Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

As Confucius said, 'The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago or today.' Would 20 years ago have been a great time for us to start our transition to nuclear energy? Absolutely, it would have been. Twenty years ago or 10 years ago, any period would have been beneficial. But, as Confucius said, if it didn't happen 20 years ago, the next best time is today. I am, as I'm sure are many Australians who are currently facing cost-of-living pressures and only seeing their family's financial situation continue to deteriorate, looking forward to the next election. I'm looking forward to the next election to say goodbye to the Albanese government for many, many reasons.

One of those reasons is that—and I'm pretty sure I'm not letting too much of the cat out of the bag—we will have a policy that looks to end the moratorium in the EPBC Act, the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 Commonwealth. All we want, and what everyone's very frightened about on the other side, is to remove four little words: 'a nuclear power plant'. In section 140A(1)(b), by removing those four little words, we would allow the market to look at this. No-one here is saying that we want to build a small modular reactor here. No-one's saying that we want a large-scale reactor over there.

What we are saying is that, when it comes to the energy challenge and looking at how we will secure a low-emissions future, we will secure that with reliable and affordable baseload energy. This is what those opposite don't understand. Baseload energy is firming energy. It's reliable. It's there at any given moment, unlike wind or solar, which are intermittent. No-one is saying they won't form part of it, but they will certainly not be the only things that will keep industry and the lights on in Australia.

By removing those four little words, the market will come in. We have an approach to all of the above types of energy. We are not ideological here. We are technologically agnostic when it comes to power, because, when Australians want to put their air conditioners on over summer, when it's a bit hot and they're escaping the heat by watching the cricket indoors, they won't care where that energy is coming from. They will just want to know that they can pay the bill and that it's reliable. But Casanova—Minister Bowen in the other place, the former minister for pink batts—is absolutely embarrassing the country. He is embarrassing Australia. He is out there saying, 'Renewable energy will be Australia's future, wholly and solely; no, thank you, nuclear.' He's saying, 'No, thank you,' to any form of energy other than their ideologically based renewables.

For renewables to work, they need batteries. I noticed that one of the electric vehicle companies in Australia has just announced the recall of 1,500 cars due to issues with their batteries. There are life-threatening issues around their chargers. Today, we also have three men in Sydney who have been sent to hospital. One, who has serious burns, is in Royal North Shore Hospital after an electric bike's battery blew up in his apartment. There are issues with these batteries, but you won't hear it from those opposite, because it's 'wind and solar', and they say, 'Let's all put batteries everywhere.' It is absolutely ridiculous.

We know that President Macron has come out calling for Australia to lift the moratorium on nuclear energy and join the rest of the world. It's extraordinary when we look at how often Mr Albanese likes to get on a plane, yet we know that there was a whole meeting over in Paris. I'm pretty sure he would have enjoyed a trip to gay Paris. He could have joined Canada, Finland, France, Ghana, Japan, Korea, Poland, Romania, the Netherlands, the UK, the US and a whole lot of other countries in gay Paris to discuss nuclear energy and how it will pay a role. I'm sure Jodes would have liked to visit and pop up to the Eiffel Tower, but no. Through the absolute obstinance of not removing four little words from the EPBC Act, nuclear is off the table for any discussion—