Subjects: A cheaper, cleaner, and more consistent energy plan for Australia; Labor’s cost of living and energy crisis; the Prime Minister’s weal leadership; the rise of anti-Semitism in Australia.
E&OE.
PETER DUTTON:
Thank you very much for being here today. It’s great to be here with my colleagues. In particular, I want to say thank you very much to David Littleproud, who has done an enormous amount of work in relation to the regional aspect, particularly, of this plan. I want to say thank you to Angus Taylor, who’s spent a lot of time in energy policy, and, as a former minister, knows the space very well and is one of the most capable minds in the country when it comes to the issue of energy. Also, of course, to Ted O’Brien, who has engaged with stakeholders around the country and has brought together our plan today.
Over the course of this term, we’ve spoken to Australians about the safety of nuclear. Of course, the Prime Minister signed up to the nuclear submarines and therefore sent a very clear message to Australians that there are no safety concerns about the latest technology in relation to nuclear. We spoke about disposal, and the Government signed up to disposing waste – including the end of life reactors – under the AUKUS submarine agreement. We spoke about the locations and we identified seven end of life coal fired power stations across the country because we have existing poles and wires on those sites, which saves a dramatic amount of money, which is reflected in the work that we present to you today. We dealt with the sites and it comes down to now the cost and it comes down to the timelines. I’ll come to the cost obviously in the second.
In relation to the timelines, the AUKUS legislation that enables the nuclear reactor to be a part of our Defence Force and to be a key technology for us to defend ourselves, that has been facilitated through legislation which has passed through the Parliament already. Why has it passed through the Parliament already? It hasn’t taken decades to do. It’s taken both parties, specifically to the exclusion of the Greens, to get that legislation through Parliament. We have a situation here where I think it’ll be post-Anthony Albanese’s leadership – which I don’t think is too far away – and in that scenario I do think there can be bipartisan opposition in relation to the vision that we put to the Australian people today.
This is a plan which will underpin the economic success of our country for the next century.
This will make electricity reliable, it will make it more consistent, it’ll make it cheaper for Australians, and it will help us decarbonise as a trading economy, as we must. The fact is that we can deliver a plan which is going to keep the lights on and we have a plan and a vision for our country which will help grow businesses – not close them down, as is currently happening under this Government. I know that there are many Australians at the moment – in fact 560 a week – families who are going onto payment plans or experiencing hardship when it comes to paying electricity bills under the Albanese Government.
The most tragic part is that it’s going to get much worse if Mr Albanese is elected, particularly in a minority government situation. What we’ve looked at is the experience of every developed country around the world, the energy mix that they’re using, and if you look to jurisdictions, for example, like Ontario, or in Tennessee, they are paying 18 cents a kilowatt hour for their power at the moment because they have renewables firmed up by nuclear. In South Australia at the moment people are paying 56 cents a kilowatt hour – three times the rate.
So, is it any wonder that we’ve had a three-fold increase in the number of manufacturing businesses which have closed in our country over the last two-and-a-half years? Is it any wonder that the cafe that I visited in Sydney yesterday and the IGA store have seen a doubling or tripling of their electricity bills under this Government? But it’s going to get worse. We’ve already seen the first signs of blackouts under the Albanese Government. Their zealot-like approach to their renewables-only policy is going to cause a lot of grief to our country in the near term and in the long term.
So, we deliver a plan today which will get the energy mix right, it will lower costs, it will keep the lights on, and it will set our country up for generations to come. So, I’ll ask my colleagues to say a few words, DLP, and then to Angus, and Ted.
DAVID LITTLEPROUD:
Well, thanks, Dutto.
Can I say today shows that there’s a better plan – a better way, a cheaper way, and a more reliable way – to provide power to the Australian people. But this report, I think Australians already knew because they’ve got the lived experience of paying higher electricity bills and being asked by state premiers to turn off their dishwashers. That is an embarrassment in a country as rich as Australia that has sovereignty of all its resources. This is about legacy – this is about leaving a legacy for generations to come in making sure we have that reliable power. There is no country on the industrial scale of the size of Australia that has gone down an all-renewables approach. That’s why we’re saying let’s draw on that, let’s have a mix and make sure that regional Australia doesn’t bear the brunt of our pathway to net zero emissions.
