Wednesday, 29 May 2024

Nuclear energy

Michaela SETTLE (Eureka) (16:16): Thank you for that little fantasy speech we got from the member for Caulfield, otherwise known as Affidavid Southwick. The expression ‘to pull a Homer’ comes from the Simpsons episode ‘Homer Defined’. Homer sets off a nuclear meltdown when he drops icing from his doughnut. Unsure of how to stop it, he uses a counting rhyme to guess which button he should press. He succeeds, but when he repeats this at another nuclear power station he is busted for being a fraud, and henceforth ‘to pull a Homer’ means to succeed despite idiocy. I grieve today for the people of Victoria should Dutton or the member for Hawthorn pull a Homer and succeed despite idiocy. The Homer of the north, Peter Dutton, has made it clear that he will pursue a nuclear future, and just last week the Victorian Leader of the Opposition came out as a supporter of nuclear power. When he was asked if he would support the federal opposition leader’s push for nuclear energy on ABC radio this year, Mr Pesutto said:

… nuclear will almost certainly play a part in our energy mix going forward.

Every Victorian should know that come the next election they are voting on a nuclear future. Victorians do not want it, and I can assure you that Anglesea does not want it. If the Homer of the north gets his way, there will be a nuclear power station in old, cold stations like in Anglesea. If the Liberals and the Nationals pursue this idiocy, I can guarantee that they will lose the member for Polwarth – which might be a silver lining. Nonetheless, the people of Anglesea will continue to fight them all the way.

What I find most horrifying about the nuclear trope is the lie of it all, even to those that they hope to inveigle. They do not have anything to offer and only know how to campaign on fear – and here we go again while the opposition stirs fear in our communities. They are grasping on community concerns about transmission lines and renewable energy projects. They stir up fear in our communities and harvest their data. There is a proposal for a wind farm near Lethbridge in my electorate, and I put a constituency question to the Minister for Planning today to help the community understand the consultation process. The member for Brighton put out a flyer with no Liberal Party identification encouraging people to sign a petition using a QR code. When you go to that petition it lands on the member for Brighton’s page. But what I find the most laughable is that it begins ‘Don’t let a Melbourne minister decide your future’. To the people of my electorate: when you hand over your details, it is to a shadow minister in sunny Brighton, even further from our home than Melbourne – our very own Karen, the Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change. Do folk in his is electorate know that he is actively campaigning against renewable energy?

I grieve today for the policy put forward by those on the other side for nuclear energy, so let us look at some of the lies that have been espoused in this space.

The SPEAKER: I remind the member that the word ‘lie’ is not acceptable language in the house.

Michaela SETTLE: Dr Alan Finkel, Australia’s chief scientist from 2016 to 2020, explained that:

Large nuclear power generators cannot ramp up and down rapidly like batteries or peaking gas generators. This reduces their compatibility with a predominantly solar and wind powered electricity grid.

By the time any nuclear power stations are built, our transmission lines will be at capacity with renewables. So in effect the opposition are tricking the folk that they are trying to get on board through fear tactics about transmission lines and renewable energy. Nuclear will not change the need for transmission lines.

The reality of nuclear just does not stack up. It is the most expensive form of energy, it takes a long, long time to get online, and it is toxic. Let us never forget the three-eyed fish of Homer Simpson. Dr Alan Finkel explained that wind energy costs $7 billion per gigawatt. Now, compare that to the Hinkley Point plant under construction in the UK, where the costs for nuclear power will be $27 billion per gigawatt. That is the difference: $7 billion from solar and renewable energy compared with $27 billion for nuclear. It just does not stack up.

The CSIRO’s recent GenCost 2023–24 report confirms that nuclear is the most expensive form of power generation available, yet the National Party conference still voted in support of it just last weekend. The cheapest forms of power are wind and solar, even when they are coupled with the cost of energy storage and transmission, and that includes the cost of building the new transmission and firming up capacity through batteries.

There are days in my electorate when the wind can certainly chill your bones, but I am very glad that it is powering our state. Our old coal-fired generators are unreliable and they are leaving, and we just do not have time for this nuclear fantasy. I will just give you some examples. A new plant in France was originally expected to be completed in 2012, and 10 years later it is still not producing electricity. Another plant, in the UK, started construction in 2016, and it is still nowhere near finishing, with their latest estimate being at around 2027. So if we look at the proposal by the Nationals and the Liberals that we should replace our renewable energy program with nuclear power, it is just based on a fantasy ‍– a fantasy that it can be done in time to service Victoria. They would have our lights go out, those on the other side.

