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

For some months—in fact, years now—opposition senators have been calling to have a full and transparent inquiry into the rollout of huge amounts of wind turbines and solar panels across our farmlands and bushlands throughout Australia. For all of that time the government has been hiding, delaying and dragging its feet, stopping a proper inquiry into its own policies. The only conclusion you can come to is that this government has a lot to hide when it comes to its renewable energy rollout. It doesn't want that program to be subject to any kind of public scrutiny.

I want to recognise the efforts of my colleagues. Senator Cadell has been ably leading the charge on this matter for years now; it's been many months. He's showing incredible persistence to get to the bottom of it. Senator Colbeck, who is co-sponsoring this motion, is working hard on this as well as are many other members of parliament—from different political parties but, principally, from the Liberal and National parties—from areas where many of these projects are being rolled out. I know that last week, in the fallout—excuse the pun!—of the nuclear announcement, many people were saying, 'Nobody would have a nuclear power station in their backyard.' Some people would claim that people wouldn't want a nuclear power station in their backyard. Well, I'm fine to have it in my backyard, perfectly fine. I've always said that. Some of them that the coalition has proposed are going to be not too far from where I live and some are going to be close to where I live. I have no problem with that at all.

One thing I think many Australians wouldn't even realise is that many do actually have a nuclear reactor in their backyard. In fact, there's a nuclear reactor in our biggest city, so millions of Australians have, figuratively, a nuclear reactor in their backyard. We've had a nuclear reactor in south-west Sydney, at a location called Lucas Heights, since the 1960s. I think it was built in 1958. So, for more than 60 years, we've had a nuclear reactor. It's actually the second reactor. It was rebuilt in the 2000s. We've had a nuclear reactor that whole time in that facility.

I would hazard a guess that many Sydneysiders don't even realise there is a nuclear reactor in their town. It goes completely unremarked. It has been run incredibly safely; it's a world-class facility. It does not generate electricity, but the nuclear reactor is a nuclear reactor. I've been out there a number of times and been told by those operating it that it could generate electricity but it is used, instead, to generate the nuclear medicines which save millions of Australians' lives—in fact, one in two Australians, on average. About half of us over our lifetimes, on average, will require the use of medicines made through nuclear processes like those at Lucas Heights. That reactor exists there and it is fine. People are happy with it.

In fact, I had a look last week. In the closest suburb to Lucas Heights, a house 1.7 kilometres away, I think, but definitely under two kilometres away from the actual reactor—so we're talking 'backyard'—sold in March for $1.7 million. If people had a problem with nuclear reactors in their backyard, you wouldn't think houses would be selling for nearly $2 million. It was a four-bedroom house. It looked like a nice home but not by any means a palace or mansion, but it sold for $1.7 million. In fact, that suburb had an average price of over $1.2 million over the past 12 months, just hundreds of metres away from the nuclear reactor there. That's in peoples' backyards.

But the funny thing is, we've been building solar factories and wind factories for a generation now, for over 20 years really, at an industrial scale here in Australia, and I don't think Sydneysiders have a solar or wind factory in their backyard yet. So, they're happy to have the nuclear reactor in their backyard. I do see a lot of people in Sydney wanting renewable energy, but I don't see anybody out there saying, 'Yes, please install a mass of hectares of solar and wind turbines off the coast of Manly Beach,' or even on the outskirts of Sydney at Camden. I don't see this groundswell of support for these facilities. No, they tend to be installed out in regional, country locations, and, typically, that's where you'll find members of the Liberal and National parties representing. So we are very much on the front line of this.

I can tell you, as someone who lives in one of these areas, that I've met many more people who would have a nuclear reactor in their backyard over an industrial-scale solar or wind factory any day of the week. We all have a visual representation of what it means for people who live near these things, every day that we come to work. Every day we come to work there's a big flagpole, over there, in the middle of the building, and there's a big flag on top. I think I checked a while back and it sits at just over 200 metres tall or something like that. These big wind turbines now going up near where I live, just west of Rockhampton, sit at 275 metres tall to the tip of the blade. That's bigger and taller than the flag here on Parliament House. If it was just one of them it might be, like the flagpole here, a bit of a spectacle. It's something you look at and are inspired by, almost, every day. But there are hundreds of them going in across the beautiful, pristine, subtropical bushland just west of Rockhampton. That is just one project. There are hundreds more, thousands of them overall, across many projects in my area. That tends to get people a bit worried—having hundreds of Parliament House sized flagpoles dotted along what was otherwise previously a pristine landscape full of animals and natural habitat, and supporting, of course, a very important ecosystem in my area, the Great Barrier Reef.

We've been told for decades now that we can't do much in these areas in the Great Barrier Reef catchment. Farmers can't clear trees anymore. They're not allowed to develop their land because, if they did, the sediment would run off to the rivers and catchments that flow to the Great Barrier Reef and that would destroy the coral in the reef. That's what we're told. Senator Hanson-Young and others have made this point many times. Yet, apparently, an overseas wind turbine investor can come to these areas in the Great Barrier Reef catchment area, and use dynamite to blow up the tops of mountains and push all that sediment over the side, where it will flow into the Fitzroy delta, out to the Great Barrier Reef and past the Keppels, and that's no problem at all. There's not even a murmur from the Greens political party about this environmental destruction. Why?