We can do this, and we should do it in a uniquely Australian way. That’s why we should have a mix that regional Australia isn’t littered with transmission lines, solar panels and wind turbines. We should have an energy industry in regional Australia that provides jobs. Nearly 80 per cent of those that work in current coal fired power stations will be able to transition across. That gives them a future, that gives those regional communities a future. That’s common sense. That’s why we made it very clear that we wanted to look at this, and as not just leaving a legacy of reliable, affordable power, but also giving a future to regional Australia. While many in the cities have, and those teals want us to go down an accelerated path of renewables, just understand the burden you’re asking us to bear. There is another way to achieve it. We’re all wanting to achieve it. We’re just saying this is a better way, a cheaper way, and a more reliable way to do that. That is a common sense that a Coalition Government will bring.
I’m proud to be part of this team that’s used that, that’s drawn on the experience around the world. In this country, what we need to do is change the culture of finding reasons why not to do things, but backing ourselves and getting on with the job and doing it. That’s what a future Coalition Government will do. We’re going to get on with the job and we’re going to do this. We’re going to do this and we’re going to leave a legacy, a legacy for our nation that ensures that we have the standard of living that we have today. That’s the responsibility that Peter and I bring into this. I’m proud to be part of this, and this report today just reinforces that there is a better way. Thanks, guys.
ANGUS TAYLOR:
Thanks, David.
Well, it’s great to be here with my colleagues for this very important announcement. An announcement of a plan that is visionary, that’s realisable, and, most importantly, is affordable. A 44 per cent reduction in the cost of energy for Australian consumers – that is what this plan is all about.
Right now, Labor taking us on a pathway to economic ruin. We’ve seen GDP per person going backwards for seven quarters in a row, almost two years of household recession. We’ve seen our standard of living collapse in front of us. Unprecedented. We haven’t seen this before. The worst of any of our peer countries. Australians are paying a high price for it.
Right at the heart of that is the complete failure of this Government to deliver on their promises on energy. Promised $275 – no sign of that. All we’ve seen on energy is higher prices and higher emissions at the same time. The exact opposite of what we need. This plan is about getting us back on track. It’s about saying there is a more affordable way to achieve the outcomes that Australians want: lower emissions, affordable energy.
Right at the heart of this is a recognition that by putting in place zero emissions nuclear power, we can reduce the cost of storage, of transmission, of capacity, by a very significant number that can reduce the cost of energy bills to Australians. As I say, this is a visionary plan, it’s a realisable plan and, most of all, it’s an affordable plan – a 44 per cent reduction in costs. We are absolutely committed to doing what we have to do to make sure Australians don’t pay more than they should for their energy.
TED O’BRIEN:
Thank you very much Peter, Angus, and David.
Energy is the economy, and Australia is at a fork in the road when it comes to our energy future. If we continue down the path of Labor’s renewables-only approach, we will become poorer, weaker, and more dependent as a nation. If we adopt the Coalition’s balanced energy mix and we become wealthy, strong, and fiercely independent well into the future. We’ve already laid out a lot of our plan with respect to introducing zero emissions nuclear energy. Frontier Economics has now crunched the numbers and they have shown that it is 44 per cent cheaper to get to net zero through a balanced energy mix when you have nuclear in that mix.
This has a direct impact on families and on businesses right across the country. We know that families are hurting right now. Every single week since Labor came to office, 560 families have signed up to hardship arrangements with their energy retailer. They were promised a $275 reduction in household power bills, but families are paying up to $1,000 more than what Labor had promised them. Australians are hurting right now and businesses are closing. Nearly 25,000 businesses have gone insolvent since Labor came to office. A big part of that is the cost of energy, which is why our single priority here is all about getting costs down, making sure that as we go towards a net zero electricity grid, we do it in a way which is going to be the cheapest possible pathway.
We’ve learnt the lessons from overseas. There’s a reason why over 30 countries today use nuclear energy and over another 50 are looking at introducing it for the very first time. That is because nuclear in the mix brings prices down. Only recently, we had the United States Department of Energy, the DOE, issued their own analysis showing that if you compare a renewables-only pathway to a renewables plus nuclear pathway, the renewables and nuclear pathway is 37 per cent cheaper.
