Sue Lines (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I inform the Senate that I have received the following letter, dated 13 September, from Senator Babet:

Pursuant to standing order 75, the United Australia Party propose to move that, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

In the interests of energy costs and the environment, Australia must end its prohibition on nuclear energy generation, and join countries like Canada and the United States who have been using this technology safely and successfully for decades.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.

Ralph Babet (Victoria, United Australia Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

r BABET (—) (): I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

In the interests of energy costs and the environment, Australia must end its prohibition on nuclear energy generation, and join countries like Canada and the United States who have been using this technology safely and successfully for decades.

Australia, we are in an energy crisis. I don't think any of us would deny that. Power bills are becoming unaffordable and our forced transition out of cheap and reliable coal and gas has left our nation with a massive exposure to blackouts and ever-increasing prices. Our energy grid: what is it? It is a house of cards, and it is predominantly, as far as I can tell, made in China. China control most of the world's supply of solar panels and batteries and they also own the majority of cobalt mines, and cobalt is a critical mineral used in so-called renewable energy products.

The recent visit to Australia by the Ontario Minister for Energy, Mr Todd Smith, should be a wake-up call to Australia to end the ban on nuclear energy. Mr Smith said that nuclear power is Canada's only pathway to net zero. Just 20 years ago, the province of Ontario was dependent on coal to generate electricity, as is Australia, but in 2003 it committed to going nuclear. It took only 11 years for it to close its last coal-fired power station, in 2014. In the last year, Ontario has sourced more than 50 per cent of its power from conventional, large-scale nuclear plants, and its power price per kilowatt hour is now about half what it is in Australia.

At the turn of the 21st century, Australia had some of the cheapest and most reliable energy in the world. That started to change when the Howard government, in around 2001, imposed a five per cent renewable energy target. In 2006 the Howard government commissioned an investigation into building nuclear power plants in Australia, which the Labor Party obviously opposed.

When Labor was elected in 2007 it lifted the renewable energy target to 20 per cent, and state governments also introduced renewable energy targets and subsidies. Just like clockwork, power prices have risen consistently ever since. Minister Chris Bowen says it would take too long and cost too much for Australia to go nuclear. But let's talk about the cost of not going nuclear. A recent report by Net Zero Australia puts the cost of meeting Australia's aspiration of net zero by 2050 at $1.5 trillion by the end of the decade, with the need for $7 trillion to $9 trillion of capital by 2060. That's around $9,000 billion, or nine times our federal debt. Wokeness is a very expensive business, it seems.

According to Minister Bowen, just meeting our 43 per cent reduction target by 2030 would require us to install 22,000 solar panels every day for eight years, along with 40 wind turbines every single month, backed by at least 10,000 kilometres of additional transmission lines. All this infrastructure can't be that good for the environment. How many whales need to be beached? How many wedge-tailed eagles need to be killed? How many trees need to be cut down? How much prime agricultural land needs to be covered in solar panels that last maybe 20 years before they end up being thrown into landfill? It seems to me that some in this place aren't as focused on genuine environmentalism as they claim to be.

Nuclear power can directly replace coal. The jobs pay well, and many of the skills are transferable. No-one who currently works in the coal industry wants to spend their days unboxing and fitting Chinese made solar panels on to roofs. Nuclear power provides a dignified transition. Best of all, nuclear can simply plug into our existing grid and provide the stable baseload energy needed to revitalise our manufacturing sector. The plants can be built in the exact same footprint where coal power stations currently sit today.

I asked our government one question: should we spend our money here at home or should we send it overseas to China? The renewable energy transition has turned Australia into nothing short of a Chinese colony. Nuclear power bridges the gap between both sides of politics. It is economically and environmentally viable. We need to end this madness. It's time to legalise—embrace—nuclear power for Australia.

Malcolm Roberts (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a servant of the many different people who make up our one Queensland community, I know that nuclear is an answer to humanity's energy needs. There are others, including hydro, which is being underutilised, and clean coal. Modern coal can be used in a way that produces zero carbon dioxide. A trial site in Tasmania is currently waiting to install equipment that will convert coal to hydrogen and then hydrogen to electricity—baseload cheap, reliable electricity. This system is only 10 per cent dearer than doing the obvious thing: burning the coal itself for even cheaper electricity. And remember, no-one has provided logical scientific points with empirical scientific data saying that carbon dioxide from human activity affects climate and needs to be cut—no-one. Increasingly, leading scientists are plucking up the courage to call out the United Nations and the World Economic Forum for their climate scam.