It wouldn't shock many people to know that I'm probably not the world's biggest greenie, but I do care about our natural environment and I don't think we should be blowing 20 metres off the top of these beautiful, pristine mountains, which have sugar gliders, koalas and beautiful natural habitats.

I care about koalas. I care very much about koalas. We aren't going to save the polar bear, Senator Hanson Young, by killing koalas, but that's the approach at the moment. That is the approach: we kill these koala habitats and somehow that will save the polar bear. I don't understand it.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order!

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

If you're going to build a 275-metre tower, you need very strong foundations, obviously. You need, I'm told, a 200 x 200 square metre platform—

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Senator Canavan, resume your seat. Senator Hanson-Young, I'd ask you to remember standing order 197. You expect courtesy when you speak. Please extend it to others. Senator Canavan, you have the call.

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

As I was saying, these towers are 275 metres tall, and they need a 200 x 200 square metre flat pad. Obviously God didn't create the mountains to have 200 x 200 square metre flat pads at the top of them. They come up to peaks. That's why they have to take off, I'm told, as much as 20 metres of the peaks—resulting in a massive amount of sediment and environmental destruction—to put those wind turbines on.

There has been a lot of talk about asking local people what they think and whether they would accept energy solutions in their area. We've seen lots of polling in the last week about nuclear reactors. Generally speaking, the Australian people would accept nuclear reactors. There are a majority of Australians who think that. In the areas that we have proposed that nuclear reactors go, there are again a majority of people saying they would. There are some people who are opposed, of course, but a majority are saying they would. Very rarely do we see our major media outlets poll these local towns about what they think about a wind factory and whether they would like those in their backyard. I'd be very interested to see the polling results on those.

We saw some insights from the report of the independent Energy Infrastructure Commissioner, Mr Andrew Dyer, earlier this year. He spent months going around to these communities and talking to them about what they think of these large-scale industrial renewables projects. He did a survey of landowners in the area who are affected by these projects. The survey result that came back said that 89 per cent were not happy with how renewable energy was being rolled out in their areas. As I've said, in this area west of Rockhampton in Central Queensland, you'll probably find more supporters of the Blues State of Origin team right now than you will find supporters of renewable energy. You never get 89 per cent. A lot of us do polling. It's impossible, usually, to get 90 per cent of people to agree on something, but you do in the case of whether or not they'd like these large-scale, environmentally destructive wind turbines near their properties.

That gets to the core of why the government is teaming up with the Greens here to deny an inquiry into these matters. They don't want those 90 per cent of people to have their voices heard in this parliament. They don't want them to have a spotlight put on them about why they're concerned about these things. I genuinely believe that Australians do care about the feelings of those fellow Australians who live in the bush and who work in the bush. Many of these people—though not all—are farmers. They care about their fellow Australians' opinions and views. If it was clearly expressed to them why these people don't want these large-scale industrial projects destroying Australia's pristine and beautiful bushland, very soon the Australian people would turn against this approach. That's why the government is denying this. That's why the government is seeking to gag those voices in rural and regional Australia from having their say on these projects.

Despite those views not getting that air time in our major media and in our major cities, Australians can see the complete failure of the government's reckless renewables approach to lowering power bills. This government promised, a few years ago, before the election—the Prime Minister promised personally, almost 100 times—that they would lower your power bills by $275 by next financial year. That promise was for the 2024-25 financial year—so, in just a few weeks that promise becomes due. Everyone knows, from the power bills they get every quarter, that the Prime Minister has broken his promise, that his proposal to go on this mad rush of renewable energy has not delivered the promised results. And this was not a throwaway line; this was the modelling the Prime Minister did. He stood behind it and said he was confident that by investing in solar and wind resources they would lower power prices.

The exact opposite has happened. On average, the average Australian household now has power bills that are more than $500 more than when the Prime Minister came to office, and many are paying $1,000 or $2,000 more, if they're a large home with a large family. This model is clearly failing. And we sit here today facing the absurd situation where we're looking at a risk of running out of gas this winter—in a country blessed with abundant natural resources. We're not Singapore. Singapore's a great place, but it doesn't have natural resources. It's not running out of gas. They don't have winter in Singapore, but they do need air-conditioning, they do need electricity all year round, being on the equator. Singapore is not running out of gas, but Australia is, even with all our resources.

There's a very simple answer for why that's happening. It's because we're obsessed with one type of electricity generation. We're ignoring the need to develop our gas resources, our coal resources and our uranium resources, too. We need to get a better balance in this debate. We need to get away from this naive, juvenile idea that there is somehow a silver bullet out there that can solve all our problems in one shot. We can't maintain an industrial economy and manufacturing sector by just relying on energy sources that are dependent on the weather. That should be obvious, but for those for whom it wasn't obvious, it's now plainly obvious, given the reality that's biting us all right now.

Likewise, my side of politics, as I often say, are not going to deliver those results just by installing nuclear power plants either. Any modern industrial economy needs a mix of energy types. We need gas to create fertilisers to grow food. Over half the world's food is grown by using fossil fuel based fertilisers, primarily natural gas generated fertilisers. We need coal to maintain our heavy industry and manufacturing, which relies on very cheap reliable power, like our aluminium sector, which is a massively thriving part of our nation, our economy, underpinning tens of thousands of jobs. We need coal for that. And yes, we should invest in nuclear, too, because it's a modern technology that can also provide reliable power. For anyone who wants to bring down power prices for our country, we need a balanced mix of energy types. We need a proper investigation of this renewables rollout before it's too late for many Australians.

