Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

After 10 long years of the Liberals and Nationals, who had 22 energy policies when they were in government and couldn't land one, now Mr Dutton has tried to take us back to the 1950s. There's not an expert that I have heard that actually supports the proposition. Nuclear energy is a fool's errand that is too expensive, too slow to build and too late to start. Nuclear energy is the Leader of the Opposition's captain's call, and it was made without consulting any experts, without any economic modelling, without consulting energy companies or the states—let alone the communities where he has decided the reactors are going to be built—and, most importantly, without the fully informed acceptance of those communities. Where's the timeline? Where's the costing? Mr Dutton has failed to deliver any detail.

One of the things that people have kept asking me all through this week is: where is the waste going to go? If you were in the chamber earlier this evening, you would have heard Senator Hanson-Young talking about the threat of imposing that all the waste go to South Australia. That's alright for Senator Whish-Wilson, Senator Brown and me because we're from Tasmania—that's alright, mate—but I'm not so sure that that's going to be okay for the South Australians.

It's against all odds, and what I really want to know tonight is: are those people on that side of the chamber even supportive of this thought bubble that Mr Dutton's come up with? It's quite extraordinary. In your 10 years of being in government, never once was it part of your 22 plans for an energy policy—and you couldn't land even one of those. There is no plan at all to deal with, heaven forbid, the cost of energy. There is not an expert that has come out and said that this will deliver cheaper energy prices to households—none whatsoever. You've got the former New South Wales Liberal minister Matt Kean, who told the ABC's Q+A on Monday night that nuclear failed its assessment on cost and supply, and they were comments which put him at odds, I would suggest, with Mr Dutton. But, really, where is it landing within the Liberal Party and the Nationals? We'll have to wait and see.

The Nationals were once against nuclear, but now they're all for it. Maybe I can be forgiven for being a bit confused because I don't know all of the ins and outs of the Liberals and how they decide on their policy. But the one thing I can say is that the Australian community are not confused at all. They know—because this is what the experts are saying and this is what the financial sector is saying—there will not be a bank or a financial institution that will want to fund this on the never-never. They want to put their money into jobs and into renewable energy, because this government, the Albanese Labor government, has actually led the way on this. We're about renewable energy. I'm a bit surprised, frankly, that my Liberal Senate colleagues on the other side are so quiet and not standing up for renewable energy when they come from the great state of Tasmania, where we have led the nation on renewable energy. But what do we get from those opposite? Just as usual, they're not prepared to stand up for Tasmania. They're not prepared to stand up for renewable energy. They're not prepared to stand up for the Australian taxpayer. (Time expired)