The ruling zeitgeist among politicians, autocrats, predatory businesses and the mouthpiece media hates the concept of plentiful and cheap power. That's the core issue. UN net zero is not about cheap power and it's not about saving the environment from a harmless trace gas essential to all life on earth. UN net zero is about restricting electricity output to provide an artificial energy deficit that can be used to control, that can be used to keep those behind this scam in power—scarcity that will rob Australia of a prosperous future that generations of Australians have worked to secure for themselves and for generations to come.

The Greens, Labor, the teals and the globalists among the Liberal and National parties oppose nuclear, and when they do their motivation should be obvious. Critics of nuclear power are serving the interests of the predatory billionaires who need an energy shortage to control people to prevent protests against what is currently the largest wealth transfer in history—a transfer from everyday Australians to the world's wealthiest individuals. As for the Greens and the teals, it makes no sense to pretend to the environmentalists and then stand back as swathes of Australia—national parks, bushland and farmland—are vandalised for wind turbines, solar panels, access roads and transmission lines, in a manner that stops soaring birds from migrating and nesting, coming around the world to do so.

It's telling that the teals and Greens opposed Senator Cadell's proposed inquiry into this environmental vandalism. That reveals their real agenda, and that agenda has nothing to do with the natural environment. It's about control and wealth transfer. So these days we listen to the Greens, the teals, Labor and the dominant globalist wing of the Liberals and Nationals putting nuclear to the sword. This is not based on any valid objection to nuclear power, which is used around the world, is safe and produces almost no waste. No, these establishment parties are putting nuclear to the sword for the same reason that modern coal is being put to the sword. There will be no low-cost electricity again in this country under a government that any of these establishment parties leads. There will be control. There will be wealth transfer from the people to elitist parasites. One Nation will continue to expose them and to support nuclear.

Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I stand in this chamber and look around, and there's a crew of us who have had this conversation so many times. We go around and round in circles and we come to absolutely no agreement. Senator Babet, in fact, had an almost identical MPI in March of this year where I think he probably gave exactly the same speech and Senator Roberts gave exactly the same speech. I'm sure that I, Senator Canavan and Senator Cadell will all do the same.

Oh, Senator O'Sullivan is going to give the same speech as well. Great. It is good that we're all on the same page.

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

It's not going away.

Karen Grogan (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's not going away. That is absolutely correct, Senator Canavan. We've had inquiries into this where it's not just each of us providing our opinions in this chamber; it is about bringing together experts. Some experts differ from each other. They have different perspectives. They're looking at things from different angles.

In the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee inquiry earlier this year, which I don't believe Senator Babet turned up for, what we came to was not a unanimous decision but a majority decision that said no. Point 1 that was put forward on the basis of the evidence put to the committee was that nuclear energy is expensive. Over a period of many, many years, it becomes cheaper, but the initial investment to start up a nuclear energy industry in Australia from scratch is extraordinarily expensive, and we know that the evidence from other areas that are going towards nuclear is exactly the same. There's significant expenditure over and above what was planned. This is the evidence that was provided to the committee.

The second point was that next-generation nuclear technology is currently unproven in the sense that there are no SMRs, small modular reactors, in commercial operation. There are plenty planned and there are various ideas out there, but there isn't actually one commercially viable one. That is the evidence the committee was given by the experts.

Point 3 is that if it were commercially viable at this point in time to bring nuclear energy into Australia, which it currently isn't, then the amount of time it would take us to develop an industry is so long as to not be worth it, given that we are already on a pathway to significant renewable energy which is very cheap. So there is unnecessary cost in moving to nuclear. If we wanted to go to nuclear, we should have done it decades ago. That brings me to another point: those opposite weren't able to get the coalition government to commit to nuclear in the nine years that they were in power, so your own people don't support it.

Point 4 is that it's fairly inflexible. The energy output of nuclear power lacks the flexibility to adjust in a market. Point 5 is the safety and environmental concerns linked to the production of nuclear energy. There are safety concerns. There are issues with how the health and safety piece is dealt with in reality and in terms of people's approach and perception of it, because we all know there is no social licence in this country for nuclear power and nuclear in general. We've seen that time and time again.

