Division Description Changes — Bills — National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2022; Consideration in Detail — 9th Mar 2023

Change	Division
representatives vote 2023-03-09#2 Edited by mackay staff on 2023-03-17 09:37:13	Title Bills — National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2022; Consideration in Detail National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2022 - Consideration in Detail - Prohibited investments Description ~~<p class="speaker">Adam Bandt</p>~~ ~~<p>I move:</p>~~ The majority voted in favour of an [amendment](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debates/?id=2023-03-09.5.1) introduced by Melbourne MP Adam Bandt (Greens), which means it will now be included in the bill. Mr Bandt [explained that](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2023-03-09.5.2): > Public money should not go to making the climate crisis worse, and public money should not be invested in coal, gas or the destruction of our native forests. That is what people across this country expect. What we have seen in the past is that when government bodies are established that allow the government to invest, previous governments have tried to use that money to support making the climate crisis worse. The Liberals even tried to use the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Renewable Energy Authority to finance coal and gas! So we know that governments need to be stopped from financing the climate crisis and making it worse. ### Amendment text > (1) Clause 63, page 39 (after line 3), at the end of the clause, add: > > Prohibited investments > > (3) An investment for the purposes of the Corporation's investment functions must not relate to any of the following: > >> (a) an activity that involves the extraction of coal or gas; >> >> (b) an activity that involves the construction of coal or gas infrastructure; >> >> (c) a project or product that involves the logging of Australian native forests; >> >> (d) an activity the carrying out of which is inconsistent with Australia's greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. > > (4) In this section: > >> Australia's greenhouse gas emission s reduction targets means: >> >> (a) if: >> >>> (i) Australia's current nationally determined contribution was communicated in accordance with Article 4 of the Paris Agreement in June 2022; and >>> >>> (ii) that nationally determined contribution has not been adjusted in accordance with paragraph 11 of Article 4 of the Paris Agreement; >>> >>> the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets set out in paragraphs 10(1)(a) and (b) of the Climate Change Act 2022; or >> >> (b) in any other case—the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets included in: >> >>> (i) Australia's current nationally determined contribution communicated in accordance with Article 4 of the Paris Agreement; or >>> >>> (ii) if that nationally determined contribution has been adjusted in accordance with paragraph 11 of Article 4 of the Paris Agreement—that nationally determined contribution, as adjusted and in force from time to time. > > Paris Agreement means the Paris Agreement, done at Paris on 12 December 2015, as amended and in force for Australia from time to time. > > Note: The Agreement is in Australian Treaty Series 2016 No. 24 ([2016] ATS 24) and could in 2023 be viewed in the Australian Treaties Library on the AustLII website (http://www.austlii.edu.au). <p class="italic">(1) Clause 63, page 39 (after line 3), at the end of the clause, add:</p> ~~<p class="italic"> <i>Prohibited investments</i></p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">(3) An investment for the purposes of the Corporation's investment functions must not relate to any of the following:</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">(a) an activity that involves the extraction of coal or gas;</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">(b) an activity that involves the construction of coal or gas infrastructure;</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">(c) a project or product that involves the logging of Australian native forests;</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">(d) an activity the carrying out of which is inconsistent with Australia's greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">(4) In this section:</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic"><i>Australia's greenhouse gas emission</i> <i>s reduction targets</i> means:</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">(a) if:</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">(i) Australia's current nationally determined contribution was communicated in accordance with Article 4 of the Paris Agreement in June 2022; and</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">(ii) that nationally determined contribution has not been adjusted in accordance with paragraph 11 of Article 4 of the Paris Agreement;</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets set out in paragraphs 10(1)(a) and (b) of the <i>Climate Change Act 2022</i>; or</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">(b) in any other case—the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets included in:</p>~~ ~~<p class="italic">(i) Australia's current nationally determined contribution communicated in accordance with Article 4 of the Paris Agreement; or</p>~~ <p class="italic">(ii) if that nationally determined contribution has been adjusted in accordance with paragraph 11 of Article 4 of the Paris Agreement—that nationally determined contribution, as adjusted and in force from time to time.</p> ~~<p class="italic"><i>Paris Agreement</i> means the Paris Agreement, done at Paris on 12 December 2015, as amended and in force for Australia from time to time.