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

For some months—in fact, years now—opposition senators have been calling to have a full and transparent inquiry into the rollout of huge amounts of wind turbines and solar panels across our farmlands and bushlands throughout Australia. For all of that time the government has been hiding, delaying and dragging its feet, stopping a proper inquiry into its own policies. The only conclusion you can come to is that this government has a lot to hide when it comes to its renewable energy rollout. It doesn't want that program to be subject to any kind of public scrutiny.

I want to recognise the efforts of my colleagues. Senator Cadell has been ably leading the charge on this matter for years now; it's been many months. He's showing incredible persistence to get to the bottom of it. Senator Colbeck, who is co-sponsoring this motion, is working hard on this as well as are many other members of parliament—from different political parties but, principally, from the Liberal and National parties—from areas where many of these projects are being rolled out. I know that last week, in the fallout—excuse the pun!—of the nuclear announcement, many people were saying, 'Nobody would have a nuclear power station in their backyard.' Some people would claim that people wouldn't want a nuclear power station in their backyard. Well, I'm fine to have it in my backyard, perfectly fine. I've always said that. Some of them that the coalition has proposed are going to be not too far from where I live and some are going to be close to where I live. I have no problem with that at all.

One thing I think many Australians wouldn't even realise is that many do actually have a nuclear reactor in their backyard. In fact, there's a nuclear reactor in our biggest city, so millions of Australians have, figuratively, a nuclear reactor in their backyard. We've had a nuclear reactor in south-west Sydney, at a location called Lucas Heights, since the 1960s. I think it was built in 1958. So, for more than 60 years, we've had a nuclear reactor. It's actually the second reactor. It was rebuilt in the 2000s. We've had a nuclear reactor that whole time in that facility.

I would hazard a guess that many Sydneysiders don't even realise there is a nuclear reactor in their town. It goes completely unremarked. It has been run incredibly safely; it's a world-class facility. It does not generate electricity, but the nuclear reactor is a nuclear reactor. I've been out there a number of times and been told by those operating it that it could generate electricity but it is used, instead, to generate the nuclear medicines which save millions of Australians' lives—in fact, one in two Australians, on average. About half of us over our lifetimes, on average, will require the use of medicines made through nuclear processes like those at Lucas Heights. That reactor exists there and it is fine. People are happy with it.

In fact, I had a look last week. In the closest suburb to Lucas Heights, a house 1.7 kilometres away, I think, but definitely under two kilometres away from the actual reactor—so we're talking 'backyard'—sold in March for $1.7 million. If people had a problem with nuclear reactors in their backyard, you wouldn't think houses would be selling for nearly $2 million. It was a four-bedroom house. It looked like a nice home but not by any means a palace or mansion, but it sold for $1.7 million. In fact, that suburb had an average price of over $1.2 million over the past 12 months, just hundreds of metres away from the nuclear reactor there. That's in peoples' backyards.

But the funny thing is, we've been building solar factories and wind factories for a generation now, for over 20 years really, at an industrial scale here in Australia, and I don't think Sydneysiders have a solar or wind factory in their backyard yet. So, they're happy to have the nuclear reactor in their backyard. I do see a lot of people in Sydney wanting renewable energy, but I don't see anybody out there saying, 'Yes, please install a mass of hectares of solar and wind turbines off the coast of Manly Beach,' or even on the outskirts of Sydney at Camden. I don't see this groundswell of support for these facilities. No, they tend to be installed out in regional, country locations, and, typically, that's where you'll find members of the Liberal and National parties representing. So we are very much on the front line of this.

I can tell you, as someone who lives in one of these areas, that I've met many more people who would have a nuclear reactor in their backyard over an industrial-scale solar or wind factory any day of the week. We all have a visual representation of what it means for people who live near these things, every day that we come to work. Every day we come to work there's a big flagpole, over there, in the middle of the building, and there's a big flag on top. I think I checked a while back and it sits at just over 200 metres tall or something like that. These big wind turbines now going up near where I live, just west of Rockhampton, sit at 275 metres tall to the tip of the blade. That's bigger and taller than the flag here on Parliament House. If it was just one of them it might be, like the flagpole here, a bit of a spectacle. It's something you look at and are inspired by, almost, every day. But there are hundreds of them going in across the beautiful, pristine, subtropical bushland just west of Rockhampton. That is just one project. There are hundreds more, thousands of them overall, across many projects in my area. That tends to get people a bit worried—having hundreds of Parliament House sized flagpoles dotted along what was otherwise previously a pristine landscape full of animals and natural habitat, and supporting, of course, a very important ecosystem in my area, the Great Barrier Reef.

We've been told for decades now that we can't do much in these areas in the Great Barrier Reef catchment. Farmers can't clear trees anymore. They're not allowed to develop their land because, if they did, the sediment would run off to the rivers and catchments that flow to the Great Barrier Reef and that would destroy the coral in the reef. That's what we're told. Senator Hanson-Young and others have made this point many times. Yet, apparently, an overseas wind turbine investor can come to these areas in the Great Barrier Reef catchment area, and use dynamite to blow up the tops of mountains and push all that sediment over the side, where it will flow into the Fitzroy delta, out to the Great Barrier Reef and past the Keppels, and that's no problem at all. There's not even a murmur from the Greens political party about this environmental destruction. Why?

It wouldn't shock many people to know that I'm probably not the world's biggest greenie, but I do care about our natural environment and I don't think we should be blowing 20 metres off the top of these beautiful, pristine mountains, which have sugar gliders, koalas and beautiful natural habitats.

I care about koalas. I care very much about koalas. We aren't going to save the polar bear, Senator Hanson Young, by killing koalas, but that's the approach at the moment. That is the approach: we kill these koala habitats and somehow that will save the polar bear. I don't understand it.