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

Every time you see a wind turbine or an industrial solar complex, think one thing: your energy prices are going to increase. That's what those things mean. We've been promised that energy prices will decrease, but wind turbines and industrial solar complexes mean higher prices for people, for families, for small businesses, for larger corporations and employers, for the whole community. And they mean trillions of dollars in waste in our economy. In every country around the world, as the percentage of solar and wind has increased, the cost of electricity has increased. That's a fact—everywhere, consistent. And now, after nearly 30 years of pushing solar and wind, which started with John Howard's renewable energy target, we see the ridiculous situation of the Labor government offering energy price relief. Why? Because they're driving up the cost of energy to make it unaffordable; that's why.

So let's have a look at why. Let's see why killing the environment in the name of supposedly saving it is costing us so much. Let's turn to the terms of the motion for an inquiry. So many people want us to have an inquiry, not just rural people but urban people, because they're worried about the cost. This is what the inquiry is looking into:

… the importance of ensuring that the National Electricity Grid has the capacity to provide a reliable and secure supply of energy to Australians as the economy transitions to new and more dispersed—

and we'll talk about that—

methods of generations and storage, and acknowledging that transition will necessarily transgress on agricultural, Indigenous and environmental lands and marine environments …

The environment and our productive capacity are suffering.

I'll cover some key concerns that are key to the inquiry because the uniparty has not thought about this—from when John Howard, the Liberal Prime Minister, started the renewable energy target to this ridiculous situation we're in now. By the way, John Howard started that and did three other things, which we might have time to discuss, that laid the foundation for the crippling of our energy supply in this country. Six years after he was booted from office, he admitted that, on the matter of climate science, he is agnostic. He didn't have the science. This whole thing is based not on science; it's based on contradictions of science.

Let's start with solar and wind. The amount of steel needed per megawatt of electricity from a coal-fired power station is 35 tons. For wind turbines it's 542 tons of steel. That's 15 times as much. Straightaway, wind is suffering a cost penalty. It's a huge cost burden. Then, when you look at the energy density of coal, it's very high. It's not as high as uranium, but it's very high. For solar and wind, it's very low.

Secondly I see the government throwing barbs at the coalition, and well it should over aspects of its nuclear policy, but the government is accusing the opposition of uncosted policy. Where are your costs, government? Where are your costs on solar and wind? Where are your costs on solar and wind, Greens? We even see some solar and wind complexes, massive complexes in the Kennedy electorate in Queensland and in western Victoria, not connected to the grid. They have been built but not connected. That's how much thought has gone into this. It's bloody ridiculous.

Solar and wind have an inherently high capital cost plus a low energy density, which means low energy production and very high cost per unit of electricity. Plus the amount of land needed for solar and wind is enormous. And then we see that the average capacity utilisation of solar and wind is 23 per cent. That's less than a quarter of what the nameplate capacity is. Now we see the latest figures just released on wind, which show that it's 21 per cent. That's one-fifth of the capacity. What does that tell you? For a given capacity of a coal-fired power station, you'll need a certain capacity of solar and wind. Multiply that by four, because you're getting less than 25 per cent. Multiply it by five in the case of wind. Five times makes it prohibitive. Four times makes it prohibitive. Then think about this: at peak hour, when we need maximum electricity, the average utilisation and the average capacity is 10 per cent, which means that, to get the equivalent of that coal-fired power station, we need 10 times the solar and wind capacity—10 times. Then, for sizeable periods, we have the sun not shining brightly because of clouds or we have the wind drought. That means we need a further multiplication to make sure we can store up enough in energy and batteries. But the batteries to store that amount of wind and solar energy have never been thought of, never been considered and never been developed. It's impossible. The cost if we don't have them will be blackouts and outages in hospitals, businesses and family homes.

Plus there are the transmission costs. Transmission costs, many years ago, used to be 49 per cent of the cost of the electricity bill. I don't know what it is now, but it's certainly substantial. Solar and wind have to be located a long way from the major metropolitan areas, which means straightaway that transmission costs are even higher than for a coal-fired power station, which can be located close to the metropolitan areas. Then, because of the dispersed nature of solar and wind, we have even more transmission lines. Then, because of the capacity factor that I just mentioned, we have even more transmission lines. This makes it prohibitive, not just in terms of the installation of solar and wind but also in terms of transmission lines. Plus, the transmission lines will barely be used because of the capacity of solar and wind not being utilised. And then we have the 15-to 20-year life, at best—12 to 15 years more likely—of solar and wind industrial complexes. That means that over the life of a coal-fired power station or a nuclear power station, they have to be replaced four times, so multiply the cost again by four. What have we multiplied it by so far? We've multiplied the cost by five, then by 10 and now by another four. Yet the CSIRO considers not one piece of that puzzle—not one piece. They say that it's all sunk cost; just ignore it.

That's why solar and wind can compete. And they still need subsidies. Then you've got to add batteries and pumped hydro. Pumped hydro itself is an admission of failure. You cannot have pumped hydro without a disparity between peak hour prices and off-peak prices, and that's due to the failure of the grid and solar and wind. And then we need firming, another cost, because coal, nuclear and hydro are stable, synchronous power supplies. Solar and wind are asynchronous—unstable—so they need firming. And they need backup gas or backup coal because solar and wind are unreliable. There's a doubling. Look at the multiplication that we have got there.

