Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying, these towers are 275 metres tall, and they need a 200 x 200 square metre flat pad. Obviously God didn't create the mountains to have 200 x 200 square metre flat pads at the top of them. They come up to peaks. That's why they have to take off, I'm told, as much as 20 metres of the peaks—resulting in a massive amount of sediment and environmental destruction—to put those wind turbines on.

There has been a lot of talk about asking local people what they think and whether they would accept energy solutions in their area. We've seen lots of polling in the last week about nuclear reactors. Generally speaking, the Australian people would accept nuclear reactors. There are a majority of Australians who think that. In the areas that we have proposed that nuclear reactors go, there are again a majority of people saying they would. There are some people who are opposed, of course, but a majority are saying they would. Very rarely do we see our major media outlets poll these local towns about what they think about a wind factory and whether they would like those in their backyard. I'd be very interested to see the polling results on those.

We saw some insights from the report of the independent Energy Infrastructure Commissioner, Mr Andrew Dyer, earlier this year. He spent months going around to these communities and talking to them about what they think of these large-scale industrial renewables projects. He did a survey of landowners in the area who are affected by these projects. The survey result that came back said that 89 per cent were not happy with how renewable energy was being rolled out in their areas. As I've said, in this area west of Rockhampton in Central Queensland, you'll probably find more supporters of the Blues State of Origin team right now than you will find supporters of renewable energy. You never get 89 per cent. A lot of us do polling. It's impossible, usually, to get 90 per cent of people to agree on something, but you do in the case of whether or not they'd like these large-scale, environmentally destructive wind turbines near their properties.

That gets to the core of why the government is teaming up with the Greens here to deny an inquiry into these matters. They don't want those 90 per cent of people to have their voices heard in this parliament. They don't want them to have a spotlight put on them about why they're concerned about these things. I genuinely believe that Australians do care about the feelings of those fellow Australians who live in the bush and who work in the bush. Many of these people—though not all—are farmers. They care about their fellow Australians' opinions and views. If it was clearly expressed to them why these people don't want these large-scale industrial projects destroying Australia's pristine and beautiful bushland, very soon the Australian people would turn against this approach. That's why the government is denying this. That's why the government is seeking to gag those voices in rural and regional Australia from having their say on these projects.

Despite those views not getting that air time in our major media and in our major cities, Australians can see the complete failure of the government's reckless renewables approach to lowering power bills. This government promised, a few years ago, before the election—the Prime Minister promised personally, almost 100 times—that they would lower your power bills by $275 by next financial year. That promise was for the 2024-25 financial year—so, in just a few weeks that promise becomes due. Everyone knows, from the power bills they get every quarter, that the Prime Minister has broken his promise, that his proposal to go on this mad rush of renewable energy has not delivered the promised results. And this was not a throwaway line; this was the modelling the Prime Minister did. He stood behind it and said he was confident that by investing in solar and wind resources they would lower power prices.

The exact opposite has happened. On average, the average Australian household now has power bills that are more than $500 more than when the Prime Minister came to office, and many are paying $1,000 or $2,000 more, if they're a large home with a large family. This model is clearly failing. And we sit here today facing the absurd situation where we're looking at a risk of running out of gas this winter—in a country blessed with abundant natural resources. We're not Singapore. Singapore's a great place, but it doesn't have natural resources. It's not running out of gas. They don't have winter in Singapore, but they do need air-conditioning, they do need electricity all year round, being on the equator. Singapore is not running out of gas, but Australia is, even with all our resources.

There's a very simple answer for why that's happening. It's because we're obsessed with one type of electricity generation. We're ignoring the need to develop our gas resources, our coal resources and our uranium resources, too. We need to get a better balance in this debate. We need to get away from this naive, juvenile idea that there is somehow a silver bullet out there that can solve all our problems in one shot. We can't maintain an industrial economy and manufacturing sector by just relying on energy sources that are dependent on the weather. That should be obvious, but for those for whom it wasn't obvious, it's now plainly obvious, given the reality that's biting us all right now.

Likewise, my side of politics, as I often say, are not going to deliver those results just by installing nuclear power plants either. Any modern industrial economy needs a mix of energy types. We need gas to create fertilisers to grow food. Over half the world's food is grown by using fossil fuel based fertilisers, primarily natural gas generated fertilisers. We need coal to maintain our heavy industry and manufacturing, which relies on very cheap reliable power, like our aluminium sector, which is a massively thriving part of our nation, our economy, underpinning tens of thousands of jobs. We need coal for that. And yes, we should invest in nuclear, too, because it's a modern technology that can also provide reliable power. For anyone who wants to bring down power prices for our country, we need a balanced mix of energy types. We need a proper investigation of this renewables rollout before it's too late for many Australians.