Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes that:

(i)

nuclear energy is not economically viable in Australia,

(ii)

nuclear energy is not a climate change solution for Australia, and

(iii)

the delay in establishing nuclear power would only exacerbate the 11 years of inaction under the Howard Government; and

(b)

calls on the Government to publish the details of any plans, including possible locations, for nuclear reactors and high level nuclear waste dumps in Australia.

This motion, as senators are aware, relates to nuclear power. It talks about the fact that nuclear energy is not economically viable in Australia and that it is not a climate change solution for Australia. I want to focus firstly on the economic viability of nuclear power. What we have seen is a government, one that has failed to undertake the action required on climate change in years past, trying to divert attention from its lack of action by creating and running a debate about nuclear power. But they know nuclear power is unviable. Let us leave aside the significant environmental issues associated with nuclear power and let us leave aside the community concern and the opposition within the Australian community to nuclear power. The reality is it is not economically viable. Do you know who supports us in that view? Do you know who has actually said publicly on the record that nuclear power would cost at least 50 per cent more than current forms of power generation? That is Senator Minchin. Senator Minchin, on Lateline earlier this month, made it clear that his view is that nuclear power would be substantially more expensive, at least 50 per cent more expensive than existing forms of power generation.

So the government know that nuclear power is not an economically viable option. Nevertheless, they are keen to press ahead with it, it appears. We have seen the extraordinary spectacle over the last few days in this parliament of, on the one hand, Senator Minchin refusing to rule out in this chamber supporting a nuclear power facility in the state of South Australia—

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Refusing to rule out?

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Minister for Community Services makes a comment about refusing to rule it out. Minister, some of us—and I suspect some of the people who put you in this place—would probably appreciate your being up-front with them about whether your plans to deal with climate change—

Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Wong, please address your remarks through the chair.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Through the chair: the minister knows that the people who put him here would probably be of the view that he should be up-front with them about whether or not he is prepared to support a nuclear power facility in the Northern Territory. I am listening, but I do not think I hear the minister indicating that. That is the deafening silence we seem to have in this chamber whenever we raise this issue.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are up-front. We are having a debate. This is the opportunity.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister says we are having ‘a debate’. This is the debate. Do you know what the government wants? The government wants a debate on its terms. You want a debate—through you, Mr Acting Deputy President—and the government wants a debate that is theoretical only, one where it does not have to front up to the Australian people to actually disclose what its plans are.

Some of us on this side of the chamber—and, I suspect, many if not all but certainly most of the people that put you here—would probably want you to be up-front as well. What are your plans? What is your position? Would you support it? You do not want to say that before an election because you know that most of the people who put you here would not agree with it. That is the reality. You want a debate on your terms. You do not want to have to fess up. You do not want to come clean with the Australian people about the plans that you really have for nuclear power. It is extraordinary! We know from the documentation and the reports that have been provided that not only is nuclear power economically unviable; it would require a significant government subsidy. We know, of course, that the waste issue has never been resolved adequately. It has certainly not been resolved here in Australia.

I want to talk about the issue of climate change. I will firstly make the point that the Stern report, the members of the IPCC panel, the European Union and the UK government have all agreed that global carbon emissions must be reduced, by 60 per cent by 2050, to try to stabilise the earth’s climate system. Under John Howard’s plan, Australia’s greenhouse pollution will in fact increase by 29 per cent by 2050, even if we build a substantial number of nuclear reactors across Australia. The Switkowski report confirms that the Prime Minister’s nuclear power plan will not cut greenhouse gas emissions and that it is not a plan to avoid dangerous climate change. We have a supposed solution that government members want to debate on their terms, because one dare not have the temerity to ask them whether they in fact support a nuclear power facility in their electorate. The government wants a debate about nuclear power as a solution to climate change when, firstly, it is economically unviable, according to the comments of the finance minister, and, secondly, the report commissioned by the Prime Minister demonstrates quite clearly that emissions will increase even with a move to nuclear power.

The reluctance to rule out supporting a nuclear power facility in their electorate seems to be particularly evident among those in this chamber. I notice that some of the minister’s colleagues in the House of Representatives—is it 18 to date; I may be wrong, Minister—have said they would not support one in their electorate. One wonders why we have a range of MPs, members of the House of Representatives, who are prepared to say they do not want one in their electorate but we do not have senators who are actually prepared to say, ‘I’m not prepared to support one in my state or my territory.’ I am happy to say that, and I am sure all Labor senators would be happy to say, ‘We do not want to support a nuclear power facility in our state. We do not want to support a nuclear power facility in Australia. We want to tackle climate change but we want to do it in a way that is both economically sensible and will have an effect on greenhouse gas emissions and that looks to a future with a reduced carbon impact.’

I beg your pardon, Minister; I think 16 of the 87 coalition MPs have indicated an unwillingness to support a nuclear facility, a nuclear reactor, in their electorate: Ms Bishop, Mr Somlyay, Mr Slipper, Mr Hunt, Mrs Gash, Mr McGauran, Mr Wakelin, Mr Lindsay, Mr Schultz, Mr Entsch, Mr Scott, Mr Broadbent, Mr Andrews, Mr Hardgrave, Mrs Gambaro and Mr Turnbull. That is quite a list, but not a single senator on the government side is prepared to stand up, for the state or territory that put them here, and say, ‘No, I am not supportive of a nuclear power facility in the state or territory from which I come,’ or to even say what they would require before they would permit one. Let us be generous to the government and say, ‘So you are not prepared to give a commitment to the electors about whether or not you would support one. Are you at least prepared to indicate what your process would be?’—nothing on that either.

In fact, we asked that question in question time this week. We made the point that the former environment minister, Minister Campbell, who has since been moved on—some might say he was downed by a parrot—had put in place a code for the community consultation and involvement that would have to occur in a decision to establish a wind farm. We asked the government if they would agree to such a process if they were putting in place a nuclear reactor. There was no answer on that, either. If we were going to have a nuclear reactor in New South Wales or Queensland—where the senators in the chamber are from—would you demand that the people of New South Wales and the people of Queensland have some say in whether they choose to go down that path?

The reality is that nuclear power is not the answer. Australia needs to go on a low-carbon diet, not a nuclear binge. If global greenhouse pollution were to rise by 29 per cent by 2050—under John Howard’s plan to build a significant number of nuclear reactors we would still get an increase in greenhouse gas emissions—the world would probably experience a four degree rise in global temperatures. We know from the CSIRO that such a rise in global temperatures would seriously damage our environment and our economy. It would be likely to damage if not destroy the Great Barrier Reef, it would impinge upon water flows to cities and the Murray-Darling Basin by around 48 per cent, it would increase the bushfire danger across Australia and it would move the dengue fever transmission zone down to Brisbane and possibly Sydney. That is an extraordinary indicator. I was born in Malaysia and I go back there regularly to see my family. Dengue fever is something one associates with the tropics. CSIRO is saying that, among other things, one of the impacts of climate change would be a move southwards of dengue fever.

The CSIRO reports and the Stern review state that global emissions must be cut by 60 per cent by 2050 if we are to avoid dangerous climate change. Where is the government’s plan to do this? Even if we adopt holus-bolus some of what the government is suggesting in relation to nuclear power, we are still looking at a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The Stern review has made it very clear that delaying action would cost massively more than taking action, and the world has only 10 years in which to act.

Climate change is a serious threat, and posturing about expensive and toxic nuclear energy, which is more than 10 years away, is a distraction this country simply cannot afford. The reality is that nuclear power is more expensive than energy efficiency and renewable technology, which are available today, and Australia needs to cut its greenhouse pollution now, not in 10 or 20 years. The delay that is outlined in the government’s own documentation regarding this issue would simply exacerbate 11 years of inaction under the Howard government.

I recall that when Senator Minchin was asked in question time about the failure of the government to address the issue of climate change—its failure to undertake economic analysis of it, to consider what needs to be done and to look at alternative forms of energy, energy efficiency and a whole range of things that we need to do to tackle climate change—he pointed to a range of environment department reports. But do you know what is most telling? This government has never commissioned—perhaps it has done so now, but certainly it had not as at the last estimates hearings, which were two weeks ago—a report on an analysis of the economic impact of climate change. This is a government that considers itself to be a great economic manager—a reputation which in the last couple of weeks has been significantly dented by poor financial decision making such as we saw in relation to the water package. This is a government that trumpets its credentials as a good economic manager.

The Stern report likened the economic impact of climate change on the globe to the impact of the world wars and the Great Depression. That is the nature and scale of the economic impact, not only on this country but on the global economy. This government has not undertaken work to analyse the potential economic impact on Australia. Treasury has never been asked to do that. How can a government claim that it is tackling an issue—that it understands how important climate change is to our environment and economy—when it has not even considered the economic impact on Australia?

What has happened instead is that the government have commenced a debate about nuclear power. As I said, it is a debate they want to have on their own terms. They want to have a theoretical debate without being up-front about what they are proposing, without members saying whether they are prepared to have a nuclear facility in their electorates and without saying what process might be in place. In fact, today they shut down debate in the House of Representatives. This is a government that say they want a debate. Mr Garrett attempted to move a motion in relation to climate change. I cannot recall exactly how many minutes he was allowed to speak before the government shut him down, but shut him down they did. If you want a debate, why don’t you have one? If you want a debate, why do you use your numbers in the lower house to stop debate on this issue? Wouldn’t you be happy to debate the matter?