</p>~~ <p class="italic">Note: The Agreement is in Australian Treaty Series 2016 No. 24 ([2016] ATS 24) and could in 2023 be viewed in the Australian Treaties Library on the AustLII website (http://www.austlii.edu.au).</p> <p>For clarity, the amendment is that after line 3 at the end of clause 63, on page 39, add: 'Prohibited investments. (3) an investment of a corporation body must not: (a) directly finance the extraction of coal or natural gas; or (b) directly finance the construction of pipeline infrastructure primarily for the extraction of natural gas; or (c) directly finance the logging of native forests; and (4) in this section 'native forest' does not include a plantation, and "plantation" means an intensively managed stand of trees that is created by the regular placement of seedlings or seed.'</p> <p>Public money should not go to making the climate crisis worse, and public money should not be invested in coal, gas or the destruction of our native forests. That is what people across this country expect. What we have seen in the past is that when government bodies are established that allow the government to invest, previous governments have tried to use that money to support making the climate crisis worse. The Liberals even tried to use the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Renewable Energy Authority to finance coal and gas! So we know that governments need to be stopped from financing the climate crisis and making it worse.</p> <p>We know that amendments which were put in the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and which were agreed to by the Greens and Labor stopped the destructive Liberal government from investing in coal and gas that would make the climate crisis worse. Public money should be going to public schools and hospitals, not to coal and gas corporations. But we know that every time money is put aside to increase investment in manufacturing to make the country more resilient that the big corporations will line up with their hands out. They will try to take public money and use it for more coal and gas. That is why the Greens have insisted that if the government wants to establish a fund to support manufacturing in this country—which we support as well; we want to see manufacturing in this country supported, grown and got off its feet—then that money cannot be used for investment in coal and gas, or to destroy native forests. So I'm pleased to advise the chamber that it's my understanding the government will support this amendment and make sure that this does not turn into a slush fund for new coal and gas. On that basis, the Greens are prepared to support this bill.</p> <p>Today is an important day, because today the Greens have stopped public money going to coal and gas, and the destruction of our native forests. We know that has happened in the past but, through this amendment, it will not happen again in the future. This country has massive potential for a revitalised manufacturing industry that thrives in a zero-pollution economy. As we have said, and as we said consistently during the election, in many places the best job for a coalminer is another mining job. We have opportunities to grow green steel in this country, to be world leaders in manufacturing steel without the need to make the climate crisis worse. This amendment, secured today by the Greens, will stop public money going to coal and gas and stop the destruction of our native forests.</p> <p>Of course, part of the reason that Senator Allman-Payne, from Queensland, our spokesperson on this issue, has pushed so hard for this is that, living in Gladstone, she knows that every dollar of public money that is spent on making the climate crisis worse is a dollar that goes away from investment in regional jobs that this country needs to ensure that workers in Gladstone and everywhere around this country can have high-paying, secure jobs as we move to a zero-pollution economy. We can have both. With public investment in public manufacturing we can provide secure futures with high wages for people who are currently working in coal and gas industries. Every dollar from the government that goes to coal and gas takes away from the jobs and wages of workers in regional Queensland and right around the country. That is why this amendment, which I'm pleased to hear the government supports, is so critical to ensuring manufacturing jobs, high wages and tackling the climate crisis.</p> ~~<p class="speaker">Bob Katter</p>~~ <p>I agree with my colleague on the necessity to restrain the exponential growth in CO2. I do not agree with my colleague on abolishing coal. If my honourable colleague seriously thinks this country can do without coal, well, let me point out that we have only three exports: iron ore, coal and gas. We gave the gas away, so we get nothing at all out of it. All these things are worth over a hundred billion dollars. The next things down the list are maybe gold, cattle and aluminium, worth about $15 billion—they were the last time I looked, anyway. So we've got the big three and nothing else. This House gave away one of them for nothing. It gave all the gas away for 6c a unit. We're now buying our own gas back for $49 a unit. I speak with authority because I was the Minister for Mines and Energy in what was then the biggest mining state in Australia—Queensland.</p> <p>Mr Speaker, if you take away coal, you bankrupt this country. Start picking out the hospitals that you're going to close—just pick them out—because there's no money. Already in Queensland, because they've got no money, they've closed, for the first time in 110 years, outpatient services. That's in Queensland, where we were opening up coalmines again and again.