David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry when the coalition points to the UK as the example of cheap nuclear power. The Hinkley Point reactors would have to be the global test case for the economic insanity that is nuclear power. I think it's worthwhile remembering that, when the UK first decided to build this nuclear power station at Hinkley, the now former—very former!—CEO of the entity said in 2007 that the Hinckley project would be cooking Christmas turkeys in England by 2017 at a cost of nine billion pounds. Talking about turkeys—and the coalition are obviously keen for a bunch of Australian turkeys—what's the current cost of that same reactor? If you have a look at the current cost, it's coming in at more than A$90 billion—not nine billion pounds, but A$90 billion—and the only turkeys that are being cooked by that Hinkley reactor are the fools in government who thought that that nuclear power station would produce anything like reasonable power. It is extraordinary. Iin fact, it beggars belief that the coalition has had a look at Hinkley and looked at the UK nuclear industry and said, 'We want a bit of that!' You couldn't make this stuff up.

Talking about turkeys, whilst the coalition wants us to join the UK nuclear turkey hunt, the Labor government has gone really strangely quiet about their naval nuclear propulsion bill. Do you remember how it was really urgent that we had to get this new naval nuclear propulsion safety bill up? The Labor government suddenly wanted to go hot to trot on naval nuclear reactors. And, whilst the Labor Party jumped out with a bunch of weird memes against the coalition's nuclear strategy—do you remember the three-eyed fish?—maybe Labor was thinking about a three-eyed Port Adelaide kingfish or a three-eyed Fremantle redfish, because that's where Labor wants to put its nuclear reactors. Worse than that, that's where Labor wants to have toxic nuclear waste dumps. They've got legislation in parliament right now to put a toxic nuclear waste dump in Port Adelaide, to put another toxic nuclear waste dump on Garden Island, just off Fremantle. So, when Labor comes in here and says, 'Oh, nuclear is terrible,' they seem to have suddenly forgotten that Labor wants floating nuclear reactors—five or more in Port Adelaide and five or more in Fremantle. Maybe when they're talking about three-eyed fish, they're talking about themselves.