Page 1889 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 7 June 2006
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turned blue already or if I have got a child running round with a dummy. I say this because I think it is at the height of absurdity to be jumping from, as the federal government has, a situation where first of all it denied the signs on climate change to one where it now admits, apparently coinciding with Mr Howard’s latest visit to his friend in Washington, that there is a climate change problem and saying that the only way we can fix it is with nuclear power.
When I saw the headline in the Australian this morning I thought initially, at first glance, that it sounds like the federal government is adopting some of the recommendations of the Australian Conservation Foundation and bodies such as the business roundtable on climate change, but then I saw that our Prime Minister is talking about a carbon tax on coal, not to fund renewable energy or anything that might add to reduce our climate change greenhouse emissions, but to fund the development of nuclear power.
We all know that nuclear power will require very heavy subsidies, I think at about a third of the cost of building and producing the energy that will come from nuclear power. Of course, we are no closer to solving the problem of what to do with nuclear waste and we now have the problems of terrorism, so that we will have to secure that waste and guard it for millennia. I think it is also of interest to know that pretty much the same people as the ones who were keeping the government’s head down about climate change are now saying that climate change is a problem. That is because they not only benefit from the mining of coal but also benefit from the mining of uranium.
But there are some businesses that do take a more responsible approach and I was pleased to host a forum last week at which the Hon. Greg Hunt, who is the federal parliamentary secretary on environment and heritage, did speak very fluently on the government’s position. He was on the same podium as Bruce Thomas, the sustainability manager for Swiss Reinsurance, one of the major advocates in the business roundtable on climate change, which is indeed advocating that the government adopt a carbon tax because it has presented through its work, through reports commissioned by Allen Consulting and reports from the CSIRO, that to act now would be a better outcome for business in Australia than to delay action and to have to make very deep cuts in a very short time, which would be the case.
We can start off now, as environmentalists have been saying for a long time, and build businesses around renewables and energy efficiency. However, for some reason or other, the government has chosen to totally ignore the renewables sector, even ignoring the ethanol industry, which one would think it would have an interest in, to jump straight to nuclear power. I think that the debate is a furphy. I think that the debate is about legitimising the mining and export of uranium and perhaps an enrichment of uranium industry. Nuclear power plants are in no way a solution to climate change problems. There will be greenhouse gases in the production of them. They would not come on board for 10 years at least if we started building them now and we do not have an infinite amount of uranium. The only thing we have an infinite amount of is sunshine and it is about time to get on with it.
MR SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.
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