</p> <p>There's a second issue here. Von Clausewitz, in the best book on warfare ever written, said that if goods do not cross borders then guns will. If you think a tiny little country of 24 million people, which happens to be Anglo and European, in the middle of Asia is going to tell China and India that they can't have any coal, well, mate, you're asking for trouble—big trouble. And you mustn't have read many history books—I can tell you that!</p> <p>In concession to your point of view: surely, if you're going to let the coal go, you say that all of the stations have to be heli-stations, which halves the amount of coal? Surely you get off your backside and make sure your coal-fired power stations in Australia are converted over? You have to do this—and I'm not being patriotic here—in North Queensland because we've got all the water. I bless the new Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, because she told me the name of the algae that's used. Michael Kelly, who was a prominent minister in this place, was advocating the use of algae some considerable time ago. If you've got a huge area of land and a lot of water, you can take all of the emissions from a coal-fired power station and turn them into a profitable product. So let's not believe that coal is the great evil, when in fact you can convert that coal into food through algae. A great advocate for the environment and dealing with climate change is no less a person than the minister, and the great advocates are now looking at where the answers are. But to cripple Australia and bankrupt Australia is not the answer. And to provoke a fight with China and India is just the act of an imbecile, quite frankly.</p> ~~<p class="speaker">David Gillespie</p>~~ <p>The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2022 is an important bill. It's a no-brainer. We do have to reconstruct our manufacturing capability. It's a matter of national sovereignty and urgency that we rebuild our manufacturing capabilities across a whole range of things. The government are putting up a bill to tip $5 billion in and add another $10 billion, but they have changed the mix of what is going to be supported in the form of either loans, guarantees, equity—all the things that interventionist governments love doing—and a lot of people in business are seeing cheap money. It won't be cheap money if it's borrowed money, where the government has to pay the value of the bonds or the borrowings every year and then try and get money out of their investments or their equity. I certainly agree with the concept that we need to reconstruct manufacturing in this country, expand it. It is value-adding jobs when we use our resources to process them into aluminium, steel, copper—all those things. We are going to process critical minerals for all sorts of things.</p> <p>The common thread in this is that all these things that you want to do with reconstructing manufacturing won't happen unless we have cheap, available energy all the time. The member for Kennedy has just pointed out the bleeding obvious: countries around the world have spent trillions of their nation's wealth—trillions of euros, trillions of US dollars, trillions of Australian dollars—on the mirage of being able to totally get rid of fossil fuels. I hate to disappoint the member from the crossbench, but fossil fuels are part of the modern industrial world. Coal will be needed to make steel.</p> <p>You can replace the use of coal and gas to produce electricity, and something that I want to point out to the ministers on the other side is that the investment mandate is critical. If we are going to spend this money, we need to reconstruct our electricity grid, because it's been moth-eaten away and it's about to collapse. The Callide Power Station in Queensland is still not ready to generate electricity. Liddell is about to be destroyed and, in a couple of years time, Eraring will be, and there will be regular blackouts, because there is no reserve capacity left in our grid to keep our cities working. Keeping everything running—hospitals, refrigeration, food processing, sewerage—relies on constant energy in a grid, and our grid has been moth-eaten away. We will end up like South Africa. Trust me, that is coming soon to a city near you, because Liddell has threatened to close. They have put in for approval to basically disassemble it, blow it up and put a battery there. Instead of 51.5 gigawatts of electricity coming out 95 per cent of the time, there will be a 500-megawatt superbattery. That will be chewed up in a couple of minutes.</p> <p>The other thing is that we should remove the prohibition on nuclear energy, because we know it has the lowest footprint in terms of CO2—lower than wind and solar. I'm not making this up. The United Nations say this. The European Commission for the economy says this. The Nuclear Energy Agency has shown this. There is much less steel, concrete and critical minerals in a nuclear power plant. The waste is very manageable, but we need to remove the prohibition. If we are going to reconstruct our manufacturing, we can have green steel and we can have green aluminium, with nuclear power. Five grams of CO2 per kilowatt—that is lower than wind and solar. There is no destruction of vast parts of the country—our beautiful native forests and mountaintops and plains covered with short-lived renewable energy and mineral-intensive renewable resources. The sun is renewable and the wind is renewable, but solar panels and wind farms are very short lived. So put the money into reconstructing our grid and manufacturing; we'll get cheap energy and will thrive again.</p> ~~<p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>~~

~~Adam Bandt~~
~~I move:~~
The majority voted in favour of an [amendment](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debates/?id=2023-03-09.5.1) introduced by Melbourne MP Adam Bandt (Greens), which means it will now be included in the bill.