None of this is included in the GenCost report from the CSIRO. It assumes no transmission cost because they've already been built. That's rubbish. We need far more new transmission lines. We have an inherently higher cost from solar and wind, plus low capacity, plus regional, plus dispersal, plus backup, plus stabilisation. Think about this: for a business, you need a stable, reliable, low-variation input. When variation occurs, it costs enormous amounts of money. At industrial and manufacturing plants, farmers are using backup, so they have to pay twice for their electricity. We also have a huge footprint in terms of land. Solar complexes and wind turbines use far more land and are far more scattered than a concentrated coal-fired power station or a nuclear power station. They're taking up huge quantities of resources. The resource footprint of solar and wind is enormous.

We have agricultural land being sterilised. We have poisons and toxins potentially going into the Brisbane water supply, into their drinking water—lead, cadmium—which feeds Brisbane, Beaudesert, Gold Coast, potentially Toowoomba, Ipswich, Logan and other areas in the south-east of Queensland. We also have the future cost yet to be added—Snowy 2.0.  By the way, when they first did the costings of Snowy 2.0, thanks to Malcolm Turnbull's prime ministership and poor leadership, they forgot about the transmission lines. They forgot to add the transmission lines. Whoops! We better add a few more billion to that. Now look at it. It was originally slated for $2 billion. We could see this, and I'm not an energy expert. We could see it when Malcolm Turnbull first released it. We told them, and no-one took any notice. Now they're putting in all these additional costs, and Snowy 2.0 is heading for $14 billion and perhaps $20 billion—if it moves! This is not about having an alternative energy supply; it's about less energy and control of energy.

We also have Mr Albanese and Mr Bowen, 'Blackout Bowen', talking about us being a renewable superpower. It means economic and environmental suicide, resource sterilisation, and displacement of Indigenous. No costings—a huge catastrophe! We're talking about billions of dollars and impacts worth trillions of dollars. We must have this inquiry. They're building in a high-cost overhead and a huge environmental legacy. When some of those farmers who are looking at the money now—some aren't selling out, but some are selling out because of the money coming in—think about the environmental legacy. No bonds. The energy company owning the wind turbines and the solar complexes can just walk off and leave it. There's no requirement to fix it. Farmers will pay for that. They're already paying in many cases, as are rural towns, with the slow thrum, thrum, thrum of infrasound, which is proven harmful to humans. So they're killing the environment to save it. We're seeing human progress being reversed.

The No. 1 message from the last 170 years since the industrial revolution started was that we have a higher standard of living and all the benefits that brings because of a relentless reduction in energy prices. What we've seen since John Howard come to power is a reversal of that. As energy prices increase, productivity falls, wealth falls and prosperity falls. We see a reversal of human progress. So what if we spend billions on solar and wind, what if it costs our economy trillions of dollars—and it will—and what if China does not? What happens then? Now do you get what's going on? Now do you see it?

I want to turn to two other points. As I said, John Howard introduced all the problems we're seeing now: the Renewable Energy Target; the stealing of farmers' property rights to comply with the UN Kyoto protocol; and the National Electricity Market, which is really a national electricity racket. He also introduced an emissions trading scheme as policy—not as fact, but as policy. That's a carbon tax. He was the first major leader of a major party to have that. The CSIRO has never provided any empirical scientific data and logical scientific points that prove the need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity. The CSIRO admitted that to me when I held them accountable, and they gave me three presentations, each 2½ hours long. In the first presentation they admitted that they had never given the advice and had never said that carbon dioxide from human activity is a danger and needs to be cut. In the second presentation they gave me, they admitted that today's temperatures are not unprecedented; they've happened before—many, many times. In fact, the scientific term for periods of high temperature is 'climate optimum', because they're beneficial for humanity, for civilisation and for the environment. The temperatures are not unprecedented.

The second point is that I've asked many government departments in this federal government for their basis of policy. To have a basis of policy you need to have the impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on some climate factor. No-one has given us that. We have amassed 24,000 datasets on climate and energy from around the world, from legally scraped websites and research institutions like the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology, and we've never found any change in any climate factors at all, so there's no basis for policy. You need that quantitative impact of carbon dioxide from human activity on a climate factor so that you can then study the alternatives, if you want to get rid of the carbon dioxide production. You've got to have that to track progress, but there's none of that. There's no basis for policy. We are flying blind. We're heading for a cliff.

Then we see there's no environmental impact statement for the use of solar and wind—none at all. What impact is the energy we're taking out of the wind going to have on our climate? What impact is it going to have on the natural environment? Yet they say that 0.03 per cent of the carbon dioxide is coming from humans, and 1.2 per cent of that from Australians. No impact quantified—the absurdity is enormous. And who will pay for all this mess? We, the people. You are foisting this on the people. We need an inquiry now. (Time expired)

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute to this discussion tonight. If you ever needed evidence of just how much the Peter Dutton Liberal and National party hate renewable energy, here it is.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Hanson-Young, remember to address members of the other chamber by their correct title.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If you ever needed a better example of how much hate there is in the Liberal and National party, led by Mr Dutton, this is it. There is not a renewable energy idea, project or power source that this coalition doesn't hate. They hate renewable energy because they're a bunch of climate deniers. They hate renewable energy because they don't want Australians making power in their own homes for cheap. They hate renewable energy because they are doing the grubby work of the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry are making an absolute motza by charging people ridiculous amounts for the use of coal and gas. They don't want people putting solar panels on their roofs or being able to put batteries on their homes, because then the people will not be paying the corporations. That's what's going on here. The big coal and gas companies want to keep making more money off the backs of hardworking Australians, households and small businesses.