The seventh point is water scarcity. Nuclear power plants require significant volumes of water, and we are a drought-prone country, so that's a huge disincentive for us. There are also national security risks—and point 8 was the social licence. These things are such that there is no sense into moving towards nuclear—none whatsoever.

Barbara Pocock (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Those who come in here to push nuclear power need to have a solution for the disposal of high-level nuclear waste. It must be safely stored for hundreds of thousands of years, and there is no permanent solution anywhere on the planet for the disposal of this waste. It's closest in Finland, but it's not yet complete after decades of planning, really long delays and huge cost. After seven decades of commercial nuclear power operations, not one nation has a final, permanent disposal site.

In 2016 the world's biggest citizens jury, in my state of South Australia, got together 350 citizens, who looked carefully at disposing of high-level waste in our state, and they said no. It cost too much, it posed a danger to future generations and South Australia's First Nations people said no. Any disposal, any plan for nuclear power and its disposal of waste, needs to have the full, prior and informed consent of First Nations people.

We have some recent experience with nuclear waste in South Australia to draw on at Kimba. Both the coalition and labour over a number of years have just spent $108 million trying to convince the citizens of Kimba to take low-level and intermediate-level waste—not even high-level waste. They divided the community, they wasted $100 million, they did not get a solution and the citizens said no. First Nations people that place, to a person, said no. People in Kimba are divided. You walk down the main street of Kimba and you will find the cost that that community paid for a poorly informed, badly designed project.

The nuclear spruikers who come into this place and push the agenda of companies that want to make a lot of money need to have a solution on nuclear waste apart from all the other problems: too slow, too expensive. The future is not nuclear. (Time expired)

Ross Cadell (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

ELL (—) (): Senator Grogan did me a kindness thinking I could remember what I said four months ago; I'm having trouble with tomorrow, so let's start anew! Let's go with what we heard today. Let's go through the waste argument we just had. It's going to take big land, but let's not forget Rewiring the Nation stages 1 and 2 are 10,000 kilometres of line taking 77,000 hectares of land. That is 77,000 hectares of land gone. You could put four waste dumps into 77,000 hectares, but we don't need to do that, because all the nuclear waste generated in the world to this date would fit into a football field. That is the truth there.

Let's go to water. Every coal plant now uses water. They're built next to water. Liddell has just closed in the Hunter Valley; let's put some small modular reactors there. We've got the water and we've got the transmission lines. We don't need more transmission lines and we have enough water.

Let's go to price. We're not allowed to look at what happens in Australia, so the CSIRO GenCost has it from about 2014. If you go the IEA, the international agency that look at this and don't ban it, nuclear has the lowest LCOE of any technology. Nuclear has the lowest in the world, but we can't even look at it in Australia, because it is banned. The CSIRO doesn't look at what the actual cost could be or what it is, because we aren't allowed to. Government policy stops it. We want to have a look at it. It might not be right. It might not get funded. But these are the things we come up with.

Then we come to adjustability. This is my favourite one from those selling the green dreams: adjustability of nuclear is not great. So what happens with wind farms? 'Oh, the wind's not blowing. Let's get on our knees and pray to God for a bit more wind. Oh, no; we don't believe in that.' What happens when the sun isn't out? 'Let's get down and do an antirain dance so the sun shines brighter.' When you talk about adjustability, nuclear has got it down pat over wind and solar. Wind and solar—what are we going to do? Climate change? Is that how we're going to fix wind and solar? We're going to have it hotter? Is that part of the plan here? So all the arguments, when you look at them, fall down.

And all we want to do is look down, because the people in the chamber and the people at home—it's a simple rule—want to turn their lights and their air conditioner on when they get home and know that it works and that it's there. They're happy to have no emissions. We'll go down this zero-emission pathway. If it's going to be no emission, what do we want? These aren't people going out to kill polar bears; they just want to have their fridge on and their air conditioning happening. Cut we can't look at the cheapest, most efficient, easiest way to do it because there's a ban.