Mr Bandt [explained that](https://www.openaustralia.org.au/debate/?id=2023-03-09.5.2):
> *Public money should not go to making the climate crisis worse, and public money should not be invested in coal, gas or the destruction of our native forests. That is what people across this country expect. What we have seen in the past is that when government bodies are established that allow the government to invest, previous governments have tried to use that money to support making the climate crisis worse. The Liberals even tried to use the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Renewable Energy Authority to finance coal and gas! So we know that governments need to be stopped from financing the climate crisis and making it worse.*
### Amendment text
> *(1) Clause 63, page 39 (after line 3), at the end of the clause, add:*
>
> *Prohibited investments*
>
> *(3) An investment for the purposes of the Corporation's investment functions must not relate to any of the following:*
>
>> *(a) an activity that involves the extraction of coal or gas;*
>>
>> *(b) an activity that involves the construction of coal or gas infrastructure;*
>>
>> *(c) a project or product that involves the logging of Australian native forests;*
>>
>> *(d) an activity the carrying out of which is inconsistent with Australia's greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.*
>
> *(4) In this section:*
>
>> *Australia's greenhouse gas emission s reduction targets means:*
>>
>> *(a) if:*
>>
>>> *(i) Australia's current nationally determined contribution was communicated in accordance with Article 4 of the Paris Agreement in June 2022; and*
>>>
>>> *(ii) that nationally determined contribution has not been adjusted in accordance with paragraph 11 of Article 4 of the Paris Agreement;*
>>>
>>> *the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets set out in paragraphs 10(1)(a) and (b) of the Climate Change Act 2022; or*
>>
>> *(b) in any other case—the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets included in:*
>>
>>> *(i) Australia's current nationally determined contribution communicated in accordance with Article 4 of the Paris Agreement; or*
>>>
>>> *(ii) if that nationally determined contribution has been adjusted in accordance with paragraph 11 of Article 4 of the Paris Agreement—that nationally determined contribution, as adjusted and in force from time to time.*
>
> *Paris Agreement means the Paris Agreement, done at Paris on 12 December 2015, as amended and in force for Australia from time to time.*
>
> *Note: The Agreement is in Australian Treaty Series 2016 No. 24 ([2016] ATS 24) and could in 2023 be viewed in the Australian Treaties Library on the AustLII website (http://www.austlii.edu.au).*
(1) Clause 63, page 39 (after line 3), at the end of the clause, add:
~~ Prohibited investments~~
~~(3) An investment for the purposes of the Corporation's investment functions must not relate to any of the following:~~
~~(a) an activity that involves the extraction of coal or gas;~~
~~(b) an activity that involves the construction of coal or gas infrastructure;~~
~~(c) a project or product that involves the logging of Australian native forests;~~
~~(d) an activity the carrying out of which is inconsistent with Australia's greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets.~~
~~(4) In this section:~~
~~Australia's greenhouse gas emission s reduction targets means:~~
~~(a) if:~~
~~(i) Australia's current nationally determined contribution was communicated in accordance with Article 4 of the Paris Agreement in June 2022; and~~
~~(ii) that nationally determined contribution has not been adjusted in accordance with paragraph 11 of Article 4 of the Paris Agreement;~~
~~the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets set out in paragraphs 10(1)(a) and (b) of the Climate Change Act 2022; or~~
~~(b) in any other case—the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets included in:~~
~~(i) Australia's current nationally determined contribution communicated in accordance with Article 4 of the Paris Agreement; or~~
(ii) if that nationally determined contribution has been adjusted in accordance with paragraph 11 of Article 4 of the Paris Agreement—that nationally determined contribution, as adjusted and in force from time to time.