The whole world is looking at the climate catastrophe that is coming, knowing that we have to stop polluting the planet and that there is an alternative for clean, green energy, and it's wind, solar and storage. The rest of the world is looking at this and saying: 'You know what? We need to start transitioning, because our planet is in crisis, our climate is at boiling point and our environment is suffering.' Climate change is here. It's already having a significant impact: the floods, the droughts, the bushfires, the famine, the heatwaves and the king wave storms that are ruining coastal homes around the world. The climate crisis is here, and it's already having a very real and dangerous impact on people's lives and livelihoods.

The fossil fuel industry are freaking out. They're worried. They're worried that they are not going to be able to keep polluting and making money from that pollution, because they know the community across the world is saying no. So who do they go to? They run to the coalition—to Mr Dutton and to Barnaby Joyce—and they say, 'Please'—

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Use the correct titles.

Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They keep running and running to Mr Dutton and Mr Joyce, to the Liberal Party and the National Party, and they say: 'Keep us alive! Keep our business going—business as usual. Burn more coal. Burn more gas. Drill for more gas. Drill for more oil. Pollute, pollute, pollute.' They do this because they want to keep on making more money and they don't want Australian households being able to pay less for their power by having solar panels and batteries for storage.

The Liberal and National parties hate renewable energy because they hate Australians getting cheap power. They want to make sure that fossil fuel industries, the coal and gas corporations, keep making profit. That's what's going on here, at the cost of our environment and our planet. In the last fortnight, we have seen the Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton, say that he would dump Australia's climate targets, like Donald Trump, and that we would pull out of the Paris Agreement, like Donald Trump, and he followed this up by saying that instead of renewable energy, which is safe, clean and cheap, he wants radioactive, toxic nuclear power reactors across the country. He won't say how much it's going to cost Australians—billions and billions of dollars. He won't say what he'll do with the waste. He's going to dump it in South Australia's back yard. That is where it'll go, and every South Australian should know this—that the Liberal Party in South Australia are selling them out. There will be at least one big nuclear reactor—maybe more—at huge cost to the taxpayer, and then we're going to have to carry everybody's toxic waste as well.

The Liberal and National parties in Australia are so backwards. They are doing the dirty work for the fossil fuel industry. I know there are lots of memes going around. There are lots of jokes about Peter Dutton and Homer Simpson. I think Mr Dutton is more like Mr Burns, frankly: sinister and dangerous. But this is serious business. Our climate is at boiling point, Australians are struggling with the cost of living, and all Mr Dutton can offer is a dangerous, toxic plan that will hike up prices and put a wrecking ball through climate action. There is not a renewable energy project that the mob on that side of the chamber, on the Liberal and National side, don't hate. They don't want you getting power cheaper. They don't want Australians being able to take control of their own energy. They want to control it. They want all the money flowing to the big corporations.

Let's call a spade a spade. This whole toxic nuclear ploy of Mr Dutton's is to allow the coal and gas industries to keep going for longer, with more coal and gas mines, more pollution, more money for the corporations and more expensive power bills paid for by the Australian people, paid for by the next generation and the generation after that. Our climate is in crisis. We can't waste another 10 or 20 years when our climate is already suffering. Young Australians know this. Older Australians know this. Every thinking Australian knows this. Mr Dutton is fooling no-one. He is fooling no-one.

The question will be: will the Labor Party and the government stand up and call this out for what it really is: an excuse to keep burning coal and using gas for longer? That will drive the climate crisis to be even worse. It will drive power bills up. It will fuel the bushfires next summer. It will make the floods worse next time around. It will make the drought worse. Australians know that we have to change business as usual. They want cheap power that is clean and green. They want to be able to see a government and a parliament that takes climate change and the suffering of the environment seriously because they care about the future their kids are going to have in 10, 20, 30 and 40 years time. Australians are smart people, and Mr Dutton is treating them like mugs.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I said earlier on today, I am incredibly proud to be part of a party and a coalition that has the courage, intellect and ability to still have rational policy discussions and debates on controversial but critically important issues for our nation. There is no more important issue for our nation's future than that of the energy mix that we will have for the next 80 to 100 years. When you have a look at the facts, we have heard so much rhetoric in this place from those opposite such as that the planet's burning. There's been a lot of hypocrisy. We've just heard that from the Greens.

For those who purport to care about the environment, to care about every polar bear, every koala and every tree, that's all right unless you want to put in 58 million solar panels, 3,500 new industrial wind turbines and 28,000 new transmission lines straight through pristine wilderness. The breathtaking hypocrisy of that by those opposite is a complete disgrace. But, when you take the emotion and the rhetoric out of it, as we on this side have done after two years of very considered policy debate, research and discussion, the facts, I think, speak for themselves.

