Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's always interesting following a contribution of that kind, where there is just so much spitballing of a range of ideas at the wall and no coherence. That's why Australians need to be very careful about what they accept from what those opposite are putting forward. The fact is this simple: renewables are the cheapest source for new-build electricity. That is the reality. We do live in what I would consider the most beautiful country in the world, and we have an incredible asset in terms of our renewable energy, and that makes us quite different from other places.

Today I want to make a very clear contribution to awaken Australians to how totally incorrect some of the rhetoric of the opposition leader is with regard to nuclear. Australians are feeling cost-of-living pressures and they are concerned about energy costs. When you're under pressure you cast about for somebody to give you an automatic, quick new solution. It is that fear that Mr Dutton is responding to with incorrect information. I cannot imagine why you would want to mislead the Australian people. Mr Dutton is the leader of the potential alternative government, the Liberal and National parties, and should be telling the truth. To do that he has to get his facts right.

Talking about nuclear energy is no small thing. We know that, overall, while the radioactivity falls after the use of nuclear fission to process any form of nuclear energy, overall radioactivity falls below that of natural uranium after about 10,000 years, so this is nothing to muck around with. This is serious, serious technology, so there should be serious, serious truth telling.

The truth is that there are two main types of nuclear plants. Some of them are in existence; they're the large-scale ones. Then there's these other ones that don't even exist in operation yet. They are the ones that we keep hearing about from those who think that nuclear is our solution in 20 years. Small modular nuclear reactors don't even exist, though there's some information you can get about them if you're interested. You can go to the Rolls-Royce website and it'll tell you about their plans for what they are developing. But they don't yet exist. To pretend that this can be put into the grid and that there'll be some immediate change to the cost of electricity is not only a lie, it's grossly misrepresenting the hope that Australians should have about a proper and sophisticated debate on this matter.

The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Dutton, has held a Coke can in his life many times, and he's decided to put into the public record his version of reality, where he says that the waste per annum from one of these small modular reactors—remember that they don't exist yet—will be one Coke can. Well, he's got his number very, very wrong because if you go to this document from Rolls-Royce, they describe very clearly that the technology they're producing generates about 285 cubic metres of spent nuclear fuel in the course of its 60-year life. If you split 285 cubic metres across 60 years you get 4.75 cubic metres per year—not just a centimetre, not just a square centimetre and not just a cubic centimetre. If we go from centimetres, which are tiny units, to what we're talking about, which is cubic metres—not a normal flat metre, not a square metre, cubic metres, which are like big blocks of concrete to stop cars proceeding. The reality is that on five occasions Mr Dutton has told the Australian people that a small modular reactor will produce one can of Coke of waste. The reality is that he's 12,499 cans of Coke out in his calculations.

You cannot trust a word that he says on this nuclear debate if he gets those basic facts wrong. Do not trust Mr Dutton. He is a master of deception. (Time expired.)