~~Paris Agreement means the Paris Agreement, done at Paris on 12 December 2015, as amended and in force for Australia from time to time.~~
Note: The Agreement is in Australian Treaty Series 2016 No. 24 ([2016] ATS 24) and could in 2023 be viewed in the Australian Treaties Library on the AustLII website (http://www.austlii.edu.au).
For clarity, the amendment is that after line 3 at the end of clause 63, on page 39, add: 'Prohibited investments. (3) an investment of a corporation body must not: (a) directly finance the extraction of coal or natural gas; or (b) directly finance the construction of pipeline infrastructure primarily for the extraction of natural gas; or (c) directly finance the logging of native forests; and (4) in this section 'native forest' does not include a plantation, and "plantation" means an intensively managed stand of trees that is created by the regular placement of seedlings or seed.'
Public money should not go to making the climate crisis worse, and public money should not be invested in coal, gas or the destruction of our native forests. That is what people across this country expect. What we have seen in the past is that when government bodies are established that allow the government to invest, previous governments have tried to use that money to support making the climate crisis worse. The Liberals even tried to use the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Renewable Energy Authority to finance coal and gas! So we know that governments need to be stopped from financing the climate crisis and making it worse.
We know that amendments which were put in the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and which were agreed to by the Greens and Labor stopped the destructive Liberal government from investing in coal and gas that would make the climate crisis worse. Public money should be going to public schools and hospitals, not to coal and gas corporations. But we know that every time money is put aside to increase investment in manufacturing to make the country more resilient that the big corporations will line up with their hands out. They will try to take public money and use it for more coal and gas. That is why the Greens have insisted that if the government wants to establish a fund to support manufacturing in this country—which we support as well; we want to see manufacturing in this country supported, grown and got off its feet—then that money cannot be used for investment in coal and gas, or to destroy native forests. So I'm pleased to advise the chamber that it's my understanding the government will support this amendment and make sure that this does not turn into a slush fund for new coal and gas. On that basis, the Greens are prepared to support this bill.
Today is an important day, because today the Greens have stopped public money going to coal and gas, and the destruction of our native forests. We know that has happened in the past but, through this amendment, it will not happen again in the future. This country has massive potential for a revitalised manufacturing industry that thrives in a zero-pollution economy. As we have said, and as we said consistently during the election, in many places the best job for a coalminer is another mining job. We have opportunities to grow green steel in this country, to be world leaders in manufacturing steel without the need to make the climate crisis worse. This amendment, secured today by the Greens, will stop public money going to coal and gas and stop the destruction of our native forests.
Of course, part of the reason that Senator Allman-Payne, from Queensland, our spokesperson on this issue, has pushed so hard for this is that, living in Gladstone, she knows that every dollar of public money that is spent on making the climate crisis worse is a dollar that goes away from investment in regional jobs that this country needs to ensure that workers in Gladstone and everywhere around this country can have high-paying, secure jobs as we move to a zero-pollution economy. We can have both. With public investment in public manufacturing we can provide secure futures with high wages for people who are currently working in coal and gas industries. Every dollar from the government that goes to coal and gas takes away from the jobs and wages of workers in regional Queensland and right around the country. That is why this amendment, which I'm pleased to hear the government supports, is so critical to ensuring manufacturing jobs, high wages and tackling the climate crisis.
~~Bob Katter~~
I agree with my colleague on the necessity to restrain the exponential growth in CO2. I do not agree with my colleague on abolishing coal. If my honourable colleague seriously thinks this country can do without coal, well, let me point out that we have only three exports: iron ore, coal and gas. We gave the gas away, so we get nothing at all out of it. All these things are worth over a hundred billion dollars. The next things down the list are maybe gold, cattle and aluminium, worth about $15 billion—they were the last time I looked, anyway. So we've got the big three and nothing else. This House gave away one of them for nothing. It gave all the gas away for 6c a unit. We're now buying our own gas back for $49 a unit. I speak with authority because I was the Minister for Mines and Energy in what was then the biggest mining state in Australia—Queensland.
Mr Speaker, if you take away coal, you bankrupt this country. Start picking out the hospitals that you're going to close—just pick them out—because there's no money. Already in Queensland, because they've got no money, they've closed, for the first time in 110 years, outpatient services. That's in Queensland, where we were opening up coalmines again and again.