So, today we see published Frontier Economics report comparing Labor’s renewables-only pathway to the Coalition’s balanced energy mix. Its conclusion is that with a balanced energy mix under the Coalition, it will be 44 per cent cheaper. That’s $263 billion less than what would otherwise have to be paid under Labor’s plan. That’s around $10 billion every single year. Our priority is to put the Australian people at the centre, and that means we have to drive costs down. Frontier Economics has now done the work independently and they have shown that with nuclear as part of a balanced energy mix, it will be 44 per cent cheaper than Labor’s renewables-only approach.
PETER DUTTON:
Ted, thank you.
We’ll take questions starting here and we’ll just work around one by one. So, if you’d like to start off?
QUESTION:
Your nuclear plan has a smaller percentage of gas in the future energy mix than the Government’s. Does this plan actually move out fossil fuels earlier than expected?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, what it says to Australians is that we have a plan which is a sensible mix of energy sources – we add nuclear into it. But what I’d say to every Australian today is that at the next election, people can vote for higher electricity prices under Anthony Albanese; or they can vote for a system where we won’t have blackouts, we will have consistency of power, but importantly for families right now, we’ll have cheaper-cost electricity. So that means the mix that we’ve adopted has that target in mind.
I don’t make any mistake at all for making very clear to the Australian people that our priority is to bring their power prices down because when we go out to speak to small businesses, when we go to the IGA or go to a butcher shop or a shop where they’re using cold room storage, their prices are going up. It’s not just your home electricity bill as well. So, all of that is being passed on to consumers through high grocery prices. So, when you go to the shops and you’re paying more for your groceries, it’s in big part because of Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen’s bad energy policy.
So, we have looked at the mix, and the mix will be about how we achieve that cost reduction and 44 per cent cheaper than Labor’s power prices over the course of the decades ahead, I think will be an incredibly significant difference between the two parties. Ted, you might have a bit more to say on that?
TED O’BRIEN:
Thanks, Peter. We need to get prices down. Now, that means we need to pour more gas into the system. We shouldn’t be closing our baseload power stations prematurely as we continue to roll out renewables. As coal retires from the system, it should be replaced with zero emissions nuclear energy. Because nuclear is also an always-on 24/7 source of energy and it is going to be critical so that we can get prices down, keep the lights on, as we reach net zero.
QUESTION:
Infrastructure projects aren’t known in Australia for coming in on time and on budget, so why should this be any different?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think at the next election, there’s a choice between the Prime Minister and what you’ve seen of his leadership style and abilities over the course of the last two-and-a-half years, and our plan, which will be a vision for our country. It’s about how do we underpin the economy with a stable energy market where the lights can stay on. You have to overbuild the system and the amount of extra infrastructure required under Labor’s plan, to your point, is going to be expensive and over budget and over time because you need to overbuild.
So, think about it this way; if you’ve got solar panels on your house at home and you’re charging up your car during the day, you can’t store energy into your battery, you can’t add the energy at the same time to your car and to your battery at home. So, this is why their system is being overbuilt so dramatically, and this is a cost that’s already being passed on to consumers now.
So our plan, I think, when you look at somebody like Frontier, they are, I think, the best in the business. Let’s be very clear about this. They’ve done millions of dollars of work for Labor governments. The Prime Minister never made a criticism about the assumptions in relation to the first report where it projected that Labor’s plan was going to cost about five times more than what they were telling you. We’ve got a well thought out plan here. This has been a long time in the making. We have independent costings which provide that validation and the contrast between the two is significant. I think your point about the cost blowouts and the time blowouts in Labor’s plan, I think that is a very real risk, and we’re experiencing it now.
QUESTION:
Mr Dutton, you’re making the economic argument today, but the politics of nuclear can still be divisive. Do you think Australia’s ready for nuclear energy? And can you explain what the next steps would be if you do win the next election; what Australians can expect in the next term of government?
PETER DUTTON:
I think, as Ted pointed out before, our country is at a crossroad, and if you look at every other comparable economy around the world, of course they have adopted or have signed up to a use of nuclear energy. We just can’t pretend anymore that part time power is going to run a full time economy. We have to make the decisions that are in our country’s best interests, and it takes the strength of the Coalition to be able to do that because we’re better economic managers. Labor can’t manage money, which is what we’re seeing in the economy at the moment – particularly in Victoria.
