zero, that is not science; that's indoctrination, intimidation and shoddy mathematical modelling. The only time the science is settled is when you have an algorithm demonstrating cause and effect and quantifying that cause and effect. Einstein wasn't famous because he was a scientist; he was famous because of the algorithm he invented—E equals MC squared. It's called mathematics. That's what matters.

Let's go back to the economy, however. Another question I put to the CSIRO—actually I didn't ask this; Larry Marshall, the head of the CSIRO, volunteered this—is that the cost of recycling a battery is three times more than the cost of building it. Of course, the thing that the unicorn farmers don't want to talk about is that it's not just the generation that you've got to build; it's the cost of building it, it's the generation, it's the transmission, it's the storage and it's all the extra security services. So that's more batteries on top of storage. You need more batteries for frequency control. And then you want to recycle it!

I'll tell you a simple solution if you want to recycle it. It's called photosynthesis. You were taught about it in grade 8 science. It's very, very simple. We know that carbon dioxide is recycled through the atmosphere every four years. Those are simple numbers. The weight of the atmosphere is 5.15 times 10 to the power of 15. Carbon dioxide makes up 0.04 per cent of that atmosphere, which means the weight of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is two by 10 to the power of 12. Carbon dioxide has the specific density of 1.53. So the weight of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is three times 10 to the power of 12. We know, as per the IPCC report of 2007, that 800 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide is consumed via photosynthesis every year naturally in the environment. That's eight by 10 to the power of 11. So you take three by 10 to the power of 12 divided by eight by 10 to the power of 11, and it's four. That means that carbon dioxide—

No, that's photosynthesis, champ! You're taught about it in grade 8 science. Let me tell you: we can cut the cost by basically going back and building more coal-fired power stations near my home town in Kogan Creek. There are 400 million tonnes—