The reality is that you do not want to debate the difficult things. You do not want to debate the fact that, within your own ranks, you have people coming out and saying they do not want a reactor in their local area. Frankly, you have internal divisions about whether this is the right way to go. You have coalition MPs who are running a million miles from a plan to build nuclear reactors in Australia. The fact is that Australians do not want nuclear reactors in their backyard. They do not want them in Western Sydney, in Adelaide, in Townsville, in Cairns or in Brisbane. They do not want them. They are not a climate change solution. Will we see real action from the government or will we simply see more obfuscation and more attempts to have what is really a phoney debate? It is a debate that is all about trying to distract attention from the fact that for 11 years this government has failed to understand the scale of the threat that climate change poses to our economy and our environment.

I hear people sighing over on the other side because they do not agree with us. Well, show us what you have done. After I came into the parliament in 2002, I did the ECITA Committee estimates for the environment department and I recall being told over and over again by members of the Public Service that there was ‘rephasing’ in the various programs run by the Australian Greenhouse Office. You might recall that the Australian Greenhouse Office was set up by Minister Hill as, I think, an executive agency or a statutory agency. The government subsequently downgraded that. They had a range of programs which, over the years, kept being ‘rephased’, which is the magical word that the government use when they allocate money to a program that is unable to be spent because they have not got around to doing it or because the program has not been running properly or for whatever reason.

So the government points to a whole range of programs run by the environment department. But, if you analyse very carefully the underspend in those, you will see that the government simply has not been doing its job properly. It has not been funding and driving a range of programs to try to prepare Australia for a carbon-light future; it has not been driving a range of programs to try to reduce carbon emissions.

Perhaps one of the most obvious examples of this is the way this government has tried to run a scare campaign when it comes to carbon emissions trading. How many times did we hear Mr Macfarlane, Senator Minchin and others in the government try to whip up a scare campaign about how much this will cost and how it was a dreadful thing et cetera? ‘We could not have carbon emissions trading; that would be a very bad thing.’ Well, a carbon trading scheme is a way in which you could introduce a market mechanism to try to reduce carbon emissions. It is a good thing to use market mechanisms to drive sustainable outcomes. One would have thought that a government that says, ‘We like markets,’ would see the sense in that. The government sets the parameters and you ensure that private enterprise can use the market to drive a more sustainable outcome to reduce their carbon emissions.

The reality is that the government is behind business on this issue. That is how much the Howard government is off the pace when it comes to tackling climate change. Not only have you had the Business Roundtable on Climate Change for almost a year, I think, calling for some sort of carbon trading scheme; you even have the Energy Supply Association calling for such a scheme—energy suppliers, people who would be affected by an emissions trading scheme, saying, ‘This is what we should be doing.’

So which group of people in Australia is really the only significant group that does not see the benefit in this? It is the Howard government. This is a market mechanism which could actually drive a more sustainable outcome. I notice, though, that in some of the language you are trying to segue from that position because you recognise it is unsustainable, and even the Prime Minister’s own task force has alluded to the possibility of a national scheme ahead of an international scheme.

I want to end by repeating paragraph (b) of my motion. I call on the government and the Senate calls on the government ‘to publish the details of any plans, including possible locations, for nuclear reactors and high-level nuclear waste dumps in Australia’. Let’s see what you want to do. If you want to have the debate, why don’t you come into this place and be very clear with the Australian people—the people who put you here—as to what your plans are and whether you as a senator elected by a state or territory are prepared to support a nuclear power facility in your home state. I invite you to do that. If you are prepared to support one, at least be honest enough to say it. Senator Chapman is speaking next; why don’t you tell us whether you would support one? (Time expired)

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The speech that we just heard from Senator Wong in support of her motion on nuclear power has writ large upon it the absolute hypocrisy of the Labor Party on this issue and is their poor attempt to mask the confusion and inconsistencies of their own position—if they could only actually arrive at one—on energy and climate change. Labor are only interested in short-term political advantage, and that is totally treacherous for Australia’s national interests.

Labor fear an informed public debate. Labor resort to an uninformed, scaremongering, fear campaign, just like they did with the GST, just like they did with the first round of workplace relations reforms, just like they continue to do with Work Choices. Yet again we see Labor demonstrating policy laziness—unwilling or too incompetent to take on the hard issues. They are not capable of debating an issue on its merits; they are not capable of challenging myths.

We might ask: why do Labor rely on uninformed scaremongering? Because they have no practical, workable solutions to current issues. That is because they are driven by ideology which eliminates from consideration and discussion practical, workable solutions. Labor are a collection of reinforcing ideologies that cancel each other out and are incapable of devising practical solutions to problems. That is why Labor are no good in government.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tell the states that!

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

All this shows is that Labor are totally unfit to govern. Labor’s—

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Wong interjecting—

Andrew Murray (WA, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Wong, others may not have but Senator Chapman at least heard you in silence.

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I was saying, Labor is totally unfit to govern. Labor’s environment policy is as confused and self-contradictory as this motion from Senator Wong. For example, as far as Labor is concerned, when Professor Tim Flannery warns about climate change he is a prophet and a visionary but when he advocates nuclear power as part of the solution he is a dangerous ratbag. We in government want an open-minded debate founded on the science and the economics, and indeed the sheer commonsense, relating to these issues. In contrast, Labor is about ideology, fear, suspicion and, most of all, the political necessity of appeasing the Greens.

We need to look at the contradictions in this cobbled-together motion that Senator Wong has put up this afternoon; they are plain for all to see. Paragraph (b) calls on the government to reveal any plans for the location of nuclear plants. To be logical, that should be consequent on paragraph (a) which addresses the items being noted. But it is not. There is no logical consequence between paragraph (a) and paragraph (b) of this resolution. The call for details of plans and locations for nuclear reactors and waste storage is not consequent on the economics, on climate change or indeed on any delays in establishing nuclear power. This simply reinforces the fact that this motion is nothing more than scaremongering. Speculation on where nuclear reactors might be located is grossly premature and an obvious tactic to stampede public opinion away from a proper debate on the merits of nuclear power. The good news for Labor members is that the government is not proposing to build a nuclear power station in any Labor electorate. But there is bad news for Labor: after the next election there will be even fewer Labor electorates within which to build them.

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s very arrogant!

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Howard government, in contrast to Labor, supports an informed public discussion on nuclear energy in Australia, one that is driven by facts not by emotion or hysteria, Senator Lundy. Contrary to what is said in this motion about nuclear energy not being economically viable, Labor’s own emissions goal will make nuclear energy economically viable because their approach, clearly, will increase energy prices. Indeed, Labor’s approach necessitates the future use of nuclear energy because without it there will be even greater massive and unsustainable increases in the energy prices for all Australians.

According to her remarks today, Senator Wong believes that global warming is the single most urgent issue facing mankind. Her solution? To immediately take one possible solution off the public agenda for all time. I think that Senator Wong is a little confused about climate change. After watching the Oscars on Monday night she decided that the glaciers are melting because of all those happy penguins dancing on them!

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is condescending claptrap!

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Howard government supports an informed public debate, not one that is driven by hysteria.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order, Mr Acting Deputy President. I would like to place on the public record that regrettably I did not have the chance to watch the Oscars.

The Acting Deputy President:

It was an amusing remark though, I must say.

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We have got to say that Labor’s opposition to nuclear energy casts doubt over its commitment to addressing the impact of climate change. On this important issue Labor is as divided as ever—and that is illustrated, again, by the differing views on the Labor front bench. On uranium, Labor has its celebrated three mines policy. Kevin Rudd thinks, ‘The Lodge will soon be mine.’ Julia Gillard thinks, ‘When we lose the election, the leadership will be mine,’ And, of course, Brian Burke thinks, ‘If federal Labor wins, all of them will be mine, mine, mine.’ We have got Peter Garrett and Anthony Albanese, fierce opponents—

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Did you know about Walker? Tell us about Walker, if you want to play that game!

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

of any change to the three mines policy. This division within Labor is clearly there for all to see.

Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We always know when you are skating on thin ice: you spend more time criticising the Labor Party than on the subject we are debating.

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The inconvenient truth of this debate—Senator Lundy, I listened to your speaker in silence and I expect the same courtesy in return.

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Chapman, please address your remarks through the chair and do not respond to provocation, and probably I should say that to both sides.

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Acting Deputy President. As I was saying, the inconvenient truth of this debate is Labor’s hypocrisy with regard to climate change. Their policies have got the half-life of a Peter Garrett lyric. Nothing illustrates this better than in Senator Wong’s and my state of South Australia. Premier Rann says that he will pass a law that no nuclear power station can be built in the state of South Australia, but of course he hates uranium so much that he cannot wait to dig every last ounce of it out of the ground and sell it to the rest of the world as soon as possible. This is where we see the utter hypocrisy in Labor’s approach, and the utter inconsistency and of course division within the Labor Party. They do not want nuclear energy. Mr Garrett says that he wants to see the coal industry stopped in its tracks. In contrast to that, only today a state Labor member—again in my state of South Australia—Mr Tom Kenyon, had this to say in the Australian:

It’s time we in the ALP gave up pretending that nuclear energy is Satan’s power supply of choice, because it’s not working. It’s time we stopped ... saying that nuclear power is bad for the environment. It’s just not true. Name one species that has been made extinct by nuclear power. You can’t, can you?

This is from the Labor Party itself. Not only are they divided with regard to uranium mining, they are also divided with regard to the issue of nuclear power. There is no end to their inconsistencies as far as nuclear power is concerned.