Today, over 400 nuclear power plants are operated safely in over 30 countries globally. We are the only G20 country that either doesn't have nuclear power energy already or sources it from other nations or is now building nuclear power reactors. We are the only one. Is there something that those opposite know that the rest of the world doesn't know? And not only are 30 countries operating 400 of them; there are another 50 nations that are now looking to transition to nuclear power. Why? Because the economics stack up. Remember that this is not a 20-year use-and-replace solar panel or wind turbine. This is an 80- to 100-year investment in guaranteeing safe, clean and reliable power so somebody born today will have safe, clean energy for the rest of their lives with a single power plant in their home state—or it might be two; it depends on where they are. No other country on the planet—not one—is going renewable only. It is insanity. We can already see what's happening to power prices and to reliability with the potential now to run out of gas because those opposite have so distorted the market and have made it a sovereign risk in terms of ensuring our gas supplies into the future.

It is time for a mature debate on this. Our nation has absolutely nothing to fear, and those opposite should have nothing to fear, from a debate. Just to show you how hysterical and how out of touch those opposite are, there is an election on in the UK at the moment. I have the election manifesto for this election of one of the major political parties. It says:

We will ensure the long-term security of the sector, extending the lifetime of existing plants, and we will get Hinkley Point C over the line. New nuclear power stations, such as Sizewell C, and Small Modular Reactors, will play an important role in helping the UK achieve energy security and clean power while securing thousands of good, skilled jobs.

Guess who that was? It wasn't the Conservative Party. It was the Labour Party in the UK. The government's blood brothers and sisters, their comrades, are the ones who are saying, 'Not only are we going to keep our current plants going; we are going to build new ones.' And why? Because they now have third-generation nuclear power plants available. They are safe, they're reliable and, over time, they are absolutely economical.

There are a number of other little dirty secrets that those opposite don't like us talking about or, in fact, for anybody else in the Australian community to talk about. It's not only the facts, which are very stark; it's also things like slavery. Think about this. Those opposite—Labor and the Greens—know only too well that every single piece of new energy technology and the components, minerals and resources that go into them are made with the enslaved labour and the forced labour of millions of people, mostly in China. They know that every single one of these 3,500 wind turbines—every blade and every component—is made somehow by the hands of women, children and men. Not only do they know that; they also know that, of the 58 million solar panels that they are planning, every single one of those has slave labour riddled throughout its creation. They know this, but they are doing nothing—nothing!—to make sure that whatever we go ahead with in Australia in terms of new energy technologies, whether it's the Teslas we import, Chinese electric vehicles, lithium ion batteries, the anodes, cathodes and everything that goes into this equipment or the critical minerals, is not done off the back of millions of Uyghurs in forced labour internment camps or Tibetans, who are increasingly impacted. Eighty-five per cent of Tibetan children are now taken away from their family members into Chinese boarding schools where they lose their identity and their language. They are then removed into forced labour camps, farms, mine sites and processing plants to produce the equipment that you want to destroy our own environment with. Yet you say nothing. Shame on you.

Certainly we need to use renewables here in Australia. We have never said anything different, and in government we had a fine record in this area. But you are not calling it out. You are allowing this to occur. To produce what we need here will require 58 million solar panels for the first 20 years alone, never mind the next four lots needed for the same life of a nuclear power plant. How many more slaves are China going to have to source to fill your supply requirements? Millions more. And we haven't even talked about the North Koreans. The North Korean government sells indentured slaves to produce products such as this across China. Yet you say nothing. Shame on you.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Reynolds, just remember to make your remarks through the chair.

Linda Reynolds (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will. Thank you, Acting Deputy President. That's the first little dirty secret that those opposite are hiding from the rest of the nation. We say yes. Yes, we must have a sensible mix of renewables, gas and coal initially as we transition to nuclear. But it cannot come off the backs of millions of people who have been enslaved. We have to deal with both. We have to deal with the transition to a zero carbon economy and energy. But you are doing it off the backs of millions of people who are in servitude.

What's the second dirty secret? What happens with all the waste? It's very clear for nuclear energy, for the low, medium and high levels of waste that are produced, that we will need to dispose of our own waste. But we can. In Western Australia there is already an industrial waste processing plant at Sandy Ridge outside Kalgoorlie. It is already taking tens of thousands of cubic metres of waste and safely burying them and disposing of them. They have the social licence to do this, they have the best geology in the world to do this and they have the best climate to do this. They can take high-level waste, and they have the social licence to do that already. But those opposite scream as if we're going to be putting high-level nuclear waste in the suburbs of our major cities. Shame on you. You know that's not true. You know we already have facilities that do this. As other speakers have already said, we've been storing low-level radiological waste for decades here in Australia. We are a nuclear nation. In my own home state of Western Australia we are in the process, somewhat slowly, a bit too slowly, of transitioning to become sovereign nuclear ready. As we transition in Western Australia, we have the capacity to store, manage and respond to any incidents, but we also have the waste disposal facilities.

So, when we have a look and we talk about the facts, the facts are on the side of those who sit on this side of the chamber. The rest of the world is transitioning. The developed north, the geographic north, certainly is, so why shouldn't we? Why should we not transition to get the economic benefits, to get the environmental benefits and to ensure that we are not destroying thousands of kilometres of pristine Australian bush, flora and fauna? We have the ability to save the waste.