There are people in Lucas Heights living on Sierra Road, 750 metres from Australia's nuclear reactor, selling their homes for $1.4 million. That's how scary this is. Sierra Road real estate—look it up! It's a great little place. Don't go to Maccas. But this is what we're talking about—the fear. They don't want to know because it'll work, people will be happy and people will have energy. (Time expired)

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

This debate, coming from the coalition, is like living in some sort of fact-free universe. I suppose they are in a post-fact world when it comes to nuclear. They sit down and they watch the Trump feed on whatever fringe app that they've got to share their nuclear dreams. The fact is that Australia is less safe with nuclear power in the country. Australia has so far dodged a radioactive bullet by not going down that path, but now Senator Babet and his mates in the coalition want us to jump in front of that bullet.

What is frightening, though, is that what you would think are the fringe voices from the coalition in this chamber are not alone. The coalition generally has been taken over by the nuclear industry, despite the fact that there's not a single private corporation in the country that'll fund this stuff. You keep telling us you love commercial and you love the market, but the fact that the market is looking at the nuclear power industry like a pool of toxic sludge doesn't seem to influence you at all.

But, when we look at what the Albanese government is doing on nuclear, I think we should also be afraid. It's not just the fringe Babets of the world; it's also the Albanese government that's doing this. The Albanese government is looking to spend $368 billion—last time I checked, although it probably went up by a couple of hundred billion dollars last night!—on nuclear submarines. We know that those submarines are unlikely to appear, but behind all of that is a push to expand the nuclear industry in Australia and, worse still, to do it in a sphere which does not meet basic international standards.

The Albanese government wants the new nuclear defence regulator to be literally run by Defence. That does not meet the international minimum standards from the International Atomic Energy Agency. You need to have functional and legislative separation between the regulator and operator. But, under the Albanese government dream, which has been ticked off by the coalition, they're quite comfortable with having the new defence regulator report to the same minister, the Minister for Defence, as is operating them, and, worse still, have a conflict ridden big four consultant write the new rule book.

Why is it important for nuclear submarines? Because every other country has got it wrong. Right now, the UK, which has been running nuclear submarines since the 1960s, has 21 of their former Royal Navy nuclear submarines awaiting disposal, mostly in Scotland. Seven are in Rosyth and 14 are in Devonport awaiting disposal. What was their initial plan for nuclear waste? To fill the submarines with concrete and sink them to the bottom of the ocean. That's what should happen with this motion. (Time expired)

Matt O'Sullivan (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I just want to start by commending Senator Babet for his motion. Of course, I acknowledge that, as a senator for Victoria, he's up against it when it comes to energy policy, so I commend you, Senator Babet, for bringing this forward. We know that Premier Andrews has decided to ban gas. One thing is for certain: he wouldn't want to see nuclear power in that state. So I commend you, Senator Babet, for bringing forward a very sensible proposition that we're dealing with right here. It's very sensible. Despite what we hear from those on the other side and, in particular, from the Greens' corner of the chamber, this is a very sensible proposition.

Last year, the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, announced that the coalition would undertake a formal internal process to examine the viability of the use of nuclear energy in Australia. It is a critical discussion that we must have as a country if we're going to deal with the energy mix that's required to get to whatever targets we want to get to. Nuclear energy has to be part of that mix, because it provides the reliability that is necessary to balance the energy market. When nuclear energy is mentioned, Labor and the Greens team up and have this little freak-out. They immediately cite the nuclear disasters of old and talk about the fear and the danger of having nuclear energy here in Australia. We must remind ourselves that nuclear energy technology has come a long way.

Senator Grogan said that I was going to deliver the same speech that I delivered last time we had a debate on this, and there's some truth to what she said. But I tell you what: the technology is advancing so quickly in this space that what I might have said three or four months ago could be complemented by the developments of technology in this space. We know that this is true, because the rest of the world is embracing nuclear energy. In fact, in the United States, through the Inflation Reduction Act, they've put nuclear on par with renewables when it comes to receiving support in subsidies and tax concessions. So the United States, of all places, have adopted this. Canada has recently announced the lifetime extension of one of its largest nuclear power plants. Eighteen months ago, they decided they were going to build the very first small modular reactor, even though we heard on this side that that's pie-in-the-sky, theoretical stuff. Canada, of all places, with their government, have decided to further embrace nuclear and some of the newer technologies that are emerging. So it is a sensible debate that needs to be had, and we should embrace it. (Time expired)