Senator Wong’s motion is completely contradictory and I have already pointed out the falsity of her point with regard to the economics of nuclear energy. It is completely contradictory in saying that the delay in establishing nuclear power would only exacerbate 11 years of government inaction. If it is not economic and it is not the climate change solution, as the first two clauses in her motion claim, then any delay in nuclear power’s establishment is quite irrelevant. So again we see the inconsistencies inherent in this particular motion that Senator Wong is putting forward today.

In contrast to that, the Howard government is keen to see an open and informed debate on this issue. We believe that it is in the nation’s interest to consider the nation’s long-term energy security especially as we move into a low-emission future. In contrast to the Labor Party, the Howard government does not shy away from difficult debates, and to be precautionary with regard to climate change we are prepared to examine all possible solutions and invest in a wide range of options and technologies for our future energy needs. This includes energy efficiency, clean fossil fuels, renewable energy and nuclear energy. In the past we have not contemplated the use of nuclear energy as a power source, but its potential to provide low-emissions baseload electricity on a large scale is becoming more widely recognised. It is par for the course in overseas countries. I guess we might ask Senator Wong whether she has ever been to France, because if she has been to France then she has used nuclear energy, despite what she puts forward here in her motion today.

As an example, work undertaken at Princeton University cites nuclear energy as one of seven key energy technologies that can help to stabilise global greenhouse gas emissions over the next 50 years. That is why the government established the task force to review uranium mining and processing and the contribution of nuclear energy in Australia in the long term. The Switkowski inquiry in June of last year was asked to undertake an objective, scientific and comprehensive review of uranium mining, processing and nuclear energy to consider whether a nuclear industry was viable in Australia and whether nuclear power could be a clean alternative to coal-fired power generation.

Indeed, there have been three recent reports with regard to uranium and the use of nuclear energy in Australia’s future energy mix. The uranium industry framework report was released on 13 November last year and includes a number of recommendations to capitalise on opportunities to develop Australia’s uranium industry. The House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry and Resources inquiry centred on a case study into the strategic importance of Australia’s uranium resources and concluded that increased production from Australia’s uranium industry could make a substantial contribution to meeting global demand for energy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Then the Switkowski report, Uranium mining, processing and nuclear energy—opportunities for Australia? was released on 29 December last year and included in its key findings support for the expansion of Australian mining and export of uranium and considered that nuclear power could become economic even against conventional coal based electricity. That review’s final report provides a comprehensive analysis of the facts surrounding nuclear energy, finding it to be clean, safe and potentially able to make a significant contribution to lowering Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The Howard government recognises the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions globally and understands that renewables and nuclear will play their part. That is why we are rolling out some $500 million in low-emissions technologies which will leverage more than $1 billion of investment from the private sector to prove up the technologies which will give us the breakthroughs that we need. Until the Labor Party recognise that solving climate change will not be fixed by simply shutting down the economies of powerhouse regions such as the Hunter Valley, Gippsland in Victoria, the Bowen Basin in Queensland and the Collie region in Western Australia, they cannot be taken seriously on this vital issue.

Through the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, the Howard government has announced its commitment to five key projects. Three of these are low-emissions coal technologies and represent a total investment of about $992 million. The other two projects are for solar and gas. The Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund does not pick winners but focuses on supporting all technologies which can significantly reduce our emissions. Instead of standing in the way with their outdated, ideological, anti-uranium and anti-nuclear power rhetoric, as we have heard from Senator Wong today, which really are poorly masked diversionary tactics and scaremongering as the only way they can see as the route into government—and that is reflected very much in this motion today—Kevin Rudd and his colleagues on the other side really need to start doing some hard policy work and thinking and acting in not only the national interest but also the global interest.

‘Nuclear’ is a highly emotive word and it attracts a variety of views across the community. Public discussion is often based on perceptions rather than facts, and those perceptions sometimes relate to views that were shaped by events many decades ago. Again, this is where the Labor Party relies on scaremongering rather than dealing with the facts and science of today. We on the government side believe it is far more important to consider the nation’s long-term energy security, particularly as we move into a low-emissions future.

There are some real challenges posed by the potential of climate change. We need to take a precautionary approach to that but, that said, there is no silver bullet to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We need to look at a portfolio of measures and technologies across all sectors of the economy. We must also look at global solutions. If we can eliminate our emissions tomorrow, for example, it would take just nine months of growth in China’s emissions to replace our current greenhouse output. That really emphasises the need for a global approach to this issue. Rather than put aside our own enormous natural advantage in fossil fuel resources, therefore, we must work on ways to reduce the greenhouse consequences of using them. We will continue to support the development of renewable energy technologies as part of this approach.

We have well-targeted initiatives aimed at technology development and innovation, rather than punitive taxes or charges which destroy jobs and industry—which again seems to be the approach of the Labor Party. We have practical solutions as our approach to renewable energy, rather than Labor’s rhetoric. We have already invested hundreds of millions of dollars in renewable energy and that includes $100 million for the Renewable Energy Development Initiative, $75 million for Solar Cities, $51.8 million for the Photovoltaic Rebate Program, $20 million for the advanced electricity storage initiative, $14 million for an advanced wind forecasting capability and a further $123 million for the expansion and extension of the $205 million Renewable Remote Power Generation Program. They are just a few of the initiatives that this government has taken with regard to this issue.

I believe that the Australian people will judge our response to greenhouse not by our words, not by Labor’s words, but by the actions of this government, and those actions have been very positive. We are taking a serious approach to address carbon emissions. Importantly, we will be coming very close to meeting what would be our Kyoto target for emissions, and that contrasts markedly with half of the European countries who signed Kyoto but indeed have absolutely no chance of getting close to their targets. I ask: what is better? To actually meet those targets or get close to them, as Australia will do irrespective of our attitude to the Kyoto treaty, or to sign the treaty and then have no actual commitment to meeting the goals that you have signed up to? We have committed $2 billion to support emission reducing technology, such as the world’s biggest solar power plant, the solar tower, recently funded in Victoria. Clearly, there is a world of difference between our approach to greenhouse and the approach of the Labor Party.

We are implementing a range of practical policies which will provide effective solutions to this problem. Of course, we will do that without damaging the Australian economy. That again contrasts markedly with the Labor Party, who have been captured by the green movement and are prepared to do and say anything to keep the Greens on side. They are blind to the fact that the policies the Greens are dictating to them will hurt our economy and cost many Australians their jobs. Labor’s policy of signing Kyoto and going it alone on emissions trading would shift emissions and jobs from here to China and India, which are not parties to those agreements and have no commitment to the Kyoto protocol. Economic modelling by ABARE and industry shows that, under the opposition’s policies, the wholesale price of electricity would double and petrol prices would increase by some 50 per cent. As I said, Labor have to resort to scare tactics to mask their slavery and cuddling up to the Greens and their willingness to sacrifice Australian jobs on their ideological altar. Careful handling of greenhouse policy is essential to avoid damaging impacts. It needs an experienced and sensible government which has shown that it can make policy in the national interest.

I conclude by saying that Senator Wong, who moved this motion, is not so much Penny as Henny Penny. You might recall the nursery rhyme—

The Acting Deputy President:

No, I am sorry; you should withdraw that.

Grant Chapman (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will withdraw that, but I will recall the nursery rhyme where a leaf drops on Henny Penny’s head and she runs about hysterically telling everyone that the sky is falling in. At this point, I might resist the temptation to cast the Leader of the Opposition as Chicken Little and Peter Garrett as Turkey Lurkey, but I want to emphasise the moral: don’t panic. The Senate’s time ought not be wasted with these sorts of hysterical, hypocritical motions that are simply scaremongering on the part of the Labor Party as a cheap way of winning votes, in contrast to the hard work of doing the hard yards on these policy issues that the government has done. The sky isn’t falling, only Labor’s credibility.

Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That was an extraordinary contribution from a member of the government talking about lazy policy. I do not think I have ever seen such lazy policy as this government has exhibited on climate change. Its basic premise is to do nothing for the next 20 years and hope it goes away. What is going to go away is our economy, if that kind of thinking prevails.

The starting point to this motion of Senator Wong’s today is the government’s own report on the viability of nuclear power for Australia, Uranium mining, processing and nuclear energy—opportunities for Australia? otherwise known as the Switkowski report. A key conclusion of this report was that nuclear energy would not be economically viable without a carbon price signal. According to the report, on average, nuclear power would be 20 to 50 per cent more expensive to produce than coal in Australia but could become competitive with fossil fuel based generation with the introduction of low to moderate pricing of carbon dioxide emissions.

Whether we are talking about nuclear energy or some other low or zero emission technology, a price signal is going to be needed. There is no question about that. One of the reasons is that coal is very cheap in this country; it is artificially cheap, you might argue. It has been the beneficiary of government subsidies for more than a century. There are old coal-fired power stations that have already depreciated their capital cost and therefore the only costs that they are forced to pay are running costs, such as fuel and maintenance.

Exceptions to that rule that alternatives need a carbon price signal would be solar thermals, such as the solar hot water services that many more of us are putting on our rooftops—although nowhere near enough; the penetration is still extremely low in this country—and electricity that is generated by hydro and bio-energy. These are already competitive in price with coal. There are parts of the world where coal and wind power are also lineball. However, the point of the issue is not that coal is too cheap, but the inevitable move to a carbon constrained future in order to avert dangerous climate change. In other words, there is the inevitable need to move away from greenhouse intense coal generation and replace the existing electricity infrastructure with low and zero emission generation technology.

