Adjournment Speech
Nuclear Energy
26/06/2024
Mr JOYCE (New England) (19:40): Mr Speaker—and to all who are listening before the State of Origin—Australia only has one job and that is to become as strong as possible, as powerful as possible, as quickly as possible. The world is changing. It is changing very quickly, but it's following a very reliable path in history with the waxing and waning of powers and how things ebb and flow. To become a powerful nation, you must have the feedstock of what makes a powerful nation.
Tonight, in inflation figures we hear that power prices have gone up by 6.3 per cent in the assessment of the increase in inflation. Now, I don't want that. This means in the best way—the best litmus test, rather than the to-ing and fro-ing throughout the chamber and everybody selecting things—we must ask this question: is one major manufacturer in the world making their way to Australia because they believe we've got it right? Not one. Who is actually leaving Australia? Our plastics industry, our aluminium industry, our oil refining industry—and now our food processing industry.
Those who might want to cause us harm would be sitting back and laughing at us. Now we have this intermittent power lobby that has hold of the government—billionaires wanting to turn themselves into multibillionaires. In my electorate, where a lot of this future obsolescence is going to be cast, we have the Hills of Gold Wind Farm about to be approved. The government's solution is swindle factories covering the horizon, up to 230 metres high to the top of the blade, and then fields of a new photovoltaic black in the valleys, and, connecting them, a cobweb of filth, of transmission lines. And there is this perverse belief, like tulip mania, that we are going to run a modern economy on a windmill.
Every now and then a country loses its mind, and we seem to be doing that right now. What is it going to take for people to understand the paradox, the irony, that we've just been talking about a so-called 'nature-positive bill' yet we are allowing this intermittent power lobby, who are so good at lobbying with the orange lanyards. They are so good at schmoozing their way through this building.
Mr JOYCE: What we have to ask ourselves is: how is removing all the environmental conditions—so one tower, one raptor per year is perfectly acceptable! Removing vegetation in rainforests is perfectly acceptable! Drowning people out, drowning areas out is perfectly acceptable! Completely imposing yourself on the free property rights of people in regional areas is perfectly acceptable! However, the virtue does not extend to metropolitan suburbs. Not one wind tower do they want at Middle Head or off Manly or off Palm Beach or in Parramatta—not one. It would be obscene; they would never get re-elected. So where do they dump them? They dump them in regional areas.
We have to clearly understand, this path is insanity. You have no chance—none, zero, zip—of reaching 82 per cent renewables. And there is nothing renewable about them. They go to landfill. It's just nomenclature—'windfarms'? What do they grow—spuds, carrots, peas? You have fallen for it, hook, line and sinker. But you are not going to reach 82 per cent. It is just insane.
Dr Charlton: Scandalous misinformation.
Mr JOYCE: I take the interjection from the member for Parramatta, because he wrote a brilliant article back in about 2013 in support of nuclear—
Mr JOYCE: It was great, 96 pages of it. It was an absolute splendid rendition of why we should go down the nuclear path. In our area, we see this quite simply: if we don't have nuclear, we're going to get more of this swill, more of this intermittent power lobby running this parliament. They've guilted you into not asking the forensic questions about exactly how they operate. We've had hidden from us the actual returns they're getting, and we've made a path for billionaires to become multibillionaires because they're running on the shirt tails of our guilt trip.
Nuclear Energy Policy
Politics has become very interesting with the nuclear versus intermittent power debate. The billionaire intermittent power lobby will be losing their collective mind that their taxpayer subsidised wind tower swindle factories and photovoltaic fields of black will have a small foot print 24/7 reliable cheaper alternative.
Power should never have been privatised by the state government and nuclear puts power back in public hands as it is a crucial service like health and education.
If you believe Minister Bowen and Prime Minister Albanese, the major economies of the world and major companies such as Rolls Royce, Westinghouse and General Electric are all foolish little boys intent on creating an unaffordable and dangerous power system so that they can lose money. If you believe Mr Albanese and Bowen then 82% intermittent power by 2030 is so much better than the baseload power it replaces and any globally proven alternative.
If you believe the major manufacturers that are leaving Australia and the families that can no longer afford their power bill, then we are turning what use to be amongst the cheapest and reliable electricity supply in the world into the dearest and least reliable.
Solar panels on your roof are one thing, you own them. Fields of foreign owned wind towers and solar panels interconnected with a spiderweb of transmission lines is entirely something else. In the places where the billionaire proponents live they would not dare have one individual wind tower within sight.
Australia does have one nuclear reactor and it is bang smack in the geographic centre of our biggest city, Sydney. It has been there for decades and no one gives a toss. We are building nuclear powered submarines which will be parked in our cities and there is no public outcry apart from why we didn’t start earlier.
Modern nuclear power is a thousand miles from the technology of the 1980s. It is enriched only to about 3 to 5% as opposed to weapon grade uranium which is about 98%. As technology improves the tiny amount of waste is reprocessed into reusable fuel. Mr Bowen and Mr Albanese will run a debate on false fear not facts.
Pick a horse on form, can you think of one thing that Mr Bowen has done in his long time in politics that has been a success? It is concerning that he is responsible to rewire the nation to intermittent power. The plan to change boiling the water in power stations from coal to nuclear is vastly more prudent than blowing the power station up to replace them with hundreds of thousands of acres of intermittent power that has never worked as an affordable effective source of majority supply anywhere in the world.
Liddell Power Station has been nominated as one of the seven locations where the Federal Coalition is proposing to build a zero-emissions nuclear plant.
Under this plan, locals would benefit from high paying, multi-generational jobs, and be empowered to maximise the benefits of hosting an asset of national importance by way of:
- A multi-billion dollar facility guaranteeing high-paying jobs for generations to come;
- An integrated economic development zone to attract manufacturing, value-add and high-tech industry; and
- A regional deal unlocking investment in modern infrastructure, services and community priorities.
Locating a zero-emissions nuclear plant at the Liddell site would draw on the existing skills and power generation experience of locals.
It would also mean much of the new spending needed for a renewables-only system – including building new transmission poles and wires – can be avoided.
Ninety per cent of baseload electricity, predominantly coal fired generation, is coming to the end of life over the next decade.
Australia needs another source of 24/7 baseload power to replace coal. Labor’s wind and solar plan just isn’t working. Australia needs nuclear.
