Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, well, well: how much can a koala bear? Talking facts and figures with these people is like taking candy from a baby. Let's quote the CSIRO, will we? Let's do that, shall we? They assume there's going to be no more transmission lines or storage needed until renewables get to 60 per cent of the grid. Well, guess what? We're at 30 per cent of the grid. Do you really think we're going to go from 30 per cent to 60 per cent and there'll be no more transmission lines and no more storage? And they don't count the cost of recycling. Well, 'recycling' is a funny term, because I thought they were renewables. I thought these things renewed by themselves—but of course they don't. I just did a post at lunchtime about the amount of concrete steel that goes into the base of a wind turbine. That post is already up to 5,000 'Like's. People are onto it. People are onto the con of renewables. To have that side of the chamber suddenly concerned about the cost of nuclear energy just smacks of hypocrisy.

Seven years ago, in 2017, the CSIRO said it was going to cost $1 trillion to get to net zero using renewables. Then, a couple of years later, they flip-flopped and modelled it down to $500 billion. Of course, this is the problem with models; they are like rubber dolls. They're not as good as the real thing. Because at the end of the day you don't want to look at the CSIRO. You want to look at the International Energy Agency, because they think nuclear is the lowest-cost energy, and they base that off existing nuclear power plants that today are competing against renewables. They leave renewables stone cold dead.