What are the comparative economics of the nuclear energy future versus the renewable energy future? The Switkowski report is thorough in its comparative analysis; however, some prerequisites of a nuclear future are not costed in that report. They are the costs, management and liability associated with the storage of nuclear waste for a minimum of 1,000 years. The government says that storage has been taken into account, but it has not been for the length of time we know is necessary for safety and surveillance over this material. The cost of risk mitigation of a potential nuclear accident is not included and, importantly, nor is the cost of dismantling the energy market in order to accommodate nuclear power.

The reform of the current energy market rules delivered cost savings through competition, but all that would have to be undone with nuclear power coming into the system. The government has already decided Australia’s energy future is a nuclear one, having nobbled renewable energy by systematically removing current commercialisation programs and the access of renewable energy to the market. More seriously, the Prime Minister peddles the misconception that renewable energy cannot meet baseload. I have heard this repeated ad infinitum. I challenge the Prime Minister when he says nuclear and clean coal are the only two technologies that can provide baseload. This is wrong and he knows it.

Electrical power systems are complicated, and the Prime Minister is using that complexity to create fear of the lights going out in ordinary Australians’ households. The lights will not go out if we move to renewable energy. If anything, they will go out because of the decades of underinvestment in infrastructure and the inflexibility of an outdated 19th century centralised energy system and, if I could call it this, Soviet style five-year plans and economic regulation.

What is needed is a diversified energy portfolio, and load management to accommodate that. It is about providing energy at the point, time and size it is needed through distributed generation. A move away from complete reliance on large central baseload generation with transmission lines crossing the country is necessary. What are also necessary are a fair go and a level playing field for energy efficiency and renewable energy. That level playing field would introduce a carbon price signal through emissions trading schemes or another carbon price signal. It would need to remove current regulatory barriers for energy efficiency and renewable energy and provide the same level of subsidy to energy efficiency and renewable energy as that nuclear power system is obviously going to need. It would need to provide a level playing field and Australia’s energy future would be truly clean and green—that is, it would be renewable.

I think we can also say that so far Australians have not been given proper choices. They have not been asked if, for the same cost, would they prefer a renewable energy future or a nuclear energy way forward. The motion also talks about the delay in establishing nuclear power and how that would exacerbate the 11 years of inaction under the Howard government. It has actually not been 11 years of inaction; it has been 11 years of very tentative action. The Democrats have been responsible for almost half a billion dollars being allocated to greenhouse gas abatement, and I am proud of that achievement. The government, however, watered it down, as it waters down almost every other positive initiative in this direction, like the mandated renewable energy target. That was set out to be a two per cent extra renewable energy component of our energy system and is now more like 0.5 per cent. In any case, the target was largely taken up in the first three years.

The Switkowski report foreshadows 12 to 25 nuclear reactors in operation by 2050. For the record, it is estimated that if the go-ahead for a nuclear power station were to be given tomorrow it would still take 15 years before the first nuclear power station would be commissioned—and that is 2025. By 2025, with business as usual, Australia’s greenhouse emissions and energy demand will have grown unchecked and resulted in Australia’s greenhouse emissions exceeding 130 per cent of 1990 levels. That is another reason why nuclear power is another bad and too expensive bet.

As the Stern report to the UK government on the economics of climate change demonstrated, action is needed now. Stern found that the impact of doing nothing will cost at least 10 times more than the cost of fixing the climate change problem. The costs of destabilising the climate are significant but manageable. Delaying action would be dangerous and much more costly. The next 10 years are critical for action to reduce greenhouse emissions. Stern concluded that further ‘action on climate change is required across all countries’ but that it need not cap growth aspirations of wealthier or even poorer countries. Climate change demands an international response based on shared understanding of long-term goals and agreement on frameworks for action.

In economic terms the Stern report emphasises that climate change is ‘the greatest market failure the world has ever seen’. It also interacts with other market imperfections; therefore, while a range of options exist to cut emissions, deliberate government policy action is required to result in abatement. Acting now, acting early by providing early policy direction, will mean the cost of responding to climate change is reduced. I call to task both the government and the ALP on this point because their inaction on the hard policy issues of energy efficiency and renewable energy has been problematic. What is required is coordinated action at all levels of government policy: coordinating building regulation; coordinating energy market reform; and removing the disincentives for distributed generation, renewable energy and energy efficiency. This should be supported by clear targets and market mechanisms, such as carbon emissions trading, renewable energy trading and energy efficiency trading—in other words, the black, the green and the white certificate trading.

We also need complementary regulatory policies for minimum energy performance standards for all buildings—that is, commercial and domestic houses; minimum energy performance standards for appliances and equipment; mandatory installation of solar hot water systems and rainwater tanks; new approaches to urban infrastructure for water and electricity, including minimum fuel efficiency standards for new vehicles; increased deployment of solar power; and distributed generation through the dual markets of continuing the photovoltaic rebate scheme and introducing feed-in tariffs.

Part of this motion calls on the government to publish details of any plans, including possible locations, for nuclear reactors and high-level nuclear waste dumps in Australia. We support this call for the government to publish those details. The local community has the right to know. But the Australian Democrats are going one step further on this: we say that the local community must give their consent and their support before facilities are granted permits to proceed. For that reason I put forward amendments to the Non-Proliferation Legislation Amendment Bill 2006 requiring: consultation to take place between the Commonwealth, state and local governments before a nuclear facility could be established, which would need to be demonstrated; and majority support and consent for the nuclear facility by the local community, gained through a plebiscite.

For the record, the Labor Party did not support those amendments, giving the reason that this would undermine the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act that makes nuclear facilities illegal. We do not agree with that. It is very clear to me that the government could, in our next week of sitting, change the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act in ways that would remove the illegality of a nuclear facility. The government has shown contempt for the EPBC Act on numerous occasions, so it is quite feasible to imagine that in this case it would do likewise.

Before concluding, I thought it would be useful to draw on some work by the leading campaigner on nuclear matters, Dr Helen Caldicott, in an article she wrote recently about another aspect of nuclear—which I think most people are very afraid of, and they have reasonable reason to be afraid. Senator Chapman suggested that this is all fearmongering. However, I think that there are real risks associated with living in proximity to a nuclear power reactor. Dr Caldicott says:

... nuclear reactors routinely emit large amounts of radioactive materials, including the fat-soluble noble gases xenon, krypton and argon. Deemed ‘inert’ by the nuclear industry, they are readily inhaled by populations near reactors and absorbed into the bloodstream where they concentrate in the fat pads of the abdomen and upper thighs, exposing ovaries and testicles to mutagenic gamma radiation (like X-rays).

Tritium, radioactive hydrogen, is also regularly discharged from reactors. Combining with oxygen, it forms tritiated water, which passes readily through skin, lungs and gut. Contrary to industry propaganda, tritium is a dangerous carcinogenic element producing cancers, congenital malformations and genetic deformities in low doses in animals, and by extrapolation in humans.

But, as she points out:

Above all, nuclear waste is the industry's Achilles heel. The US has no viable solution for radioactive waste storage. A total of 60,000 tonnes are temporarily stored in so-called swimming pools beside nuclear reactors, awaiting final disposal. Yucca Mountain in Nevada, transected by 32 earthquake faults, has been identified as the final geological repository. Made of permeable pumice, it is unsuitable as a radioactive geological waste receptacle and recent fraudulent projections of the mountain's ability to retard leakage by the United States Geological Survey have rendered this project to be almost untenable.

Already, radioactive elements in many nuclear-powered countries are leaking into underground water systems, rivers, and oceans, progressively concentrating at each level of the food chain. Strontium 90, which causes bone cancer and leukaemia, and cesium 137, which induces rare muscle and brain cancers, are radioactive for 600 years. Food and human breast milk will become increasingly radioactive near numerous waste sites. Cancers will inevitably increase in frequency in exposed populations, as will genetic diseases such as cystic fibrosis in their descendants.

Each typical 1000-megawatt reactor makes 200 kilograms of plutonium a year. Less than one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. Handled like iron by the body, it causes liver, lung and bone cancer and leukaemia. Crossing the placenta to induce congential deformities, it has a predilection for the testicle, where inevitably it will cause genetic abnormalities. With a radiological life of 240,000 years, released in the ecosphere it will affect biological systems forever.

The government can pooh-pooh that kind of advice, but it is my understanding that this is pretty accurate. I doubt very much that we will see any studies being done on the risk to people who live near nuclear reactors. Until we see serious studies being done—not studies done by the industry—we will not know what risks people in this country will be exposed to.

It is critical that we have a lot of debate on this issue. It seems that the government imagines that nuclear power is just going to slip in somehow and that we will all be convinced that this is the only answer to greenhouse, but it is not. There are many problems associated with nuclear power, not least the one which is about delayed action: the fact that it will be many, many years before we will have an alternative to coal in the form of nuclear power. In the meantime, well-known technologies have been tried and are clean, and that is the path we should be heading down.

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens opposition to nuclear power stations is firmly on the record. We will be supporting this motion. However, with the greatest respect to the Labor Party, I am mystified as to how they can take a strong position against nuclear power whilst gearing up to open up uranium mining. I would like someone to explain to me how nuclear power can be too expensive and too unsafe for Australia, but cheap and safe enough for Indonesia, China and India. I hope the ALP do not opt to open up their uranium mining policy. Unfortunately, I believe that, if they do, it will affect the credibility of their stance on issues such as nuclear waste and nuclear power stations.