There's a second issue here. Von Clausewitz, in the best book on warfare ever written, said that if goods do not cross borders then guns will. If you think a tiny little country of 24 million people, which happens to be Anglo and European, in the middle of Asia is going to tell China and India that they can't have any coal, well, mate, you're asking for trouble—big trouble. And you mustn't have read many history books—I can tell you that!
In concession to your point of view: surely, if you're going to let the coal go, you say that all of the stations have to be heli-stations, which halves the amount of coal? Surely you get off your backside and make sure your coal-fired power stations in Australia are converted over? You have to do this—and I'm not being patriotic here—in North Queensland because we've got all the water. I bless the new Minister for the Environment and Water, Tanya Plibersek, because she told me the name of the algae that's used. Michael Kelly, who was a prominent minister in this place, was advocating the use of algae some considerable time ago. If you've got a huge area of land and a lot of water, you can take all of the emissions from a coal-fired power station and turn them into a profitable product. So let's not believe that coal is the great evil, when in fact you can convert that coal into food through algae. A great advocate for the environment and dealing with climate change is no less a person than the minister, and the great advocates are now looking at where the answers are. But to cripple Australia and bankrupt Australia is not the answer. And to provoke a fight with China and India is just the act of an imbecile, quite frankly.
~~David Gillespie~~
The National Reconstruction Fund Corporation Bill 2022 is an important bill. It's a no-brainer. We do have to reconstruct our manufacturing capability. It's a matter of national sovereignty and urgency that we rebuild our manufacturing capabilities across a whole range of things. The government are putting up a bill to tip $5 billion in and add another $10 billion, but they have changed the mix of what is going to be supported in the form of either loans, guarantees, equity—all the things that interventionist governments love doing—and a lot of people in business are seeing cheap money. It won't be cheap money if it's borrowed money, where the government has to pay the value of the bonds or the borrowings every year and then try and get money out of their investments or their equity. I certainly agree with the concept that we need to reconstruct manufacturing in this country, expand it. It is value-adding jobs when we use our resources to process them into aluminium, steel, copper—all those things. We are going to process critical minerals for all sorts of things.
The common thread in this is that all these things that you want to do with reconstructing manufacturing won't happen unless we have cheap, available energy all the time. The member for Kennedy has just pointed out the bleeding obvious: countries around the world have spent trillions of their nation's wealth—trillions of euros, trillions of US dollars, trillions of Australian dollars—on the mirage of being able to totally get rid of fossil fuels. I hate to disappoint the member from the crossbench, but fossil fuels are part of the modern industrial world. Coal will be needed to make steel.
You can replace the use of coal and gas to produce electricity, and something that I want to point out to the ministers on the other side is that the investment mandate is critical. If we are going to spend this money, we need to reconstruct our electricity grid, because it's been moth-eaten away and it's about to collapse. The Callide Power Station in Queensland is still not ready to generate electricity. Liddell is about to be destroyed and, in a couple of years time, Eraring will be, and there will be regular blackouts, because there is no reserve capacity left in our grid to keep our cities working. Keeping everything running—hospitals, refrigeration, food processing, sewerage—relies on constant energy in a grid, and our grid has been moth-eaten away. We will end up like South Africa. Trust me, that is coming soon to a city near you, because Liddell has threatened to close. They have put in for approval to basically disassemble it, blow it up and put a battery there. Instead of 51.5 gigawatts of electricity coming out 95 per cent of the time, there will be a 500-megawatt superbattery. That will be chewed up in a couple of minutes.
The other thing is that we should remove the prohibition on nuclear energy, because we know it has the lowest footprint in terms of CO2—lower than wind and solar. I'm not making this up. The United Nations say this. The European Commission for the economy says this. The Nuclear Energy Agency has shown this. There is much less steel, concrete and critical minerals in a nuclear power plant. The waste is very manageable, but we need to remove the prohibition. If we are going to reconstruct our manufacturing, we can have green steel and we can have green aluminium, with nuclear power. Five grams of CO2 per kilowatt—that is lower than wind and solar. There is no destruction of vast parts of the country—our beautiful native forests and mountaintops and plains covered with short-lived renewable energy and mineral-intensive renewable resources. The sun is renewable and the wind is renewable, but solar panels and wind farms are very short lived. So put the money into reconstructing our grid and manufacturing; we'll get cheap energy and will thrive again.
~~Long debate text truncated.~~