Nuclear Power

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (15:41): I would like to talk today about federal opposition leader Peter Dutton's nuclear power delusion. It is a delusion that took 18 months to announce and, frankly, it was not a particularly good announcement, even after that time. There was not a great deal of modelling done, there was no legal path examined and, most importantly, the costings are incredibly, incredibly rubbery.

The federal Coalition's nuclear policy is self-labelled as a cheaper, cleaner and more consistent energy plan, but in reality it is none of those things at all. In their announcement, the Coalition said Australian taxpayers and businesses will save up to 44 per cent on their energy bills with nuclear energy. That is another delusion—a big one. There is a series of articles by RenewEconomy, which actually tells us why those costings are not worth the paper they are printed on. Four big accounting tricks, they say, have been used in these calculations, and I refer to RenewEconomy dated Wednesday 19 February 2025.

The first of those points states it does not reflect the real cost of building nuclear, and the Liberal Party's costing assumes a cost for nuclear power plants 'which is around half what nuclear reactors have actually cost to build'. It only considers electricity costs while ignoring the cost of petrol and gas in calculating the cost of the Liberal Party's announcement, but it does include the cost of petrol and gas when it calculates the price for Labor's electricity policy. It is a little bit difficult to understand how you could take it out of one and put it into the other and still have a relatively safe costing proposal. Point 3 states:

Tries to hide the cost of replacing old coal power stations with nuclear to outside the time period covered by the costing. The costing only includes costs incurred between 2025 and 2051…

Anything beyond that point is absolutely ignored by the costing documents. It further states:

Under the costing of the Liberal-National Party's scenario they've pushed most of the costs of replacing old coal power stations to outside the 2025-2051 time period.

It also assumes that climate change is not an important and urgent problem. The people who costed it for the Liberal Party said quite clearly that there is available economic data that could take into consideration the future cost of climate change, but they have decided to ignore it in the costing paper that they did for the Liberals.

Acting President, you do not have to actually take RenewEconomy or even me as a veritable font of information on this, because we can actually turn to Senator Matt Canavan, a former cabinet minister and leading climate change denying voice, from the Coalition's right flank. He does not like renewable energy, but he believes his colleagues are not serious about nuclear energy. Matt Canavan said it 'ain't the cheapest form of power' and that Dutton is promoting it 'because it fixes a political issue for us'.

You can turn to Christopher Pyne—from the Liberals' moderate wing, fast diminishing though it is, and a senior minister under three Liberal prime ministers—writing in Nine newspapers last month. I am advised that he argued compellingly that a nuclear power plant would never be commissioned if the opposition was elected but, in what he described as good news for Dutton, suggested it was unlikely this reality would dawn on most people before the election. Cynicism has never been something people have accused Chris Pyne of, but I have to say that he speaks a real truth when he talks about the Dutton Liberal opposition never actually wanting to deliver on its energy plan.

One big problem I see with the nuclear delusion that Peter Dutton has put forward, however, is that it actively assumes that nuclear power plants are running consistently to, as he says, provide base load, which means they are pushing energy into the grid constantly all the time, which means they have to turn off rooftop solar so that it is not overloading the grid. Quite frankly, about two-thirds of Australians have rooftop solar or are intending to install solar plus batteries down the track. They have invested their own money in putting solar on their roofs and now they are going to be told by the Liberal Party at a national level, 'Vote for us and we'll turn off your solar and you won't get any roof rebates back into the grid.'

A number of people on some of the old rebate schemes are getting quite a bit in return for their investment in rooftop solar. Those of us who came to it later are getting less. Nonetheless, we are getting refunds for the electricity we push back into the grid. The Liberals are telling us they are going to stop that, they are going to make us pay higher electricity prices for nuclear energy and they are going to stop us using rooftop solar and getting our rebate. I think that is one delusion going far too far.