The government have at least had a consistent position on all these things. They are keen to embrace all things nuclear. The Prime Minister has clearly hitched his political fortunes to this unpredictable industry. The fact is that, despite all the hype about this nuclear renaissance, this is a failed industry. It has never lived up to its promises and its sudden re-emergence as a political issue in Australia signals a total failure of imagination on behalf of the government.

The Prime Minister’s campaign to resurrect the 1950s dream of nuclear power stations should have been pronounced dead in the water of the Switkowski review. This hand-picked, pro-nuclear panel used a highly optimistic set of assumptions favouring nuclear energy and still concluded that public subsidies or carbon taxes would be needed to make the nuclear industry competitive—that is, before realistic estimates of decommissioning, comprehensive insurance, research and development, waste transport, mine rehabilitation and waste are factored in. Of course, the same carbon taxes that potentially could help nuclear industries and energies are very helpful for renewable energies and would help the renewable energy industry take off, as they have in other parts of the world. However, unlike nuclear power stations, they could be installed virtually overnight and they will not leave a legacy of hazardous waste lying around for millions of years all over Australia.

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Lying around?

Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Or buried in a waste pit. The government refuse to create a level playing field for renewable energy in this country, which is one of the reasons we are having this ridiculous debate yet again on nuclear power. In the past decade we have seen an appalling flight of renewable energy investment and research overseas. Research centres and CRCs have been defunded or redirected and private investors have been leaving in droves in despair. Perhaps this is what the government wanted because then they thought they could raise the argument that nuclear energy is the only energy option available for Australia, having smothered and got rid of all the promising alternatives.

On economics alone this technology fails the most basic test. It is still the most expensive method of boiling water ever devised by humankind. In the United States, subsidies are estimated to have accumulated over the 50-year period from 1948 to 1998 to about $US74 billion. Forbes magazine put it this way in 1985:

The failure of the US nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history.

If this is the disaster the Australian government are sleepwalking towards, they have not learnt anything in 20 years. A former commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission told the New York Times in 2005:

The abiding lesson that Three Mile Island taught Wall Street was that a group of NRC-licensed reactor operators, as good as any others, could turn a $2 billion asset into a $1 billion cleanup job in about 90 minutes.

The Howard government seem to have missed hearing about this abiding lesson. Senator Chapman just provided us with a reminder of why. The government claim they just want a debate about nuclear energy, but anyone in this so-called debate who challenges the government’s uncritical acceptance of the industry’s credentials is labelled ‘hysterical’, ‘emotional’ or ‘out of date’. That way the government avoid hearing anything that might serve as a warning of what this technology can do to communities. There is a reason why people do not want these things in their backyards or in Australia. It has very little to do with being hysterical, emotional or irrational. There are well-founded fears, confirmed over the last five decades, about whether nuclear fission is the most appropriate way to boil water.

Perhaps the government has uncovered secret evidence that the nuclear industry has eliminated the risk of catastrophic accidents and has worked out how to prevent routine releases of radioactive chemicals from these plants. If this is the case, the Prime Minister has nothing to fear and neither does the community. He should tell us where his 25 nuclear power stations are going to go.

It is a significant irony that the greatest proponents of nuclear power are the same people who have been telling us for the last 10 years that climate change is a myth. Yesterday those very same people were gathered together in Parliament House, the very same climate change sceptics, telling people that the answer to climate change is nuclear power.

Regrettably, nuclear power will do nothing to help us decarbonise the economy, and they know it. Every stage of the nuclear fuel chain is powered by fossil fuels. Uranium mining is highly energy intensive, and will become much more so as the high-grade uranium deposits are exhausted and the mines get larger and larger.

Let us be absolutely clear what this whole nuclear debate is about. I firmly believe it is about expanding the uranium mining industry to give it a thin coating of environmental respectability. If you can cloak it with being the climate change saviour, maybe people will swallow the bitter pill of uranium mining. We are not going to wear it and we are not being fooled.

If anyone ever manages to build a nuclear power station in this country it is going to be well after this government is a distant memory. It will be long after we have missed the deadline for taking firm action to deal with climate change. We need to be taking action now to address climate change, not in 10 or 20 years time when a power station could eventually be built. In the meantime, we could have been building and operating renewable energies. What a wonderful way to direct people’s attention away from the other serious issues that are affecting our country, and the issues around uranium mining.

BHP Billiton is considering quadrupling the size of the Olympic Dam uranium mine—the largest electricity user in South Australia and the largest single industrial user of groundwater in the Southern Hemisphere. It will be by far the largest uranium mine in the world, and the largest open-cut excavation on earth.

Rio Tinto are planning to extend the life of the Ranger mine in Kakadu. While they have the Jabiluka uranium mine on hold, it remains one of the world’s richest high-grade deposits, and I do not think for a moment that they intend to hand it back to the traditional owners. At the same time, Uranium One is busy advancing plans for the honeymoon acid in-situ leach mine, which is little more than a liquid nuclear waste dump in South Australia. And communities across the Northern Territory are fighting a national radioactive waste dump which is being forced onto the Territory against all conventions of scientific rigour or procedural fairness.

I would like the Prime Minister to tell this country in whose backyard the nuclear power stations are going to be located. I would like him to tell the people of the Northern Territory why the nation’s nuclear waste is being dumped in their backyard. I would like both major parties to explain how they plan to safeguard what happens to Australian uranium once it leaves our shores.

Nuclear power is not a genuine response to climate change. It is too slow and too expensive. If you provided a level playing field, renewable energies would leapfrog nuclear energy. And it is far too dangerous, as Hugh White reminded us in the Sydney Morning Herald today. This debate is a furphy disguised to promote the interests of uranium mining, to distract the community from some of the other decisions that need to be made to address climate change, and to hide the fact that there has been insufficient research and resources directed to renewable energies in this country.

As Senator Milne reminded this place this morning, solar thermal energies have the capacity to deliver the same baseload power as a coal fired power station. They could economically achieve the comparison within seven years. Within seven years we could have an ecologically sound source of energy that meets the same capacity as a baseload power station.

Renewable energies are a reality and could be made commercially viable if the same level of interest and money was invested in them as is now being invested in the nuclear energy debate, which will lead us nowhere and leave us with waste for hundreds of thousands of years. Nuclear is too expensive and will not even deliver the goods. What nonsense to even be pursuing it.

What nonsense to be labelling people as emotional and irrational because we are actually pointing out the facts. We are the people who have been pointing out the dangers around climate change for a very long time. Unfortunately, we have turned out to be correct. Now the people who have been in denial over climate change have all of a sudden turned green and want to use nuclear energy to address climate change when the science shows that it cannot deliver what we need on time. Climate change is being used as an excuse.

I reckon someone should do a PhD on the PR job that the nuclear industry has carried out on how to get nukes back on the agenda—‘Let’s use climate change!’ It is one of the biggest PR con jobs I have seen in a very long time and I reckon there will be not one but many PhDs written on that very con job; and unfortunately this government is falling for it. I do not think Australians are falling for it; I do not think Australians want a nuclear energy industry in this country. They certainly do not want nuclear power stations in their backyards, so we will be supporting this motion.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nuclear power is an important matter, which Senator Wong has raised in the chamber today. Carbon emissions and global warming create worldwide problems and must be acted on now. There is no more urgent matter for this country to address than climate change. I do not think I am making a revolutionary statement; it is a proposition that is now greeted with increasing enthusiasm across the industrial world. There are still a few sceptics in the government who have recently read some opinion polls and found it necessary to change their rhetoric, but they have made a political career out of this sort of climate scepticism. Even Prime Minister Howard and his government have to acknowledge the seriousness of the current situation.

Day after day we are told that there are quick fixes and that new arrangements can be made without much thought or consideration of the implications—that somehow or other a wave of the magic wand can solve the problems that we are now confronted with. The truth is that it is not possible to get quick fixes. It is not possible to come up with a quick and dirty response to the problems of climate change, despite the political urgency that the government has now discovered and despite the fact that the Prime Minister, being an extremely clever politician, feels that it is possible to seek some sort of political solution to his problems with the establishment of inquiries or by making claims that nuclear power is the answer to all our problems.

Climate change is not a matter that we can afford to take lightly and we cannot allow it to become a casualty of the Prime Minister’s self-interested politicking. The opposition simply will not allow that to happen. We are of the view that we need to examine the facts carefully. We need to analyse the government’s nuclear plans carefully and ensure that they are brought to the attention of the public.

The increasing use of nuclear power is, at the very least, a decade away according to the most enthusiastic protagonists within the government. Anyone who knows anything about this subject knows what a completely ridiculous proposition that is. The minister for finance is a self-proclaimed expert on the question. Yes, I am referring to Senator Minchin. He has made it very clear to us that he has a view of his expertise on these questions. He has made it very clear that nuclear power will not be viable in this country for at least 100 years. Yet we are being told by the minister for industry that a click of the fingers can produce nuclear power inside 10 years. That just cannot be done. Even the government sponsored report confirms that the 25 reactors that are recommended will not be up and running, by Switkowski’s estimation, until 2050. According to the most extraordinary estimations, it would take 10 to 15 years. This, as I say, is the most generous and optimistic estimate.