Finally, I have another issue that some of my Western Australian colleagues—Andrew Hastie, Nola Marino and others—have been fighting for with their local communities. The government is proposing mega wind farms right across many of our oceans, along our coastlines. In Western Australia, one of them runs 8,000 square kilometres along the south-west coastline. The community is rightly outraged. It is not necessary. If we transition to a small modular reactor at Muja, just outside of Collie, we do not need these 8,000 square kilometres of wind farms. With the amount of community outrage that there is, this will never get built. It should never get built. We should actually now look to transition to nuclear.

Like everything else this government has done, they've not only stuffed up the consultation—they're years behind. But we also found out at Senate estimates, only a couple of weeks ago, that the geniuses in this government said, 'Well, we'll put 8,000 square kilometres of large industrial wind turbines south of Garden Island.' Guess what? They never stopped to think of any security implications. Have they talked to our AUKUS partners? What do they think about having these Chinese built and constructed megastructures in their approaches to Garden Island and close to Garden Island? Well, I can tell you what. They do know about it now, and, if you think it's going to be in our nation's interest to have thousands of Chinese built and installed wind turbines that will impede submarine access and whale migration to Garden Island, you are crazy. Of course it won't be. This wind farm will never get built and shouldn't be built, but those opposite have no plan B. We are already suffering for that.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Happy 10th anniversary of transmission Tuesday. We're so excited it's the 10th anniversary that we're celebrating on a Monday. We're here a day early for the 10th anniversary of transmission Tuesday. We got interrupted at our last go at it; it's why some of us are back today. Most of us have done the double-digit performance, so it's getting a bit to the stage of: how many times can you make the point, or as I have said earlier, how much can a koala bear?

Just for you, Senator Cadell: how much can a koala bear? Well, I can tell you that rural and regional communities are starting to get tested to that nth degree.

But I did want to make a very special mention of the contribution we saw from Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young. I was listening to what she was saying, as painful as that was to do. I was listening to the personal attacks on opposition leader Mr Dutton and the personal attacks that were consistently being made to those who don't belong to the unicorn-farming society, but there was no mention of transmission lines, which I find a little ironic considering we're here for transmission Tuesday—celebrating early on the Monday. There was no mention of the 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines that are being bulldozed through prime agricultural land, through rural and regional communities and through the last chlamydia-free koala habitat. We know it's gone. No STD will be getting them—just a transmission line—and bulldoze we go for the 28,000 kilometres of transmission lines that are required. I do note Senator Reynolds' point about the windfarm of WA, which was an outstanding one—no consideration of national security. That could be because this government has moved national security advice from the national security committee and put climate change on it. So we have the minister for climate change, Mr Bowen, advocating for wind farms off the coast of WA, within cooee of where submarines are going to be based.

But perhaps we should all practice now: 'Ni hao!' Because if those who sit at the end of the chamber got their way, I think that's how we'd all be speaking. Every single one of these renewable projects that they are so keen on, every project that they're so enthusiastic about, all those solar panels—

Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What's wrong with solar?

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'll tell you, Senator Grogan, what's wrong with solar panels—

Malarndirri McCarthy (NT, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's Senator McCarthy.

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

But I can ask the question just as easily.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sorry, Senator McCarthy. I apologise for verballing you, Senator Grogan. I'll tell you what's wrong with solar panels—their lifespan's not terribly long. So for a lot of those households who took up all of those rebates 10-15 years ago to put solar on their roofs, it was great for them at the time, plugged in, running their pools during the day, when the sun was shining. But all of those solar panels are coming to the end of their lives. So where are they going to go? They know, in their faux utopia, where all this waste is going to go and what's going to happen. It costs $22 to recycle a solar panel and it costs $2 to put it into landfill, so there are no prizes for guessing where all these outdated, used-up solar panels are going.

The other problem with solar panels is how they're produced. Those of us that sat on the side of the chamber do not believe, in any shape or form, in the use of slave labour. The use of slaves to create things, whatever they are—I don't care if they're a brand of sandshoe, a type of car or a solar panel. It is wrong for us as Australians to have in our supply chain any item that we know has been made by the use of slave labour. So when I'm asked what's wrong with solar panels, it's a basic human right that's being violated, as Chinese use Uyghur slaves to make these solar panels. I think that's a pretty big problem with solar panels that in this utopia, in this race to renewables, in this running after an ideology that comes way down the list of concerns.

Coming back to my point with regard to the wind turbines near Garden Island in WA and the national security implications that could be had there, we know what the communities are saying done in the Illawarra, in my home state of New South Wales. They're not quite jumping up and down with joy—maybe jumping up and down in anger and frustration—at the windfarms that are being pushed onto them with an absolutely—you couldn't call it community consultation. We know that this government is not interested in consultation. When they do consult, as we're learning with so many pieces of legislation, it's with NDAs being signed by those who are deemed worthy to speak to it. This is the problem when you are chasing ideology. It's an ideology that there is no chance we are going to reach the 82 per cent renewable target for by 2030. It is not going to happen. That's not me saying that; that's the experts in energy across the sector and the economists looking at it. Every single manufacturing and large group that relies on power all know that there is absolutely no way that 82 per cent renewables by 2030 is ever going to be achieved.

