Subjects: Labor’s energy policy shambles; Labor’s cost of living crisis; nuclear energy; the Prime Minister’s lack of leadership; visit by the Premier of the People’s Republic of China; anti-Semitism.
E&OE.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
The Leader of the Opposition, Peter Dutton is on the line.
Mr Dutton, thank you so much for your time.
PETER DUTTON:
My pleasure, Chris. Thank you.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
The Paris Agreement – does it stay or does it go under your Prime Ministership?
PETER DUTTON:
It stays – and we’ve got a strong commitment to net zero by 2050 – but we’ve got to be realistic about where families are at the moment. The amount of hurt and pain that people are feeling in their own budgets, the number of business failures and an economy which has really tightened dramatically.
When the Prime Minister made the commitment of 43 per cent, the economy wasn’t in a state that it is now. People were paying much less – less than, sub-2 per cent for their mortgages. People are now paying six, seven, eight per cent for their mortgages. It’s a very different environment.
The Prime Minister, when he talks about signing up to international agreements – I know he likes to rub shoulders with all the international leaders and be popular within that group – but his first responsibility is to take care of Australians, and I think he’s taken his eye off that ball. People are really stretched with cost of living pressures at the moment, and my argument is that we should be taking care of Australians first and bringing power prices down. Instead, their ‘renewables-only’ policy has really driven prices up, and everybody knows that in their bills. Now the energy regulator is saying, ‘well, there’s a prospect of will have blackouts and brownouts’, which would be a disaster for families but for businesses as well. That’s the approach that we’ve taken.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
So what would we have to cut emissions by; what target would allow us to receive a bit of cost of living relief?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Chris, it’s very hard in Opposition – without all the modelling and the advice from Government – to put an exact figure on the table. But we are transitioning. We’re decarbonising as an economy. We’ve put up, what I think is, a very credible solution that provides a vision for our country for decades to come to have a zero emissions nuclear policy, which will firm up the renewables.
The trouble at the moment is when the Prime Minister and Chris Bowen go out there telling you that wind and solar are free, everything’s going to be easy and life’s going to be great. People know that’s not true. There are massive costs in distribution of renewable energy, it doesn’t work of a night-time for the solar panels or when the wind’s not blowing, and you need to firm that up. The Government talks about green hydrogen, which is prospective but is not commercialised yet.
There are all sorts of flaws in their system, and I just think they’re dictated to by the Greens and being dragged into agreements that ultimately harm Australians.
We need to have a policy, as I say, which is working to bring power prices down to make sure that it’s cleaner, yes, but to make sure it’s consistent, that we don’t have the disruption to power supply as well.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
But the target: 43 per cent by 2030, that is Australia’s climate target – to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 on 2005 levels. That target is the Paris Agreement. So, isn’t that the same thing? If you abandon the target, you’ll abandon the Agreement?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, the Paris Agreement is predominantly about net zero by 2050, and that’s what we’ve signed up to. You don’t need to go, you know, linear way to that. To try and get to the 43 per cent, which most analysts at the moment say that the Government won’t get to anyway. They’re introducing this new car tax, so it’s about $10,000 on an average car. Australians, I think, are just starting to hear that message. So, who on earth could afford to pay another $10,000 for a Toyota HiLux or a Toyota RAV4 hybrid at the moment, which is what Mr Albanese is proposing…
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
What’s that got to do with the Paris Agreement?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, that is part of their trying to achieve 43 per cent reduction. So, they’re trying to push people into electric vehicles or out of diesels, out of a Toyota Hilux or a Ford Ranger. That’s part of how they say they’re going to achieve the 43 per cent. Now, the other point is that there are many other parts to this puzzle as you go forward. So, the Government has to sign up, by next February, to a 2035 target. That’s somewhere reportedly between 65 and 75 per cent. That is going to mean massive disruption to agriculture in this country. It’s going to mean an increase in petrol prices. It’s going to mean an increase in electricity and gas prices, and at exactly a time when families can’t afford it.
The Prime Minister’s out there yesterday, ranting and raving, but never mentions cost of living or electricity prices, which is the reality of what families have to deal with each quarter or each time they get their bill.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
Now, you told The Weekend Australian there’s no sense of signing up to targets that don’t have any prospect of being achieved. So why did Tony Abbott sign up to the Paris Agreement in 2013?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Tony Abbott gave a commitment of 26 to 28 per cent, which was achievable, and it has been achieved. There needs to be, particularly if you’re in Opposition, the ability to understand the consequences of your policy and your actions. I’ve looked very closely at green hydrogen, at batteries, at nuclear, at hydro. My argument is that we should be trying to reduce the input costs of electricity and gas, because it’s not just your household bill that’s gone through the roof, it’s also the people next door, it’s the IGA, it’s the butcher, it’s the farmer.
If you continue to drive electricity prices up, inflation will stay higher for longer, which means interest rates stay higher for longer, and it’s at a time when the economy is starting to contract.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
You speak to John Howard a fair bit?
PETER DUTTON:
I do.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
What does Mr Howard say? Does he regret the fact that he made building more nuclear facilities in Australia illegal in 1998?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, he did that as part of a deal with the Democrats at the time…
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
And the Greens.
PETER DUTTON:
…and it wasn’t because there was anything wrong with nuclear. It was because they wanted to get the particular bill through, and they didn’t think there was a short-term prospect of getting nuclear energy.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
But does he regret it given how everything’s played out?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, John can speak for himself, Chris. But, John Howard…
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
You’re effectively trying to unwind a Liberal policy here?
PETER DUTTON:
What I’m trying to do is provide some sort of safety for our country at a time when people need support and a vision for our country that the Prime Minister can’t provide because he can’t get from one day to the next with disastrous decisions of the Government’s making.