We know that the government’s Chief Scientist, Dr Peacock, himself a supporter of nuclear power, has said that the report presented by the Switkowski committee was unrealistic. The report, he said:

... is unrealistic in believing that a reactor could be established in as little as ten years.

He goes on to suggest to us that Mr Switkowski’s report ignored expert advice from international experts; ignored community advice; and was totally unrealistic about the nature of nuclear physics, the regulatory environment that is required and the sheer, extraordinary costs that are involved with such a proposition.

We can contrast this position being taken by the Australian government in the face of the political pressure it is now under with what is occurring in the United Kingdom. The Labour government commissioned review by Sir Nicholas Stern made it very clear that delaying action would inflict massive costs on the economy and that the world had only 10 years to act on these questions. That was his assessment. The CSIRO and the Stern review both support the urgency of the task. They argue that there must be a 60 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050 if we are to avoid permanent damage to the earth.

Building 25 nuclear power reactors is not the solution, nor would it be possible in the economics of the industry as we currently understand them. Posturing about such an expensive and toxic industry is not the way to go, and it is certainly not the way to go in the claims that are being made about it being possible within 10 years. The Switkowski report makes it clear that, even with 25 nuclear reactors across the nation and with the various existing programs, such as the Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund, greenhouse emissions would nonetheless still soar from 558 megatons in 2000 to 718 megatons in 2050. That is a 29 per cent increase. That is not a solution.

If global greenhouse pollution rose by 29 per cent by 2050 the world would probably experience a rise in global temperatures of four degrees Celsius. The CSIRO has warned that such a rise in global temperatures would seriously damage Australia’s environment and economy. It would have a serious impact on the Great Barrier Reef; it would cut water flows to cities and the Murray-Darling Basin by 48 per cent; it would increase bushfire danger across Australia; and it would move the dengue fever transmission zone down to Brisbane and possibly as far south as Sydney. Climate change is not just about people having their beachside holidays affected; the whole issue here is about preventing the serious threat to our survival on this planet.

The Economist has labelled nuclear economics as ‘dodgy’ and has pointed out that there has been a whole series of costs associated with the reactors. It is not just the cost of establishing the reactors but also the cost of shutting them down. In any assessment on these questions, you have to build on the cost of decommissioning. The British Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has found that shutting down their 20 nuclear sites is going to cost $161 billion.

We have seen the considerable costs associated with the decommissioning of our tiny research reactor at Lucas Heights. So the sort of proposition that we have been talking about here in terms of the sheer scale of what is being proposed has to be seen in its full economic context. The last reactors that were built in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada cost between $7 billion and $14 billion, even after 40 years of experience in building nuclear reactors in these countries. So there is a very substantial cost of construction. The Switkowski review does not include these recent overseas experiences and predicts the construction costs would be somewhere in the range of $2 billion to $3 billion for an Australian nuclear reactor, despite the fact that we do not have the necessary nuclear skill set to achieve such a scale of building program in this country.

There have been serious criticisms raised about the costs associated with Mr Switkowski’s report. It is quite an extraordinary situation for the government to claim that this is the solution to our problems. I have spoken directly to two nuclear physicists who were involved in the last effort to produce a nuclear reactor in Australia—the doomed proposal down at Jervis Bay. They have told me that the project was stopped because the cost of generating electricity could not possibly be justified because it was higher by up to a factor of 10 in terms of the difference between the cost of electricity generated through traditional means and through the nuclear proposal. In economic terms it just does not make sense. This is particularly important in a country where we have coal reserves in such extraordinary abundance. It just does not make sense to undermine those arrangements.

Even in countries where the opportunities for energy generation are somewhat more limited—for instance, China, where they are proposing a massive expansion in their nuclear program—the fact remains that, despite the proposals to build up to 40 new reactors, the baseload contribution of those reactors to the Chinese electricity grid is not particularly significant. For the next century we are likely to see in China a heavy reliance on coal. Just the other night their top nuclear scientist in an interview broadcast on the ABC pointed out that the proposals that are being advanced in China are totally unsuitable to countries such as Australia and that, had they the options that Australia has, it is not altogether certain that they would pursue the policies that are being pursued.

So it is extraordinary that we are being told that this nuclear fantasy is the quick fix to our global warming problems. It is the quick fix allegedly to our energy requirements. It is the quick fix to the notion that this Prime Minister is faced with in the political struggles that he is currently engaged in. That is really what it is about. It is about coming up with a quick and dirty solution to a political problem. It is not about the long-term investment in the future of the country.

So there is the cost of building a nuclear reactor. There is the mere fact that the regulatory regime would not allow it to be constructed—if it were to be done properly—within a period of probably less than 15 years. This is in spite of the fact that the amounts of money that are being spent on alternative energy generation technologies and research and development are so limited and despite the fact that we have substantial reserves of coal. You would have thought that a government would be thinking about alternative strategies than those it is proposing.

I say that especially in the circumstances where we have not been able to deal with the waste question. In this country we have been struggling with the problem of the development of a low-level nuclear waste facility. We have been struggling with that problem now in this country for well over a decade. That is a low-level waste dump to deal with the remains of the nuclear industry, as limited as it is, in this country now. We are talking about gloves, soil, watch dials and various other pieces of equipment that are being used. We have an inventory of nuclear waste in this country of a low-level nature, which essentially is made up of soil. A substantial part of that is soil from the old CSIRO site in Fishermens Bend in Victoria, which was moved from Victoria over to South Australia, and now is accumulated in South Australia with various other tools and other pieces of equipment from Lucas Heights.

This low-level material has created such a political problem in this country that it has defied the work of our best administrative minds, our best political minds, I might suggest, for probably up to 15 years. Yet we are told that we can now handle high-level—not intermediate-level—nuclear waste and we can produce the wherewithal to deal with that waste in a period when we have not even dealt with low-level waste over a 15-year cycle. I ask the question: how are we going to be able to build these power stations when we cannot even build a waste dump? It strikes me that highlights just how ludicrous the proposition has been in terms of the government’s discussions on these issues.

Then we are told that some of the government’s favourite sons—Mr Ron Walker, the former national treasurer of the Liberal Party, the bagman out of Victoria for the Liberal Party—

David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The bagman?

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is he not the bagman any more? I just wanted to know whether or not he was still the bagman in Victoria but if he is not I bow to your superior knowledge. Coming out of Western Australia, I have no doubt you would appreciate what it is all about.

David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Brian Burke.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I understand it, Noel Crichton-Browne is one of your great patrons, is he not? I would ask a simple question: why was it that the Prime Minister—

Alan Ferguson (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Carr, perhaps you could ignore the interjections and address your remarks through the chair.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will, Mr Acting Deputy President, because they are disorderly, disruptive and of course unhelpful in the circumstances. Despite the close friendship with Noel Crichton-Browne that the senator has developed over many years, I can understand how sensitive he is to these issues. Senator Johnston is a well-known powerbroker in Western Australia. He has developed these friendships over many years. I understand how these things happen.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think ‘friendship’ might be a bit harsh.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Friendship?

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Marshall interjecting—

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sorry; I never wish to be harsh with Senator Johnston.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Marshall interjecting—

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am reminded that it is pertinent.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Marshall interjecting—

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He’s obviously run out of material.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have not run out of material. There is a very rich stream there, I can assure you.

The Acting Deputy President:

Senator Carr, I suggest that you ignore the interjections and the help that you are getting from your colleague and return to the subject.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My concern is the fact that Mr Walker had clearly private discussions with the Prime Minister about the development of nuclear power and the establishment of a new company to prosecute that case. Those conversations are no longer quite as private as they once were. I am very concerned that the establishment of a new entity to prosecute the case for nuclear power on a commercial basis occurred just a very short time, some days, before the Prime Minister established Mr Switkowski’s inquiry. Just five days after Mr Howard’s discussion with his friends from the Australian Nuclear Energy company, the government announced the nuclear futures inquiry.

I am concerned that the government has brought forward an inquiry which has been so heavily criticised by people as senior and as knowledgeable as Senator Minchin himself. He has drawn to our attention the fact that the proposals brought forward in that inquiry were unrealistic, badly costed and out of touch with the harsh realities of this industry. I am very concerned that the government is so divided on this issue because it would appear that Mr Macfarlane does not share Senator Minchin’s concerns about the fact that it would take so long for these things to get off the ground and is rushing headlong into this dangerous field, which could have such profound consequences for Australia. I am particularly concerned that the government has been so poor in dealing with the questions of research and development, in particular with regard to the coal industry and the importance of research and development in the industry to ensure that we are able to export a high level of expertise in the treatment of coal so that we are able to burn it more efficiently and reduce its greenhouse gas impact.

We would have thought that, given the resources in the coal industry that are available to this country, the government would pay much more attention to the science required to ensure that new technologies are brought on stream for new power stations to be developed in a timely manner in order to ensure that this country’s energy resources are best used and that our supply of clean and efficient electricity is brought forward in a cost-effective manner. I would have thought the provision of such technologies would be an enormous benefit to the world in terms of our capacity to help other countries develop new forms of power generation through the use of coal.