Can you imagine if we lived in a world and there was an opportunity to have reliable baseload power that had zero emissions? Imagine! We have unicorn farmers chasing every rabbit they can find down a hole. Imagine if there was a zero-emissions type of power that was reliable and could firm the grid. But—hang on—there is! Wait; there's more! It's nuclear power, embraced by every other of the top 20 economies in the world, except for little old us. We're still sitting here, with those in the government saying it can't be done. Don't worry about chasing the green hydrogen genie that doesn't even exist yet. Green hydrogen is, again, up there with the unicorn farmers. It doesn't exist in any capacity to deliver anything, but never let a goal or a dream get in the way of your ideology and the way that you chase it down.

We know that there is a proven technology that is zero emissions, is absolutely reliable, can be scaled up and down, will firm the grid and, on top of that, does not require the 28,000 extra kilometres of transmission lines. So what we're actually here for today, what we've been asking for—the Greens contribution earlier in the evening failed to use the word 'transmission', let alone 'transmission line' or 'powerline'; we can substitutes some terms in and out there, but they didn't use one, didn't even come close. I don't think she understands the intent of what we're trying to do here: protect rural and regional communities, protect areas of special significance to Indigenous populations, protect the chlamydia-free koalas—even the ones with chlamydia. We're actually not that fussy. We'll even support the koalas that have chlamydia, because we don't think they should have transmission lines going through their habitats.

The thing about this crazy thing called nuclear is that the transmission lines would come from the brownfield sites where the coalition has proposed that the reactors would go. That means no new transmission lines. What those opposite fail to understand—maybe, in their picture book on how energy works, they didn't get up to the page where it explains: generation is one thing; transmission and distribution are another, and that is over 50 per cent of the cost. At the very least, even to be kind to you, it's 50 per cent of the cost. We hear those opposite saying, 'Renewables are the cheapest form of energy,' but that's because the CSIRO's GenCost report, which looked into this, didn't factor in the cost of transmission or distribution, because in their unicorn land they had already been built. Somehow or other, infrastructure that doesn't exist today doesn't need to be costed. In the GenCost review they just decided it already existed. It is puerile. It is lacking any intellectual depth or rigour, the way that this is being pursued. There needs to be some honesty here. Someone on the other side who can actually read the GenCost review needs to have a look at it and see where the costs of transmission and distribution are. They're not there. I suppose it's no wonder Minister Gallagher couldn't answer the question today about how much this was going to cost. She couldn't tell us, because they don't know. They don't know, because GenCost hasn't told them, and we know that GenCost is the only thing they can ever look at.

It's all a bit sad and sorry that, in a cost-of-living crisis, with energy prices being pushed up, we have this absolutely fanciful claim that this race to renewables is somehow going to reduce energy bills. Look at what's happened since these guys have been in government for two years. We now have gas shortages. Victoria sits up on its moral high ground: 'No gas! No more gas in new homes. We're not having gas, but, Queensland: keep that pipeline open and keep pumping it down.' Remember when the hospitals in Queensland were for Queenslanders? The Victorians would be in all sorts of trouble if Premier Miles decided that Queensland gas was for Queenslanders. I was in Melbourne last week. It was a bit on the cold side. It would be a very chilly winter for those in Melbourne. Victorians wouldn't be able to put the hot water on—no warm showers and no heating services. Industry would shut down, but of course, we know that everyone else, pretty much other than those of us sitting on this side of the chamber, actually care about the survival of industry—particularly our heavy industries that we know need affordable, reliable base-load power, none of which is possible with these renewable projects.

Yet somehow, we are here for the 10th time, just trying to get an inquiry. We want to have a little look and go and talk to some of the communities. Clearly we can't talk to the koalas, but I'm sure someone—

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

Interpretive dance.

Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health and Suicide Prevention) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Interpretive dance? I look forward to that, Senator Cadell. I think you and I could come up with some very good choreography there. I think it would be quite the spectacle. Who is going to go out and talk to these communities? Who is going to talk to Indigenous communities whose cultural heritage sites are about to be demolished? Who is going to talk to communities whose arable farmland is going to be destroyed by solar farms and wind turbines? Who is going to have a conversation about where all the waste is going to be buried at the end of the life span of these renewable projects, which have, by the way, on a nice day—I am being kind—about a third of the life span of a nuclear power plant.

We know the new climate change tsar. I saw today that the incoming Chair of the Climate Change Authority is former Treasurer of New South Wales and federal New South Wales division colleague—know how much I'm loving on them. But they make such good choices—solid choices! A couple of years ago, Mr Kean was claiming nuclear was deadset going to be part of the future. He was actually saying that one of the reasons he didn't think it could be part of the future was that he really didn't understand the small modular nuclear reactors and how they were going to work. But now, he's saying, 'No, no, no—no nuclear,' even though they're in operation in so many other advanced economies around the world. He's saying, 'No, no, no, we can't have that, but we're going to chase green hydrogen.' We're not even just chasing hydrogen anymore; we've had to go up a level. We've had to go green hydrogen, which has delivered nothing.

Just step up, Greens. Just come and join the party. Get an inquiry. We know the Labor Party is going to oppose it, but come over and sit with us and say: 'How do you do? Let's get an inquiry. Let's go save those koalas. Let's make sure that we're not going to use landfill for all this used renewable stuff, and make sure we're actually going to have some sort of oversight of these renewables project and know that in 20 years or 15 years, we're not going to be stuck with where we put them.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the question be now put.

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

The question before the chair is that the reference proposed by Senators Colbeck and Cadell be agreed to. A division having been called, the matter will have to be deferred until tomorrow. The debate is adjourned accordingly.