Nita Green (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the answers to questions from senators today in relation to the Future Fund. We were a little surprised in question time to receive as many questions as we did on the Future Fund given that we know that the cost of living is the biggest issue for Australians and that they want to understand what cost-of-living relief the government is delivering and how the government is able to help people in these cost-of-living times.

Unfortunately, we got questions from those opposite about a change to the Future Fund and the investment mandate of the Future Fund. The reason that it's interesting that they raised these questions is that the continuing overall obligation of the Future Fund remains the same—maximising returns. Nothing has changed in that respect. But we have asked the Future Fund to consider increasing residential housing supply. I wouldn't have thought that that was a very political, complicated thing to ask of an investment fund when we know that we need more housing across Australia. We've asked the Future Fund to look at energy transition. The one thing that the entire globe is dealing with at the moment is how to transition the energy market. Of course it makes sense to update the investment mandate to include that. We've asked it to make infrastructure more resilient and more secure. I wouldn't have thought that that is highly political or highly ideological, but those opposite are opposed to this.

What's interesting to me is it's clear that there are pieces of this new investment mandate that they are heavily opposed to. It's because they don't support our energy transition, and they don't support our move to net zero. We know that our government is committed to this transition. What we don't know is what the plan is from those opposite. We have some very loose details and some very loose numbers. I want to talk about the difference when it comes to cost. We're talking about the things that our government's doing to invest in the energy transition, something that those opposite are so opposed to.

What is the alternative from the Liberal and National parties? It's a nuclear power plan—a $600 billion nuclear power plan that will only supply about four per cent of the energy network when it is actually built and will add $665 to power bills. It's an incredibly costly plan from those opposite; $600 billion is a lot of money. It's hard sometimes to understand how much money that is. It's a big figure; there are a lot of zeros. I thought it would be helpful to explain how much money those opposite are planning on charging taxpayers to deliver a plan that doesn't achieve anything more than 3.7 per cent of our energy market. Six hundred billion dollars is the same as 775 Tasmanian stadiums. That's how many stadiums you would have to build to spend the same amount of money that they are planning on spending on nuclear power. It is the same amount of money that it would cost to build 50 Snowy Hydros. You would have to build Snowy Hydro 50 times over to spend the same amount of money that they are planning on charging taxpayers for their nuclear power plan. With the same amount of money that they want to charge for nuclear power, you could fund the NDIS 14 times. That's how much money they want to spend.

The obvious question is: What will they cut to pay for it? Will they cut essential services like the NDIS? They will have to. They will have to cut money to pay for this. Six hundred billion dollars is a huge amount of money to spend on a plan that delivers almost no electricity supply in 2050 and does not deliver net zero. This is why they are talking about the Future Fund today. They are so opposed to net zero and energy transition in a way that develops renewable energy, the green economy and more jobs for regional Australia. They're so opposed to that that they would rather spend $600 billion of taxpayer money on a nuclear power plan that will not deliver electricity to Australian households for another 20 years. It is an absolute joke. So every time they come in here and question our commitment to the net zero energy transition, we will make sure that Australians understand that if a Peter Dutton Liberal-National government is elected, it will charge taxpayers $600 billion—700 Tasmanian stadiums worth of money—to deliver a plan that will not work.