Instead we have a half-baked proposal from the Prime Minister, a political stratagem to deal with a political problem arising from the fact that this government has been negligent on the issue of climate change. It has been such a strong advocate for the climate change sceptic argument—until very recently when the opinion poll data came in that showed Australians no longer take the view that this is a matter that can be treated with complacency. Instead of developing a long-term view about investment in the country’s future this government sought to opt for a short-term political fix. (Time expired)

David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been an 11-year hibernation for the federal opposition. They want to talk about clean coal; where is the policy? They want to talk about greenhouse gas; where is the policy? They have been doing nothing. And when you have done nothing there is only one thing you can do when you are as desperate as this opposition are to get into power: run a scare campaign. How do you run a scare campaign? What is the best ingredient when you have been caught without policy on an issue that has developed in the community? You start to talk about who is going to have a nuclear reactor in their backyard: ‘There is no policy, but let’s run a scare campaign so that we’re at least looking busy. We’ve done nothing but we can look busy. We can take the easy road.’

Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Minister for Community Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s right, smoke and mirrors.

David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

‘We can use smoke and mirrors. We can fudge it, we can duck and weave and we can pretend we know what we are talking about.’ But, at the end of the day, whether you have done any hard yards or developed any policy catches up with you. It caught up with the opposition on the GST. The sky was going to fall with the GST; the world would be absolutely destroyed by the GST. But look at the GST now: oh dear, it’s working beautifully! Work Choices was going to mean massive job cuts. We were told that everybody would be without a job when Work Choices came about. The federal opposition says, ‘We haven’t done any policy on industrial relations, but let’s run a scare campaign on Work Choices.’ It is untrue. Work Choices is working beautifully: 200,000 new jobs since March and the lowest recorded unemployment figures since data has been kept.

When there is an issue in the community and you have not done the hard yards the opposition says: ‘What we’ll do is run a scare campaign, particularly when our party is so divided on issues like uranium mining, particularly when if we are going to clutch power in the coming federal election we have to do it with Green preferences. So we’ve got to run a smoke-and-mirrors argument about nuclear reactors in backyards so that nobody really asks the question about what Labor’s policy is 10 or 20 years into the future with respect to energy generation.’ The opposition says: ‘We don’t want to ask that question because all we want to talk about is whether you are going to get a nuclear reactor in your backyard. Because that is what the Greens are saying, and we want to say what they’re saying so that we’ll get their preferences and no-one will really know what is going on and we can fudge it and we can take power because we can slide through under the door.’

I want to tell you what Dr Flannery said, Mr Acting Deputy President Ferguson. In launching his book We are the Weather Makers: The Story of Global Warming Dr Flannery said that Australia needs to have the debate on nuclear energy because of its role as a large uranium exporter. Let us not forget that the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory and the Premier of South Australia are keen to open up more uranium mines, and Dr Flannery, the climate change champion, is saying that it is the debate we have to have. But the Labor Party contribution to the debate is: where is the nuclear reactor going to go? In whose backyard? Adjacent to whose back wall? What a fantastic contribution to the national interest—a scare campaign! After 11 years in hibernation they suddenly stir and bring forward a magnificent scare campaign.

Who can forget the words and the approach of Labor’s illustrious former Prime Minister of eight or nine years, Bob Hawke, when at the same launch he told the University of Oxford Alumni dinner that we could revolutionise Australia’s economy by taking the world’s nuclear waste. He said Australia had ‘the geologically safest places in the world for the storage of nuclear waste’. This is the Labor man of the century, the Labor man who led them to government for the longest time ever. That is what he is saying. He has a policy; even retired as he is he has a policy. He still has much more going for him than the current opposition ever has.

The point is that the Howard government stands for an informed public discussion on nuclear energy, so that all of the facts can be known and so that there can be a removal of the emotive, nonsensical, political chicanery type arguments that are being run by the federal opposition. I have told you why they oppose having this argument. It is because of what will happen when Mr Albanese and Mr Garrett get to the national congress. Mr Garrett is a man of fluid principle, no hard and fast principle—things change. I say that when I look at his attitude to US bases. I just know that he will be on both sides of the street with respect to uranium mining. Let’s have a look at what we are offering the Australian community: we are offering an informed debate, driven by facts not by emotion, hysteria and cheap, come-out-of-hibernation scare campaign politics.

Speculation on where nuclear reactors would be located—and this is the big contribution of the federal opposition—is so premature as to be laughable, simply designed to stampede public opinion away from the debate that we think and Dr Flannery thinks we should have. Given there is no decision to add nuclear power to Australia’s energy mix, it is a classic case of the old Labor scare campaign. For a start, Commonwealth and state legislation prohibits the establishment of nuclear power stations in Australia. There is nobody who would consider investing in nuclear power until there was solid bipartisan consensus in support of nuclear power. I say that again for the benefit of senators opposite: there is no-one who would invest in nuclear power stations until there is solid bipartisan support for nuclear power in Australia.

The prospect of nuclear energy is a discussion that any responsible, sensible parliamentary member has to have in addressing the future energy needs of the country in the context of its environment. It is responsible to have the discussion, not to jump up to the microphone and ask: ‘Where’s the nuclear reactor going to go? Whose backyard is going to get it?’ What a wonderful contribution! It is an insult to this parliament and it is an insult to the role of the opposition.

There have been three recent reports on the use of nuclear in Australia’s future energy mix. The government’s energy policy, as we on this side all know, has remained in line with the 2004 energy white paper. We are discussing this issue, looking at those reports and working through the facts to engage the community as to the viable options into the future. We have Mr Switkowski’s report which was handed down on 29 December of last year. Mr Switkowski chaired the Prime Minister’s task force. We also have the uranium industry framework report, which was released on 13 November 2006. This report included 20 recommendations to address impediments to the capitalisation and opportunities to develop Australia’s uranium industry. The UIF report fed into the development of the review of the Prime Minister’s task force, and some of the review’s findings, particularly those with respect to current skill shortages, are similar to the recommendations in the UIF report. The third report is from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Industry and Resources. The committee’s inquiry centred on a case study into the strategic importance of Australia’s uranium resources. The terms of reference for the case study, initiated in March 2005, asked the committee to inquire into the strategic importance of Australia’s uranium reserves.

I want to deal with those three reports in a moment, but let us just pause to look at the context in which we are talking here. There are over 400 nuclear reactors around the world. The opposition is running around and saying, ‘Whose backyard is going to get one?’ I have to tell you that there are an awful lot of backyards in the world that have one, and they are in some pretty interesting places.

For those of you who do not know, Argentina has six. Austria has one. Bangladesh has one. Brazil has one. Canada has 24. Colombia has one. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has a reactor. Cuba did have one, but it is no longer in operation. The Czech Republic has two. Egypt has two. Estonia has one. France has 59. Greece has one. Hungary has three. India has seven, by my count. Indonesia, our nearest neighbour, has three. Israel has two. Italy has two. Jamaica has a SLOWPOKE-2 reactor in Kingston. Japan has 17 reactors. Kazakhstan has three. Latvia has one. Libya has one. Lithuania has one. Malaysia has one. Mexico has three. Morocco has one. The Netherlands have two. Norway has two. The Philippines has one. Peru has two. Portugal has one. Poland has two. Puerto Rico has two. Serbia has two. Slovenia has one. Spain has one. South Africa has one. South Korea has three. Syria has one. Who would believe that Syria has a nuclear reactor? It is a miniature neutron source reactor, but they have one. Sweden has six. Switzerland has two. Taiwan has one. Thailand has two. Turkey has three. Ukraine has two. The United Kingdom has 20. The United States has 139, of which some 60 have been shut down. So shutting them down obviously is not too much of a problem when you can shut down that many. Uruguay has one. Venezuela has one and, lo and behold, Vietnam has one.

Isn’t it amazing that, with 440 nuclear reactors already out there, the opposition is running around and saying, ‘Who’s going to have one in their backyard?’ Well, a hell of a lot of people do have them in their backyards and there is not one, single problem with them. But that does not detract from having a good scare campaign. When you have been asleep for 11 years and you suddenly come to, you would think: ‘Crikey! We’ve got a new leader and the polls are looking on the up. We’d better do something to make it look as though we are awake and have some policy.’ Of course all of us on this side know that the opposition has done nothing for 11 years and the public will find out about it.

The House of Representatives committee focused on the global demand for Australia’s uranium resources. I want to talk about uranium resources because this issue is crucial. The Labor Party want us to break away from their crazy three-mines policy, where you have some uranium that is evil and some uranium that is okay. It is interesting to try to work out which is evil and which is okay, but the Labor Party have been doing amazing things.

The Labor Party, in wanting to expand uranium mining, as the government does, has to come to terms with the fact that we are in the game of nuclear energy, because we are providing the resources for the 440 power stations and reactors that I have just adverted to. We are doing it because we are the biggest source of uranium in the world—we have more reserves. The members of the House of Representatives committee considered another six issues, including consultation and approval processes with traditional owners, health risks to workers and the public from exposure to radiation, and the adequacy of regulation of uranium mining by the Commonwealth. Many of the issues the inquiry examined were also independently addressed in the report of the uranium industry framework and the Prime Minister’s task force.

The committee was highly critical of existing state government restrictions on uranium exploration and mining, which it described as being—and this was a committee comprised of government and non-government members—‘illogical, inconsistent and anti-competitive’. The committee concluded that increased production from Australia’s uranium industry could make a substantial contribution to meeting global demand for energy while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Let’s remember the context of what we are discussing—that it would contribute to meeting global energy demands while reducing greenhouse gas emissions—and the opposition’s contribution to that, which is: ‘We don’t want to talk about it. We’ve been asleep for 11 years and we’re not going to talk about it, because we are divided and it is not in our political best interests.’