If we look at the international experience – in Asia, in North America, in Europe, all of these countries have recognised the fact, firstly, that there is no hope of achieving net zero by 2050 without nuclear in the system firming up renewables. I think it’s a really important point to make. President Macron has said this, President Biden said this, Keir Starmer has said this, Prime Minister Trudeau has pointed this out, and, as we saw the recent COP gathering, all of those countries and many more have signed up to more nuclear into their system.
I think Australians are smarter than what the Prime Minister credits. I think Australians are well-read, they understand what’s happening internationally, and they understand that the latest technology nuclear is zero emissions, it’s going to provide 24/7 baseload power so we don’t get the Labor blackouts and it’s going to bring prices down by 44 per cent compared to Labor’s cost, which will be the difference between families being able to pay their bills and not. It’ll be the difference between pensioners whether they can keep the lights on and keep their air conditioning running over summer. It will make the difference for that small business at the moment, which is closing under Labor and their 100 per cent renewables policy.
QUESTION:
So, if you started building the first nuclear plant in this scheme today, tomorrow, let’s say, it’s 12 years from now until 2036 when it’s supposed to be switched on. Has there ever been a nuclear plant built that quickly? There are many, you know – the UK has tried to do that and it’s years out of date with its project, years behind schedule for its project, the US has trying to do the same thing and it’s years behind. Why would we will be able to action all of that in 12 years?
PETER DUTTON:
I’ll let Ted add to this, but again, I think we should look at the international experience. Now, you can take a scenario where there’s a bespoke approach and thousands of system and design changes, which does blow out the cost and the time to acquire the technology to introduce nuclear power. That’s not what we’re proposing here. We want a proven technology. We want the ability to use the latest generation zero emissions technology, and we can do that on the timelines. That’s the advice of the experts. The timelines are much more achievable with a bipartisan position similar to what was adopted in AUKUS. Now, to Anthony Albanese’s credit at the time, when he was Opposition Leader, he supported the deal we signed up to with the United States and the United Kingdom on the nuclear propelled submarine deal. He said it was safe, he said that he was satisfied that we could safely dispose of the waste as well, and that’s what the Government should do now and what we’re doing here.
We provided leadership in relation to AUKUS to secure our country and the safety of our country for decades and generations to come. We’re now putting forward a plan which will secure our economy and provide an underpinning with an energy system that will drive jobs and growth in the economy for generations to come, and we can achieve those timelines in a more condensed way, if Labor is able to follow the leadership that we’ve given.
Unfortunately, the Labor Party is led by a very weak and incompetent Prime Minister at the moment, but I think that’s not far off changing. So, Ted, you might add to that.
TED O’BRIEN:
Thanks Peter.
On timelines, the Coalition’s plan is consistent with the international average timelines. It is consistent with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s advice. The construction period is consistent with the Albanese Government’s Nuclear Technology Agency’s advice. So our plan is consistent with the best advice that you can receive – both domestically and internationally.
I think it’s notable that Tony Irwin, who commissioned the nuclear plant that we have for medical isotopes in Sydney, says that in fact that plant is a far more complicated one to stand up than a standard power plant. He’s also commissioned eight nuclear power plants around the world, and he’s made it very clear that when it comes to the one that we’ve already done in Sydney – a nuclear reactor – that was done on time and on budget and within ten years.
QUESTION:
You claim that the capital cost is 44 per cent cheaper than Labor’s plan, by how much do you calculate the price of people’s electricity – the consumer – will reduce? And what are the timeframes for that?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’ll have more to say about our energy policy in relation to the near term, because it’s incredibly important that people get help now and we’re determined to do that. As we said before, the Government has ramped up electricity prices after promising to reduce it by $275, and people are now paying $1,000 more than what Labor had promised, and that is just the start. Let’s be very clear about it. Another three years, particularly of a Labor-Greens Government, is going to see escalation in electricity and grocery and gas prices like our country hasn’t seen before. So, there’s a near-term picture of support that we need to address and we’ll talk more about that. In relation to the work that’s been done – the independent costings that we’ve got today – it shows that 44 per cent of cost differential, so 44 per cent cheaper under the Coalition’s energy plan than Labor’s energy plan, over the period of implementation, and lower emissions from 2050 on under our plan as well. It’s important to point out. So, if you look at the work of Frontier, it shows that in black and white, and Ted, you might add to that as well.
