Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Shadow Minister for Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Development) Share this | Hansard source

I rise, as someone who is heading to Dubai at the end of the week to attend COP28, to speak in favour of this motion. I think it is incredible that a country with 35 per cent of the world's uranium—we're exporting it to the world—isn't looking at nuclear energy. Everyone in the G20 and all of our trading partners have signed up to net zero by 2050. What are we trying to do? Get to net zero by 2050 with one hand tied behind our back, instead of using a cheap, reliable source of zero-emission energy. The Labor government, in the fantasy world that they seem to exist in, are saying, 'No, we're not going to look at that.' The rest of the world is tickered up and the International Energy Agency has said, 'The world will not get to net zero by 2050 unless there's an adoption of nuclear energy production.' The IPCC has said it as well. It's not just those on this side of the chamber.

What's the Labor government saying? 'No; we're going to electrify Australia. You're all going to be driving an electric car. Your mum is ripping out her gas stove to put electric hotplates back in.' We got rid of those in the seventies. Fine. We're building 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines across our country. Why? Because the Labor Party refuses to remove the moratorium our country has on building nuclear power or even about thinking about nuclear power as a potential option for our nation to deal with reality of the laws of physics and the laws of economics that you are going to have to come to terms with.

It's all been very ambitious up until now. It's all been very ethereal and very 'unicorn pie in the sky', but at some point you are going to have to ensure that the lights stay on and that people are in well-paid jobs in regional capitals and in our suburbs across the country. That means production lines in all of our manufacturing facilities don't shut down because the wind isn't blowing, the sun isn't shining or you haven't quite got the tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines up and running in time. This is the reality you're facing. That is why at COP28 this week the world came together to recognise the fundamental fact that, in the race and the ambition to reach net zero by 2050, you cannot leave nuclear power generation out of your mix. Of course you're going to have to have wind, you're going to have to have solar and you're going to have to have carbon sequestration. You are also going to have to have nuclear. For a country like ours, where so many of our well-paying jobs and your union members' jobs are reliant on cheap and available energy production, why would you take this particular piece—this tool—out of what we're considering?

Of course it's going to take time, but so is building 28,000 kilometres of infrastructure. The fact is that your infrastructure construction is going to cost $328 billion. That is the reality. Don't shake your head, please, senators on the opposite side of the chamber—through you, Chair—because that is your own costing. That will come at the cost of building road and rail projects, and we know the Inland Rail in and of itself will produce 750 thousand tonnes of CO2 every single year it's going to be in operation. Hundreds of thousands of B-double trucks are going off the road because of that singular piece of infrastructure.

We are very much looking forward to heading over to Dubai. I call on Minister Bowen and say, 'It's not too late to join with the 22 other countries.' Not all of them already have nuclear power generation in their borders, but they're committed to the science that says we can't, as a globe, get to net zero there without a zero-emissions energy source like nuclear.

We are not a country that is subjected to earthquakes. We are a country that has very high environmental laws and sustainability frameworks, so adopting that technology here just makes sense, rather than turning your back and trying to do something no one else in the world is seeking to do. I heard comments earlier that Australians are against it—no they're not, only 24 per cent of Australians oppose it. (Time expired)