So, the important point is that John Howard strongly supports nuclear power, as did Bob Hawke, as does the AWU – the Australian Workers’ Union – as does Premier Malinauskas in South Australia and the sensible voices on the right within the Labor Party. Of the top 20 economies in the world, Australia is the only one, only one of those countries, so 19 of the top economies in the world have nuclear, or have signed up to do so, because in Ontario, for example, where 60 per cent of their energy market there is supplied by nuclear, they pay 25 per cent of the costs of electricity that we do here.
So, there is a much better way to do it and the Prime Minister at the moment just doesn’t have any eye on trying to reduce prices. Everything he does drives up prices and that’s been the result of three budgets.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
Let’s have a look at nuclear in a little more detail.
So, we had John Gorton in 1969 propose a nuclear power plant at Jervis Bay, that was scrapped. 2006, under John Howard, there was a prime ministerial taskforce to review nuclear energy in Australia, its author found that political bipartisanship is the only way forward, we haven’t got that. The South Australians held a Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission in 2016, they found it would be commercially unviable to develop a nuclear power plant. John Barilaro unsuccessfully went for it in 2017 in New South Wales. In 2020, a Victorian committee into nuclear found without subsidisation, a nuclear power industry will remain economically unviable. So, to be honest, we’re about as far progressed in 2024 as we were in 1969. So, what makes you think you’re right and everyone else is wrong?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, a few things. Is Anthony Albanese right and the 19 top economies – those Governments – are wrong around the world? I don’t think so. When you look at the technology, where it is now, it’s something very different than obviously it was in the 1960s, as is any technology.
The next point, I suppose, which is very valid, is that if you look at the technology that’s available to us, a small modular reactor, the latest technology, zero emissions, takes up about two hectares. It’s 470MW, so five acres. The equivalent space to be utilised for an array of solar to achieve the same energy yield takes up 4,000 hectares or 10,000 acres. The emission or the waste out of the small modular reactor in a 12-month period fills a Coke can, and you can do it for zero emissions. If you look at countries around the world, including Poland, for example, they’re implementing the latest technology. It means, effectively, it’s an equivalent to millions of houses being powered with zero emissions. So, it meets our international obligations that weren’t there in the 1960s. As a trading nation, we’ve got to have a credible policy in place, and we can do that. We can firm up the renewables. People want to believe that the battery technology can work. It doesn’t. The technology just hasn’t advanced as quickly as you would want, and it lasts for about two hours at a cost of $190 million. It’s not feasible, and the Prime Minister continues to talk about green hydrogen like it’s in commercial production now. It’s not…
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
Well, wouldn’t you use the same logic for the small nuclear reactors, there’s only four of them in operation, isn’t there?
PETER DUTTON:
But Chris, again, if you have a look at what’s happening around the world, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, most of the major powers have a nuclear propulsion system in their nuclear submarines. The collective research and development in what must be tens of billions of dollars a year across those economies means that that technology is got to translate into the commercial space over the coming decades, which means that it will be even more efficient. You’ve got a situation, I think, where you can deliver energy ultimately at a lower cost, because the amortisation period is about 80 years, as opposed to a wind turbine, which is about 19 years, and you’ve got huge loss of amenity for regional communities.
So, I strongly support renewables in the system, but they don’t work tonight, and we need to run hospitals tonight and cold rooms and households and businesses. The fact is that nuclear in many other markets is able to provide that firming, and I think if we have a mature discussion in this country instead of the Prime Minister running off like a, frankly, sending out photos of what a beach looks like and ‘would you have it at a beach?’. No, actually, we’re talking about end of life coal fired power station sites because you can distribute through the poles and wires there now.
The Prime Minister’s proposal to distribute wind and solar energy, which can’t travel over the existing poles and wires. It comes at a cost of about $1.3 trillion for their entire plan, and it’s 28,000km of new poles and wires, which is equivalent to the entire Australian coastline. It’s just not going to happen. I just don’t think, I mean, they can’t manage the economy at the moment, and I don’t think that they’ll be able to manage the transition in energy either.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
Speaking to Peter Dutton, the Leader of the Opposition.
Just very briefly, before I let you go, Mr Dutton, a bit of news this afternoon, the Premier of the People’s Republic of China, Li Qiang, will be visiting Australia from Saturday to Tuesday. Anthony Albanese just said he is, quote, ‘pro-panda’. What are you?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I want to see an increase in our trading relationship with China. We’ve got an incredible diaspora community here of about 1.4 million people of Chinese heritage, and they’re an integral, wonderful part of Australia, and we want to see that relationship grow. We want to see peace continue in our region, and I’ll be in Canberra to meet with the Chinese Premier as well, and I met only a couple of months ago with the Foreign Minister, Wang Yi.
So, it’s an important relationship for us, and I hope that it continues to strengthen.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
You’re pro-panda?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I’m pro-China and the relationship that we have with them. I want that trading relationship to increase. Nobody’s against pandas, of course! But we’ve got to be realistic about the world at the moment. We need to make sure we strengthen the trading relationship because there are many businesses here who rely on it. But we have to be realistic about working to keep peace, because as we know in Europe and as we’re seeing in the Middle East, we live in a very uncertain time. The Prime Minister also says that we live in the most precarious period since the Second World War, and he’s right, and we need to work hard at peace as well.
CHRIS O’KEEFE:
I appreciate your time. Thank you so much, and kudos for you going with the Prime Minister and condemning the Greens, because I think that their issues with fanning anti-Semitism has been left unopposed for far too long. So, it was really pleasing for all Australians to say what you and Anthony Albanese did in Parliament last week. Thank you so much.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you, mate. Appreciate that. Thank you.
[ends]