Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of nuclear energy in Australia. Chris Bowen is saying it would take many years to establish nuclear energy in Australia, as if this is an excuse for not doing it. My answer to that is, if it's going to take a long time, you'd better get started on it right now. Australia cannot afford to be left behind on developments in the critical technology being utilised safely at about 450 locations around the world.

Nuclear energy makes perfect sense in Australia, where almost 25 per cent of all the world's uranium reserves are located. Going down Labor's renewables-only path will require the mining and refinement of billions of tons of increasingly scarce and expensive raw materials. This is not required by nuclear energy, which has a tiny fraction of the geographic footprint required by renewables. Electricity bills for Australian households without subsidised solar are around 25 per cent higher than those paid by households in nuclear powered countries like the US, France and Canada.

At COP28 a number of countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Finland, Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands and Sweden, signed a declaration calling for the tripling of the world's nuclear energy capacity. Also at COP28 were Minister Bowen, Senator McAllister and a delegation of 48 bureaucrats representing an isolated government—the only G20 nation in the world not pursuing nuclear energy. Instead, they've signed a pledge to triple renewable energy capacity. We know what that really means: more pain for Australian families and businesses as they struggle with ever-increasing electricity bills. It means more pain for the country as the unreliability of renewables hits us with blackouts and brownouts.

Labor is hopelessly compromised on nuclear energy. They're happy for it to be used to power submarines but not the Australian households and businesses who need it. Labor's ignorance and obstinacy cannot be denied. They have no plan whatsoever for the massive environmental cost of disposing of used solar panels and wind turbines, none of which have been recycled anywhere in the world and virtually all of which is ending up as landfill.

They have no plan to manage the increasing withdrawal of private financing and investment in renewables, because the numbers don't stack up for private financing without taxpayers intervening.

One Nation has led the policy charge with nuclear energy, with a bill in New South Wales three years ago seeking to overturn state bans. We support nuclear energy and support lifting the suicidal national ban on this technology in Australia. Senator Grogan says it's not viable. Green hydrogen, which you're heading down the path towards, is not viable either and it doesn't work either, so don't talk about it not being viable— (Time expired)