Interview with Ashleigh Gillon, Sky News

ASHLEIGH GILLON: Joining us with more reaction now is Assistant Climate Change and Energy Minister Jenny McAllister. Appreciate your time, thank you. This proposal from Mr Dutton isn't suggesting we go all in on nuclear and dump renewables, but that it be among the suite of technologies we use in Australia. Why shouldn't we go down that path, as many other countries have done so in terms of embracing nuclear as part of the mix alongside renewables, to really have a longer-term plan to cut emissions in this country?

SENATOR JENNY McALLISTER, ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY: Hi Ashley, nice to see you. We have a really quite immediate challenge. When the previous government was in office, they allowed four gigawatts of dispatchable capacity to leave the system and only 1 gigawatt came on. And it means that we have a very significant challenge now to replace all of those older coal-fired power generators that are coming to the ends of their life and becoming increasingly unreliable and will mostly exit the system by 2035. The plan outlined today does absolutely nothing to deal with that challenge and the consequence of that, if Peter Dutton was elected and went through with this plan, it would be a less reliable system and a less affordable system in this critical window between now and 2035, when we've actually got a lot of work to.

GILLON: There are clearly a few hurdles to get through. Community consultation, getting through the state premiers. We've been outlining some of the challenges facing the Coalition already on the program this afternoon. One of the issues would be that Peter Dutton would need to tear up Australia's nuclear ban to actually make this happen. Is there actually any reason in 2024 why we need a ban on nuclear? Your side of politics clearly doesn't think nuclear makes sense on an economic scale. But is there any actual need these days for a ban on nuclear to continue?

McALLISTER: The biggest problem with all of this is that it is a very dangerous and risky distraction from the task right in front of us, which is twofold, to secure the reliability of the national electricity market at a time when there are a lot of older assets coming to the end of their life, and also to make sure that Australian communities right around the country can reap the benefits of the global transition to net zero. There are countries all around the world that are interested in green hydrogen, in green metals, in green ammonia. But getting to a point where our communities can benefit from that requires us to start transitioning our electricity system now. The Coalition's plan, and I'll come back to that because it's not much of a plan, suggests even by their own calculations, that they will not be ready to switch on one of these machines until 2035 or 2037. It is way too late. There's a reliability challenge that we need to meet now and there's an economic opportunity that we need to grasp now. And the material put into the public domain by the Leader of the Opposition this morning meets neither of those tests.

GILLON: Okay. We're very clear on the fact that Labor thinks that this plan unveiled by Peter Dutton is hopeless and doesn't make economic sense. But in terms of that actual ban on nuclear, do you have any opposition to actually lifting the ban on nuclear in terms of having it as an option in the mix?

McALLISTER: The objection is that it is a distraction and you've got to start to wonder whether it isn't a deliberate distraction.

GILLON: That's not a reason [inaudible] is it?

McALLISTER: Mr Dutton wanted to have an adult conversation about nuclear and he said that nearly two years ago today they announced a list of places. They didn't say what technology they would propose to use in those places, small-scale modular reactors or large reactors. They didn't say how much it would cost. They didn't say where the labour force or the technology would come from to produce these. They didn't actually even say how many gigawatts of energy it would add to the system. And they certainly didn't lay out a plan for what they would do between now and 2035, the critical period when we need to deal with all of the problems that accumulated in the energy system when they were last in government. Now we are rolling out a plan to actually deal with all of these problems. Four gigawatts left the system, only one came on during the period that they were government. It's a significant challenge, but we're up to it. We are working with industry, working with communities and putting in place the policy settings that will let us meet our targets and move towards a much more sustainable, reliable and affordable system for Australians that will underpin the economic opportunities that come with a global transition to net zero.

GILLON: Jenny McAllister, appreciate your reaction to that policy. Thanks so much for your time.

McALLISTER: Thanks, Ashleigh.