TED O’BRIEN:
Indeed. I think it’s fair and reasonable that over time, prices reflect cost. What Frontier Economics has shown is that the cost difference is $263 billion through to 2050. So compared to Labor, will the Coalition be delivering cheaper power prices? Yes, they will.
QUESTION:
Is there modelling on that?
TED O’BRIEN:
The modelling goes to the cost of the total system between Labor’s approach of renewables-only and the Coalition’s approach, and so it’s a cost modelling all the way through to 2050.
QUESTION:
But no projections on the power prices that people will [inaudible]?
TED O’BRIEN:
No, it’s not a pricing analysis, but as Frontier Economics makes it very clear in the report, that prices ultimately reflect costs over time and therefore the 44 per cent difference in the cost between Labor’s approach and the Coalition’s approach, it is fair to assume that it would be comparable when it comes to price differential over that period of time.
QUESTION:
Could subsidies be on the table during that expensive construction phase? Subsidies on people’s power bills?
TED O’BRIEN:
Look, when it comes to the construction of the power plants, that’s fully built into our modelling without any consideration for subsidisation.
QUESTION:
Capital costs blew out on almost all recent nuclear projects around the world – in Finland, the US, France, the UK, the US, of a range between 1.7 to 3.4 times. What guarantee can you give that that won’t happen in your plan? And on the timeline, that assumes you would work with the states to override the current ban on nuclear power. What progress have you made since you made your announcement six months ago?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, we’re in opposition, so we’re not in position to be negotiating contracts with State Governments that have been elected, so that…
QUESTION:
Are you confident you’d be able to get them [inaudible]?
PETER DUTTON:
I’m very confident that we can, and I think Peter Malinauskas would be the first to sign up, because today is a great day for Peter Malinauskas because he always said that his only concerned about nuclear was cost, and so I think all of that concern he had disappears today, evaporates. So, Peter Malinauskas has said that there’s no safety concerns about nuclear. He believes very strongly in nuclear because he’s been a great advocate for Osborne and the nuclear submarine industry that will be created that he’s a great champion of in South Australia. So, I look forward to working with him very closely, and of course the other Premiers as well.
In relation to the cost, there’s an assumption of $10,000 a kW in the assumption that Danny Price has used in the capital cost. Now, that is higher than the costs that the CSIRO has adopted, and both modellers, obviously, have looked at the international experience. So, I feel confident about where we are. We’ve not provided any radical approach or departure from the learned experience, and I think if you look at some of the individual sites that you’ve sort of cited in your question, there’s again thousands and thousands of variations in some of those sort of purpose-built arrangements. That’s not what we’re proposing here. We could have decided when we were in government to build an Australia made nuclear submarine. We didn’t do that. We used the existing technology from the Americans and from the Brits, and that’s why it’s a sensible proposal, both in terms of the nuclear propulsion system for the submarines and the latest technology that we want to adopt under this model as well.
QUESTION:
Given the reason 90 per cent of coal generation is due to close over the next ten years is economic rather than technical, how would the Coalition ensure that they stay feasible over that time? Would subsidies need to be considered to keep them open through that transition time?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, that’s of course, it’s a good question because of course that’s what’s happening now. Labor Governments in New South Wales and in Victoria – and perhaps under the Palaszczuk Government here, but under the LNP Government in Queensland – so in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, the State Governments are all negotiating or have negotiated an extension of the coal fired power station sites because they know without that the lights are going out, and so that is already happening.
As I say, our priority is to make sure that pensioners can keep their air conditioners running through summer, to keep their heaters on during winter, to make sure that small businesses can afford to pay their power bills, and we will do whatever it takes to make sure that the cost of electricity in our country is reasonable, and, at the next election, the Prime Minister is only promising to further increase electricity costs.
