Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Minister Watt, I'll take that interjection. I just want everything, mate. I want everything. I'm one of the few voices in this debate to say that I support solar and wind. Let's build some of that. Let's build coal. Let's build uranium. Let's build nuclear. Let's build gas. Build it all! If you want lower energy prices, let's have it all. We've got it all; let's use it all. We're happy to export it to other countries. We export our uranium to other countries, but we ban it for ourselves. We export our coal to other countries; let's use it ourselves.

The other thing I'll say in response to Minister Watt's objection is that we need to get over the idea that one form of power is going to solve every problem. This idea that it's one and nothing else—that it's renewables and nothing else or that it's nuclear and nothing else—is ridiculous. We have a complex, detailed industrial economy. We still have one—just! And different types of industry need different types of power. Some need coal-fired power. Those aluminium smelters up at Gladstone that Minister Watt and his government are trying to subsidise, when we just used to run them without subsidies, need a certain type of power. If you want to have data centres—data centres are not even in the ISP; that's another thing that needs to change—then data centres need a very reliable form of power. They're not going to be run on solar and wind. We can have different horses for different courses. We do not have to tie our star to just one naive set of power solutions.

We should get rid of the target of 82 per cent renewables in 2030. That is a constraint that we're not even going to meet, and, clearly, that's coming out now in the public domain, so let's remove that constraint. We should move to a technologically neutral capacity investment scheme, which goes to what I was just saying. That was the recommendation of the Energy Security Board a number of years ago, but, again, it was co-opted by the political process through the ministerial council on energy. Ministers have removed the ability for us to use our coal and gas to firm up the system because they're ideologically opposed to this, and that is making everything more expensive. That's the core reason why we're all paying more for power—we're removing parts of our electricity system which are cheap, which are reliable and which can serve a purpose, for those varied demands that people have, and we're left with something that doesn't work. And, when things don't work, things start to break. It starts to become more costly to try and gaffer tape things together. People have to run diesel gen sets all over the place now. It is absolutely absurd for a country like us to do that.

Finally, we should have a proper review of the net zero emissions goal. Why haven't we done that? New Zealand did it. They actually published it. They still went with it for some reason. They published it. Their own studies, as a New Zealand government who supported net zero, showed that wages would fall in New Zealand by eight to 28 per cent. If that were in Australia, that would be $7,000 to $28,000 a year. That's the cost of net zero. That's their figure. We've never done it. Why don't we do it? Again, what have people got to be afraid of? If you really support this stuff, do these reviews and show the Australian people the figures, and they might be able to understand why we're suffering under high power prices. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.