One of my favourite family photos is of me at my very first rally, which was a nuclear disarmament rally, when I was less than a year old, back in 1965. The community have been protesting about nuclear for a long, long time, and I do not think that they are going to be happy to see those bans swept aside by the Liberals and Nationals either here or federally. Given that lack of social licence, any of those power stations would take even longer to build – beyond those in the UK and France.

On the other side they try to talk about small reactors as the solution, but let us face it: they do not stack up because they are completely untested. There are no small modular reactors operating in the UK, Europe, Canada, the US or any other OECD country. There are no SMRs under construction or approved in the OECD, and there is no data to support any claims about how much SMRs will cost when deployed as operating power stations. They are asking us to trust them on a wing and a prayer on something that cannot be built and will cost more than three times the amount to produce the same gigawatts. Again they are creating fear and throwing out lines but with no basis in fact. There is great community concern about safe storage and disposal of high-level radioactive waste. Here in Australia we have already got low-level nuclear waste and, guess what, there is no disposal site in Australia. There are over 100 temporary storage sites – not disposal sites, temporary storage.

Top nuclear waste expert Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe says waste is currently kept in cupboards and filing cabinets in universities and hospitals. We are not managing the low level we have now. How is this going to work in the Liberals’ nuclear future? Will a toxic waste dump be approved in Hawthorn or Brighton? No, I bet you it will not. I bet you they will send it out to the regions where they have been stoking fear endlessly amongst communities about renewable energy, and instead they will send them a great big nuclear toxic waste dump. Something we know about the other side is they do love to tell us that the market knows best, so here is another one for them, again from Alan Finkel. Let us not forget that he was Australia’s chief scientist for many years. He says:

The various operational, political, and cost challenges faced by the nuclear industry have led to nuclear’s share of global electricity generation falling from more than 17 percent in 1996 to 9 percent in 2022.

As usual, the Libs would have us turn back the clock with some fantasy that at another time it was going to be a great idea.

But enough about them. Let us talk about the alternative, the real and ongoing work that has been done by this government to ensure our energy future, and this stuff is based on fact. We smashed our 2020 emissions target of 15 to 20 per cent. We achieved 29.6 per cent, and in 2021 we achieved a 32.3 per cent reduction. We do not just talk about climate change – we deliver it. We are decarbonising at the fastest rate in the country, and since this government was elected in 2014 we have cut emissions by more than any other state. We have the strongest climate change legislation in the country, and Victorians voted overwhelmingly for the next steps in our ambitious agenda. In the previous contribution from the other side there was lots of talk that those in government should be more concerned about some of our marginal seats, and I would suggest that perhaps those on the other side should look to their seats. Ask their seats how they feel about nuclear energy and how they feel about nuclear waste in their electorates. I think you will find that many of them would object pretty strongly.

In ‘Homer’s Odyssey’ Homer stages a protest about the lack of safety at the nuclear power plant, and Mr Burns offers Homer a new job at the plant as the safety inspector, which would have a considerably larger salary than his old job as a technical supervisor. I can only imagine that this is the game plan behind the member for Hawthorn’s support for nuclear energy. He is looking for a job from his mates when the affidavits start piling up. Let us remember that we need a strong energy future in this country, and this government has continually worked towards lowering emissions and providing a stable energy grid. For those on the other side to come in and just lob a bomb basically into the community around nuclear energy and all the joys that it will bring I do not think is working. It is one of the most extraordinary tactics I have ever seen in politics to suggest to your very voter base that they are going to have a nuclear power station in their electorate.

Really today I grieve for Victoria that we need to continue to have a debate around nuclear energy. Since I was born, and that was a long time ago, we have been protesting in Victoria against the use of nuclear energy. I have every confidence that Victorians will continue to stand up and say, ‘We do not accept this,’ and they do not accept it because it is expensive, it will take forever and it is toxic. How about they get behind us instead of creating fear in our communities about renewable energy? Why don’t they support it? Why don’t they work towards a clean, green future for Victoria instead of striking fear in people’s hearts and suggesting what really is a pup? There is no way that you can justify to anyone in Victoria that a nuclear power station would be of any value. So in this grievance debate I grieve for Victoria that they are being sold this pup. I grieve that they have no opposition that they can look to for ideas. Rather, again and again they look to the opposition, the alternative government, and all they see is fearmongering. It is the only thing they know how to do. It would be great if the opposition would bring a policy to us. They have tried with nuclear and it is a pretty strange one, but it would be great to see something from the other side instead of fearmongering and disturbing regional communities.

I care passionately about my electorate. I am there every day, unlike the member for Brighton. I travel that electorate every day, and I care for that community. Renewables offer a future for all of Victoria. One of the local farmers talked to me about the fact that it makes his farm an absolute going concern and protects his farm for future generations, rather than changing the land use there. Rather than trying to scare people, why don’t people get on board and support this government’s renewable energy program.