What Labor’s doing in the energy policy at the moment is killing the economy. It is really doing a lot of damage, and long-term. So that overbuild that I spoke about before is already being reflected in people’s electricity bills, and this is why we’re paying three times the cost for electricity in our country compared to other markets, where they do have a renewables plus nuclear mix, which is our plan.
QUESTION:
Would you expect to have to support these coal generators to stay open? And is that factored in the price?
PETER DUTTON:
Well we’ve, as I say, there’s not a great deal of transparency around the contracted arrangements – and Ted, you might have some more detail on this – but I think the Victorian Government, for example, has refused to release that detail and WA I think there are similar discussions going on. I’m not sure whether a deal has been arrived at or not, but there’s obviously been a commercial payment that’s been made that hasn’t been declared, but there are reasonable assumptions in relation to that in this work.
TED O’BRIEN:
Yeah. Peter’s right. There is zero transparency around the contracts at the moment, but we do know that the New South Wales Labor Government has extended Eraring, we know the Victorian Labor Government has extended Yallourn, and where there’s been transparency, it’s actually the newly-elected LNP Government in Queensland that is investing in its current fleet.
This is the problem, I think, when you have candidly a cowardly Prime Minister, who’s not prepared to be upfront with the Australian people. We can’t afford for lights to go out, and there’s a reason why some of the State Governments are needing to extend coal.
Our approach is completely different. We are putting the people at the centre and the priority is to get prices down, and that means you cannot close coal plants prematurely. The lights go out and the prices go up. Now, if Anthony Albanese and Chris Bowen want to continue to be cowardly and not have that conversation with the Australian people, well that’s on them. But it also explains why we’re in such a mess we are today.
QUESTION:
You appear to be assuming a weaker future economy than under Labor, and also one that sees households relying longer and more on petrol, cars, and gas heating, just to name a few. The cost of which you haven’t actually included in your model. How is that credible?
TED O’BRIEN:
So, let’s be clear about what we have modelled: Frontier Economics has done the work independently, and they have modelled the integrated system plan, and so they basically modelled what Labor has been modelling. So, if people say some things have been excluded – such as the cost of EVs and home batteries – well, that’s because Labor’s modelling excludes that. So, in order for us to compare their model to our model, of course we had to adopt some of those basic assumptions.
Secondly, then when it comes to the ambition for the Australian economy, if you have a look at what the assumptions are about Labor’s plan, Labor is assuming that 98 per cent of all new vehicle sales will be EVs. They are basically assuming that the Australian people will be forced to behave in the way that the Labor Party want them to behave. We have a very different approach to that. We can still reach net zero by respecting the choices of the Australian people.
Now, the increase in electricity use under the Coalition – we have adopted AEMO’s recommended scenario of the progressive scenario – so Labor thinks it can go far higher. Labor thinks, for example, that 25 per cent of the electricity generation today will be needed to produce green hydrogen within the next couple of decades. So Labor is basing their entire rollout on a fantasy. But here’s the problem: they’re locking Australia into a spend. Once money is spent, it can’t be unspent. They are going to be rolling out tens of thousands of kilometres of transmission lines. We’ve already heard from the Minister that he wants 22,000 solar panels installed, 40 wind turbines a month, all the way through to 2030, basically carpeting Australia. Why? Because Labor believes they can force the hand of every Australian to behave the way Labor wants them to behave, to electrify exactly how Labor wants them to electrify. What happens with an overbuild is someone has to pay for it – and it’s typically consumers or taxpayers.
Now, the approach that we have taken, again is a demand profile for electricity that the market operator has also recommended is very feasible. One that’s far more realistic and one that actually has a more ambitious growth in energy use than our historical past in Australia. So that’s the difference – ours is realistic, theirs is a fantasy.
QUESTION:
You are relying on coal and gas, which has shot up – both prices have shot up – over the past few years. So why should we trust that this is going to work?
TED O’BRIEN:
So, if you look at the modelling from Frontier Economics, you see that one of the reasons you have a cheaper grid and this is shown all around the world is you need to maintain a form of always-on, 24/7 baseload power. Now, if it’s not coal, well, it’s got to be nuclear. This is why we need to maintain that 24/7 baseload power, because these big power stations which are always on, they last a long time and you can spread the costs over a long time, and if well-managed and if well-planned, they can keep prices down.
