Jenny McAllister (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

In just five days time, the Albanese government will commence taking $300 off the power bills of every household. In two decades time, Mr Dutton will serve up the most expensive form of energy that there is. As today's ISP lays out, renewables are the cheapest form of energy. Getting more renewables into our power system will bring the prices down. Cheap power is why one in three Australian households and small businesses are choosing solar. Australians understand this dynamic in their bones, and yet we have an opposition who in the last week has served up an uncosted, unspecified plan to introduce nuclear, indicating that taxpayers will bear the cost and the risk and providing no information at all about what it will do to bills and how much power it will produce.

We're getting on with the job of dealing with the mess that was created by the previous government and their approach to energy policy. Under Labor, we've had a 25 per cent increase in renewables on the grid. We've had record investment in batteries and storage. We've had over 330,000 solar rooftop installations in the last year alone. We've greenlit more than 50 renewable projects since the last election. We're already halfway to meeting our 2030 emissions reduction target in the national grid. We're cutting power bills from 1 July by bringing rebates to every household, and Mr Dutton is promising action in two decades. There is a very clear choice in what is being offered to the Australian people when it comes to energy, and I will say this: now is not the time to turn our backs on the cheapest form of power.

I heard Senator Antic indicate, 'We'll let the market decide,' and I'm somewhat confused by this because, as I had understood it, Mr Dutton's plan is that the Commonwealth will build and operate nuclear reactors. As I understand it, Mr Dutton's plan is that this will all be a public sector activity. I don't understand what Senator Antic is talking about when he says that the market will decide, because it's not my understanding that that is the plan that's laid out.

It's actually reasonable that people are confused, because so far the information that's been put into the public domain is seven sites and perhaps some polling given to one outlet—sites and some polling. We don't have any numbers. We don't really have any indication of what technology is preferred: modular nuclear reactors, an unproven technology, or large ones, something Mr Dutton previously said he didn't support? We don't have any indication about how much power will be generated by these nuclear reactors, and we don't have any indication whatsoever about what will happen between now and 2037, which, under the coalition's incredibly ambitious timetable, is the earliest point in time that they assert that nuclear power will be available to Australians. Putting aside all of the uncertainty about whether such a timetable could ever be achieved, what is supposed to happen between now and 2037? AEMO tells us that we can expect 90 per cent of Australia's coal fired generation to exit the grid by 2035. What is the plan between now and then? None of these questions have been answered.

It is actually quite incredible that a party that aspires to government could put out a policy of this kind, and it's not surprising that, in speaking about it, so many coalition senators seem to be so very confused about what the nature of this proposition actually is, because, as Senator Gallagher pointed out in her answers to questions, this is not even half baked; this is something close to parbaked, perhaps. I'm not sure it's even been mixed. It appears to be a proposition that has been pulled together hastily after a slip of the tongue by Mr Dutton and a realisation by the party that they couldn't allow this vacuum to go on any longer.

The coalition has so many questions to answer about this: how many reactors, what will we do for the communities that don't wish to have reactors in these places, how much radioactive waste will be produced on these sites, how much will it cost, who will pay for it, and what will it do for bills? The truth is that this election will be a very clear choice for Australians between a positive, costed plan and a costly and risky nuclear proposal.