Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

ELL (—) (): Senator Grogan did me a kindness thinking I could remember what I said four months ago; I'm having trouble with tomorrow, so let's start anew! Let's go with what we heard today. Let's go through the waste argument we just had. It's going to take big land, but let's not forget Rewiring the Nation stages 1 and 2 are 10,000 kilometres of line taking 77,000 hectares of land. That is 77,000 hectares of land gone. You could put four waste dumps into 77,000 hectares, but we don't need to do that, because all the nuclear waste generated in the world to this date would fit into a football field. That is the truth there.

Let's go to water. Every coal plant now uses water. They're built next to water. Liddell has just closed in the Hunter Valley; let's put some small modular reactors there. We've got the water and we've got the transmission lines. We don't need more transmission lines and we have enough water.

Let's go to price. We're not allowed to look at what happens in Australia, so the CSIRO GenCost has it from about 2014. If you go the IEA, the international agency that look at this and don't ban it, nuclear has the lowest LCOE of any technology. Nuclear has the lowest in the world, but we can't even look at it in Australia, because it is banned. The CSIRO doesn't look at what the actual cost could be or what it is, because we aren't allowed to. Government policy stops it. We want to have a look at it. It might not be right. It might not get funded. But these are the things we come up with.

Then we come to adjustability. This is my favourite one from those selling the green dreams: adjustability of nuclear is not great. So what happens with wind farms? 'Oh, the wind's not blowing. Let's get on our knees and pray to God for a bit more wind. Oh, no; we don't believe in that.' What happens when the sun isn't out? 'Let's get down and do an antirain dance so the sun shines brighter.' When you talk about adjustability, nuclear has got it down pat over wind and solar. Wind and solar—what are we going to do? Climate change? Is that how we're going to fix wind and solar? We're going to have it hotter? Is that part of the plan here? So all the arguments, when you look at them, fall down.

And all we want to do is look down, because the people in the chamber and the people at home—it's a simple rule—want to turn their lights and their air conditioner on when they get home and know that it works and that it's there. They're happy to have no emissions. We'll go down this zero-emission pathway. If it's going to be no emission, what do we want? These aren't people going out to kill polar bears; they just want to have their fridge on and their air conditioning happening. Cut we can't look at the cheapest, most efficient, easiest way to do it because there's a ban.

There are people in Lucas Heights living on Sierra Road, 750 metres from Australia's nuclear reactor, selling their homes for $1.4 million. That's how scary this is. Sierra Road real estate—look it up! It's a great little place. Don't go to Maccas. But this is what we're talking about—the fear. They don't want to know because it'll work, people will be happy and people will have energy. (Time expired)