Let’s not forget, at the turn of the century, Australia had one of the cheapest electricity prices in the industrialised world. Now we have among the highest. Now, if you look at one thing that keeps prices down, it’s that always-on, 24/7 baseload power, which is why renewables have an important role to play, they will continue to play an important role as part of a balanced energy mix, but you cannot base an entire economy on part-time electricity. We need full-time power. Australians and businesses need to be able to turn the lights on, turn the machines on, when they need it, and in order to do so, you must have that 24/7, always-on baseload power. Right now, that’s coal, and, in the future, it’ll be zero emissions nuclear energy.
QUESTION:
Just a point of clarification; is it the case that your plan will have less power demand in 2050 than under Labor’s assumption. Is that the case?
TED O’BRIEN:
We are assuming that Labor’s demand profile is too high. We believe, in fact, it could never be achieved, because as Labor continues to build out this fantastical programme that it has, prices are only going to keep out through the roof, businesses won’t even be here to use the electricity they suggest is going to be used. Again, Frontier Economics has done the work on this and they have proven that time and time again there has been overly optimistic projections for energy. We believe that a more realistic pathway, that the market operator itself has identified, is the progressive pathway. Far more ambitious than our past as a nation, but it avoids us over-capitalising, over-spending, and that’s one of the problems we see with Labor’s plan.
QUESTION:
Isn’t there a risk, though, that further down the road, you will have to make up for any shortfall that, you know, there might be a massive take up in EVs in the coming years. Has that factored in at all?
TED O’BRIEN:
It has factored in, and again, based on all the trajectories we see today in the real world, then the progressive scenario is by far the more realistic one. Again, I go back to Frontier Economics. They don’t muck around. They’re absolutely straight when it comes to their advice, and they have been completely supportive of this. That, in reality, we are not going to need the amount of energy Labor’s talking about. If Labor truly thinks it’s going to force every Australian to do exactly what they want, behave how they want, Australia is going to be a poor, weak economy moving forward; an economy that won’t have a need for anywhere near the energy that we’re talking about.
QUESTION:
Briefly switching topics then – very briefly – given rising anti-Semitism, is it time for all politicians to tone down their language and look for points of commonality? Given the ASIO boss, Mike Burgess, says inflamed language leads to inflamed tensions.
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I think if you look at the last 14 months, it’s been a period of shame in our country, where we’ve allowed anti-Semitism to emerge and to flourish. It’s something we should, as a nation, really reflect on.
This Christmas, there are a lot of Australians of Jewish heritage who have been in our country for a long time – including some Holocaust survivors – who are thinking about leaving our country because they feel it’s unsafe to live here.
The Prime Minister had an opportunity to provide leadership and to show that strength of leadership and to be very definite about it, when the steps of the Sydney Opera House were occupied by an unruly mob chanting anti-Semitic chants. The Prime Minister had the chance over the last 14 months to step up and to intervene in the months and months and months of campus protests that we saw at our universities, where people were waving the flags of listed terrorist organisations. The Prime Minister has had the chance to do that. The Prime Minister has had the chance at the United Nations to show leadership and to stand with our allies to support the only democracy in the Middle East – a country that’s given us intelligence that saved the lives of Australians and Australian Defence Force personnel. He didn’t do any of that.
So, the Prime Minister is out there now trying to make up lost ground, but the problem that the Prime Minister’s got is that he’s created a huge mess in our country. He’s made us less safe as a country, he’s made us less prosperous, he’s made a future less certain for Australian families, and I think three more years of this is just something that our country can’t afford.
People are not better off today than they were two-and-a-half years ago, and you can imagine how bad off they will be and how bad our country will be after three more years of a Labor Government led by Anthony Albanese.
QUESTION:
Are these small modular reactors or large-scale facilities?
PETER DUTTON:
So we’ve said, as we’ve said previously, in South Australia and Western Australia, small modular reactors, and then the bigger technology because you get a greater efficiency, you’ve got capacity on that distribution network, and ultimately, we’ll take advice in relation to the best technology to deliver the lowest cost of electricity at each of those sites. Thank you very much.
TED O’BRIEN:
Thanks very much.
[ends]