Dorinda Cox (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the Australian Greens spokesperson for resources, I want to focus on the mining of uranium, because, of course, if we want nuclear energy, we need uranium. There are currently two operating uranium mines in Australia, both in South Australia. There are talks of opening up new mines in my home state of Western Australia and in the Northern Territory, particularly at the Ranger mine, the longest-running uranium mine, which has recently ceased operations after a controversial history of leaks, spills and licence breaches over that period. There have been discussions, particularly with Energy Resources of Australia, about extending the lease at Jabiluka, which sits near the Ranger mine, with both sites being within the World Heritage listed Kakadu National Park. The Mirarr traditional owners have opposed the mining at Ranger, and, if it does proceed, it's without their consent. They're now focused on ensuring that that site is rehabilitated to be included again in the World Heritage listed national park. They are also strongly opposed to any mining taking place at Jabiluka again. The Mirarr have carried out cultural responsibility for the impacts of anything originating from their country. In the case of the Fukushima disaster, after it was confirmed that Australian uranium was present in their reactors, senior traditional owner Yvonne Margarula said, when she learnt the poison from her country had resulted in so much damage in Japan:

This makes us feel very sad.

Any suggestion that Australia should consider engaging in nuclear power is a direct insult, in fact, to the Mirarr people and many other First Nations communities that are actively resisting uranium mining and radioactive waste proposals in their country.

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

First of all, I want to congratulate Senator Babet for bringing this excellent motion forward. Secondly, I will raise something that none of my esteemed colleagues on the other side have spoken about today, and that's people's power bills. People are really struggling out there at the moment. They're struggling to pay their mortgages and for petrol, and they're struggling every quarter when a new power bill turns up, almost invariably higher than the power bill they received the quarter before. The No. 1 thing Australian people want us to focus on is supporting things that can bring down living costs, including power prices, for them. There is no doubt in my mind that building new always-on baseload power stations is the key way to bring power prices down. We've already tried a failed approach. What we've been doing is not working, clearly, and no one on the other side has suggested anything different from what we are currently doing. What we have been doing in the past 15 years is massively increasing our production of renewable energy—it has gone from five per cent of our electricity production to more than 25 per cent—nearly 30 per cent. It has more than quintupled. We have more than quintupled the amount of renewable energy we have produced in this nation, and over that time power prices have more than doubled for Australian families. No matter how many times you say as a mantra that renewable energy is the cheapest form of power, you cannot deny the raw basic facts that the more we seem to install of this cheapest form of power, the higher our power prices go. Why is that? It's because renewable energy is on only every now and again. It's not on all the time, and in the times it is not on, you have to have very expensive backup, whether it is gas or restricting power output at factories. All these ridiculous things—when the sun's not shining, when the wind's not blowing—are costing us a fortune.

We should listen to other countries that have made these mistakes and learn from their examples. As Senator Cadell said, the International Energy Agency has clearly spoken on this. They've looked at different technologies from all over the world, and said in a report only a couple of years ago that 'electricity from the long-term operation of nuclear power plants constitutes the least cost option for low-carbon generation'. Anyone who is against nuclear power in this country is for higher power bills for the Australian people. Those are basic facts. Anyone who wants to come in and say the CSIRO found something different—no, they don't. The CSIRO doesn't actually look at existing nuclear technologies. Have a look at the so-called GenCost report: there is not a single bit of analysis of the cost of existing nuclear technologies. They look only at these small modular technologies in 2030. They make estimates. They're all predictions and projections; they are not looking at the raw, hard facts.

I and this side of the chamber think that it's about time we start doing things differently and start thinking of ways we can help Australian families, looking at ways we can bring their power prices down. We may as well give this a go. We may as well give it a go because the rest of the world does it. They operate safely all around the world. Nuclear power plants have the lowest rate of fatalities of any form of power production around the world. We've got to manage the waste issues anyway. We are buying these nuclear subs, so we're going to have to deal with the waste issues anyway. If we don't fix this soon, I am worried that the principal purpose that these nuclear subs will have to be put to is when the inevitable renewable blackouts come, we'll have to park them in Sydney Harbour, go and get a long extension cord and plug them into the grid. That will be our only solution! Instead, we can build a nuclear power plant today and that will bring down power prices as well.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Babet be agreed to.