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senate vote 2023-09-13#11
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2024-01-19 13:53:27
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Title
Matters of Urgency — Nuclear Energy- Matters of Urgency - Nuclear Energy - End prohibition
Description
<p class="speaker">Sue Lines</p><p>I inform the Senate that I have received the following letter, dated 13 September, from Senator Babet:</p>-
- The majority voted against a [motion](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?gid=2023-09-13.186.1) introduced by Victorian Senator [Ralph Babet](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/senate/victoria/ralph_babet) (United Australia Party), which means it failed.
- ### Motion text
- > *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.*
<p class="italic">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:</p><p class="italic">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.</p><p>Is the proposal supported?</p><p class="italic"> <i>More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—</i></p><p>With the concurrence of the Senate, the clerks will set the clock in line with the informal arrangements made by the whips.</p> <p class="speaker">Ralph Babet</p><p>r BABET (—) (): I move:</p><p class="italic">That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:</p><p class="italic">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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p> <p class="speaker">Malcolm Roberts</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p> <p class="speaker">Karen Grogan</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p> <p class="speaker">Matthew Canavan</p><p>It's not going away.</p> <p class="speaker">Karen Grogan</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p> <p class="speaker">Barbara Pocock</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p><p>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. <i>(Time expired)</i></p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>-
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