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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-11-27 Daily Xml
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Nuclear Energy

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:25): My question is to the Premier. What is the state government's policy on nuclear energy and is it consistent with the approach taken by the federal government at COP29? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA: David Penberthy said in The Australian last week in relation to the federal government's action at COP29 and I quote:

It puts Australia in a kind of energy dunce's corner away from so many liberal democracies which have realised and are showing that nuclear is a valuable and affordable part of the energy mix in achieving a decarbonised future. You could only defend the status quo on energy in Australia if you are completely inured to cost-of-living concerns. Federal Labor are 'embarrassing themselves and they are damaging our state'.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:25): I have been on the record about my views on nuclear energy for many, many years—in fact, going back long before I was in this parliament—and it is a position that I have held consistently ever since, and my colleagues at a federal level are well aware of it. With respect to the various range of opinions that we see coming from those opposite on the nuclear energy debate and what it means for the people of Australia in terms of cost, it is an interesting point because it strikes me as somewhat absurd that the proponents of nuclear energy from the Coalition talk about how we need to have nuclear energy because it will reduce costs, yet the only cost that has not been released is from the Coalition themselves and what the cost of their nuclear energy policy is.

Just think this through for a second. How can you argue as a party of government and the alternative prime minister of the country that you are going to reduce power bills through having nuclear energy and then when people ask, 'Well what is the cost of that nuclear energy?' you say, 'Well I don't know, I can't tell you.' There are two things I would say to that: either the federal Leader of the Opposition knows what the cost of nuclear power is and will not tell people, which begs the question why not, or two, he announced a policy without knowing what the cost is.

This is the conservative party of government in this country and they purport to represent economic responsibility. I cannot imagine a John Howard standing up before the people of Australia and saying, 'I want to talk to you about costs, but I am not going to tell you what the costs are.' I just cannot imagine something so reckless, let alone a policy that says a conservative government, if elected, will have a state-owned intervention into power generation in a privately owned market. 'We are going to have a state-run intervention, it is going to reduce costs but we are not going to tell you what the cost is.' It is unbelievable.

How does that compare with respect to this government's position and my position? My position is this: nuclear power does have a role to play in decarbonisation globally. There is no prospect of net zero being achieved, or the Paris targets being achieved globally without nuclear power playing a role. That is consistent with South Australia's interests, given the fact that we are home to an economic uranium mine that exports to the civil industry globally. So we are quite comfortable with the prospect of a civil nuclear industry globally—in fact, we support it. In terms of an Australian context, our simple response is this: there is no evidence of nuclear power being an economic proposition in an Australian context.

You do not have to take my view about that, you simply only have to look at all the independent analysis that has been conducted by a range of organisations, including the CSIRO, amongst others, who make it clear that nuclear power in the Australian context doesn't stack up economically. Until such time as that changes, I am not too sure why we would be debating it.

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