The report of the Uranium Mining, Processing and Nuclear Energy Review Taskforce, the UMPNER report—that is, Mr Switkowski’s report—was released by the Prime Minister on 29 December, as I have said. The key findings were that there is support for the expansion of Australia’s mining and export of uranium as identified through the task force consultations, that regulation of uranium mining should be rationalised and that a single national regulator should be established to cover radiation safety, nuclear safety, security safeguards and related impacts on the environment for all nuclear fuel cycle activities.

The report also finds that skills shortages, most notably radiation safety officers and geologists with uranium experience, and restrictive policies—that is, regulation, land access and transport—are the major constraints to the expansion of Australia’s uranium industry. The report suggests that Australia’s exports of uranium oxide of $573 million in 2005 could be transformed into a further $1.8 billion—more than tripled—after conversion enrichment and fuel fabrication, but notes there would be significant challenges in obtaining access to the relevant technology and funds for investment. The report suggests that there is an opportunity of taking our exports from about $500 million to about $1.8 billion. Of course, the Labor Party’s contribution to the debate is, ‘Let’s not talk about it.’

The final report of Mr Switkowski’s review provides a comprehensive analysis of the facts surrounding nuclear energy, finding it to be clean, safe and potentially able to make a significant contribution to lowering Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions. What could be more important to the national interest? It is clean, safe and with potential to make significant contributions to lowering Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions—it does not get more important. It is what we want to hear. But the really important question is: ‘Where is the reactor going to go? Is it your backyard or my backyard?’ That is the opposition’s contribution to this. It is an absolute disgrace.

The review anticipates that a reactor could be operating in 2016 or, more likely, 2020. That is in perfect circumstances where the price of electricity is high and where there are problems justifying the per kilowatt hour price, which, as I will explain in a moment, is much higher than the current price of coal or gas. Mr Switkowski’s review received over 230 public submissions from a wide range of organisations and individuals.

Australia has an abundance of low-cost coal and gas—fuels producing 90 per cent of our electricity and 34 per cent of our greenhouse gases. That is the problem. We are saying, ‘Let’s look at a solution’ and the opposition’s contribution is to say, ‘No!’ We have the lowest electricity costs in the OECD. Obviously that is of substantial economic benefit to us and we must be careful to protect it. When we look at these issues we must do so in a responsible way.

I see that I am running out of time, so I will finish by saying that, when the government suggests we have a debate, it is no answer to worry about your political hide, to worry about how it is going to look when you are divided on uranium mining or to avoid the hard questions when you really need to show some leadership and responsibility. You need to take on the hard issues and endeavour to come up with the best answer for Australia’s future energy needs in the national interest.

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this very important motion moved by Senator Wong because it provides an opportunity to speak about Australia’s future energy needs, particularly in the context of climate change, and an opportunity to point out once again the ineptitude and inaction of this tired government, which has failed to plan for Australia’s future environmental wellbeing.

This tired government is the responsibility of a Prime Minister who used to be on the top of his game but now, as we have seen over the last few days, has shown he has lost it by foolishly attempting to use the nuclear debate to wedge the opposition, and in so doing has, yet again, shown us his lack of conviction to really address climate change in Australia and has also managed to reveal spectacularly the divisions within his own party about nuclear power in Australia.

Having been found out as failures when it comes to addressing climate change and the potentially devastating effect on our nation, the government and its Prime Minister are flailing around trying to cover up a hopeless performance. The $10 billion, hastily cobbled together water package was a prime example of a government in panic, a government out of control. Without even cabinet consideration, let alone an economic impact statement, and with just the most cursory financial oversight, as we found out at Senate estimates last week, the Prime Minister chucked some money at a problem and hoped it would buy him back the voters he knows are deserting the government. And, yesterday, when the Labor Party queried this questionable and irresponsible behaviour, the Minister for Finance and Administration, Senator Minchin, accused us of ‘nitpicking’. I do not think the people of Australia consider it nitpicking to ask questions about expenditure of $l0 billion of taxpayers’ money.

We had another example of the government’s quick-fix environment strategy with the light bulb replacement scheme launched with much fanfare by the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources. I am not knocking energy efficient light bulbs. Labor supports any measures, big or small, that are good for our environment and our future. However, some questions clearly need to be asked about the practical implementation of the light bulb scheme. My office and other senators’ offices have had lots of enquiries about the practicalities of that proposal. It is further verification of the government making its environment policy on the run in response to bad press and bad polls.

If we had any doubt about the mess the government is in, we had verification of the mess this morning when the government completely stuffed up its response to a motion which simply asked the Senate to endorse existing legislation relating to the prohibition of nuclear power—legislation that, apparently from this morning’s debate, some government senators were not sure about, even though nuclear power has been on the agenda all week, even though they have been in government for 11 years and even though Senator Abetz made mention of it in question time yesterday. I guess that shows how much attention other senators pay to the utterances of Senator Abetz! You have to ask: are they really unaware of what is in the current legislation or was it wishful thinking this morning? Perhaps they were hoping that the legislation really did not exist because it is a barrier to the establishment of nuclear power facilities in this country. It is a barrier to the ambitions of the consortium, Australian Nuclear Energy Pty Ltd, that has been encouraged and supported by the Prime Minister, who is gung-ho for nuclear energy.

Yesterday Senator Abetz reminded us about the legislative prohibition on nuclear power and said that we should not get too excited about nuclear power because:

... under Australian legislation as it stands at the moment we will not be having nuclear power stations.

You have to worry about whether there is any genuine commitment to that legislation given the ‘at the moment’ comment by Senator Abetz. Of course, we know that the Prime Minister has been encouraging his mates who want to make money out of nuclear power, despite the fact that legislation exists that prevents it.

You would not want to rely on that legislation because, as we already know, this government abuses its majority in the Senate, time and again, by steamrolling legislation through that the majority of the people of Australia neither want nor have asked for. Work Choices was all about rewarding the big end of town for supporting the government, and do not for a moment think that the government would not use its majority again to reward Ron Walker and his mates. It will be interesting indeed to see what the government’s response to the Switkowski report will be, particularly in regard to the amendment of the existing legislation.

The government are at sixes and sevens over nuclear power as evidenced by the debacle in the chamber this morning, and you can see it whenever you ask one of those government senators if they want a nuclear reactor in their state. Senator Wong’s motion asks the government to publish details of any plans, including any possible locations for nuclear reactors and high-level nuclear waste dumps in Australia. I await that response from the government with great interest. While I am waiting, I am going to use the opportunity to once again ask those opposite exactly where in Australia they are going to put a nuclear power station. Yesterday, I raised the matter in the context of Port Augusta—a very nice, seaside city at the top of the environmentally sensitive Spencer Gulf in my state. Today, I ask: will it be in the seat of Mayo, maybe at Victor Harbor? Nuclear power stations need a lot of water, I understand, and there is plenty of water there in Mr Downer’s seat. Maybe it could be in the seat of Kingston. There is some land there by the sea, at the old oil refinery at Port Stanvac. Maybe it could in the seat of Makin or in the seat of Wakefield—though there could be a few issues finding enough water in that area of my state. I doubt whether the Little Para reservoir would be up to it, but I suppose you could always put the waste dump there to take the nuclear waste from the nuclear power station.

As we know, government members and senators are happy to talk up nuclear power, but they are not happy to have nuclear power stations or nuclear dumps in their own electorates. Ask them that question and watch them weave and duck. You have to ask why the Prime Minister is encouraging nuclear power when all the research, even the government’s own Switkowski report, says that nuclear energy is not economically viable in Australia. We also know nuclear power is not a climate change solution for Australia. It will not deliver what the nation needs to ameliorate climate change. Even if all the problems associated with nuclear power in Australia somehow disappear, it would still be another decade before any nuclear generated electricity could be delivered to the grid, and it would be 2050 before the 25 to 30 plants that the Switkowski report says would be required to supply one-third of Australia’s energy needs would be in operation.

Let’s be absolutely clear about the problems associated with nuclear power in Australia, because they are enormous problems—and the government senators like to try and sweep this under the carpet. The problems include: the initial cost of $2 billion to $3 billion per plant; disposal of waste; decommissioning of plants; planning and construction of linkages with existing energy infrastructure to carry the power; lack of skilled workers to operate the plants; the fact that it will divert massive investment away from renewable sources of energy like wind, solar, geothermal, biofuels and hydro; security risks; the fact that the states currently control electricity generation and distribution; the fact that the majority of Australians do not want nuclear power plants; and the fact—and we even hear this from government senators—that the cost of electricity would rise by up to 50 per cent for domestic and commercial users. Even if you could sort out all those problems, it would still be too late for Australia’s environment because the lead time to bring the plants into commission is too long. It would take another decade, during which time attention and resources would be diverted from reducing greenhouse gas emissions and encouraging efficient energy use and renewable sources of energy. We have already had a decade of neglect and denial of climate change from this government and we cannot afford another decade. We cannot in fact afford another year.

Sometime this year, probably, the people of Australia will have a chance to consider which party will lead this nation into an environmentally sound and sustainable future. Whether the Prime Minister is still on his crusade for nuclear power when the election comes around will be determined by the polls and what he perceives his chances of hanging onto office are, because he has been there so long he does not want to let go. He did not want to hand over to Mr Costello and now the Liberal Party is paying the price with a worn-out, tired and directionless leader. Unfortunately, the Australian people are stuck with the same leader and are paying the price too. I commend Senator Wong’s motion to the Senate.

Debate interrupted.