Interview with Greg Jennett, ABC Afternoon Briefing

GREG JENNETT: Okay. Well, straight from the House, where we all just witnessed Bill Shorten’s valedictory speech ending his 17 years in Parliament – well, almost ending it, he’s got a little bit to go – Assistant Minister and Member for Fremantle, Josh Wilson joins us now in the studio, Josh, welcome back to the program. Just a quick reflection on Bill Shorten, we may as well do that right off the top, after a big tilt at the prime ministership, not once, but twice, he seems pretty relaxed about his political mortality. Now, what will he be remembered for?

JOSH WILSON: Well, it was lovely to hear Bill Shorten’s reflections on 17 years of contribution in Parliament, and some reflections on the contributions he made to Australian life before that. It was a typically thoughtful, generous and good-humoured, and self-deprecating contribution from Bill. I think it was lovely to have the whole House of Representatives full to hear his look back on the things he had done, and his look forward, because he’s going into a role where, as he sort of said, he’s going to focus on Australia’s future through the future and wellbeing of young people. And that’s in keeping, I think, with his approach to politics and public life. He’ll be remembered for lots of things, obviously going back to his contribution to the Labor movement, the Beaconsfield mine disaster, and then in this place, things like the NDIS, which I’ve no doubt will become, as he said, one of those exceptional features of Australian life as a kind of cornerstone institution that delivers fairness, as does Medicare, as does Australian superannuation, all great Labor reforms.

JENNETT: All right. You’re right, Josh, there was a solid turnout on both sides and up in the galleries too, I noticed. All right, let’s move on to some of your recent work. You’ve been at the UN climate conference known as COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Nuclear has become a bit of a focus, I think, both there and incidentally and accidentally back here in Australia. So, I looked up the International Atomic Energy Agency’s blurb about their activities, and they’re celebrating an SMR, a small modular reactor deal done, there between Google and Kairos Power. The US government shared plans to at least triple US nuclear power capacity by 2050. There’s a long list they put forward there. Does this give you pause for thought about nuclear’s role globally and potentially in this country,

WILSON: Not really. I mean, you mentioned some things. I think at that conference, nuclear was a fringe issue. The primary focus is on dealing with climate change, and the main way that we do that is by massively increasing our investment in clean energy and renewable energy and storage and the kinds of technologies that go with that. That’s clearly in Australia’s best interest, both because we are already affected by climate change. We’re in a region that will be affected by climate change, but we have a lot to gain by the energy transformation and the sort of decarbonised industry opportunities in things like green hydrogen and green metal. So that’s our future. I mean, you know nuclear, the reality of nuclear, the head of the IEA, when he was in Australia, said quite clearly that it had no role here in Australia and globally, it is in decline. It’s important to recognize that it peaked as a proportion of global energy in 1996, that the number of reactors peaked in 2002, that last year the world added 460 gigawatts of non-hydro, new renewables, and nuclear capacity went backwards by one gigawatt. That’s the truth about nuclear, and it’s fair enough that some countries that have had nuclear in the past continue to look at it as making some contribution to their mix. But there’s no place, and no economic case, for it here in Australia,

JENNETT: It could yet peak again, though globally, couldn’t it? Because very clearly in the list that I read over and I briefly touched on only an element of it, there does appear to be a look forward towards the potential of modular reactors, if they prove themselves, you might yet see much higher peaks for nuclear.

WILSON: Nuclear has been an industry that’s been around for a long time. It likes to pretend that it’s always on the cusp of some fantastic new technological revolution, but almost all of the sort of the fairy tales that the nuclear industry has told have failed to come true, and unfortunately, it’s been the nightmares, in the case of Chernobyl and Fukushima that have become the reality. There aren’t yet any functioning SMRs in the world, and the coalition likes to put a lot of time and energy into that particular fantasy in lieu of having a national energy policy or anything that looks like it. But the poster child for SMRs worldwide, and certainly from their point of view – from Ted O’Brien’s point of view – was the SMR project in the United States being undertaken by NuScale.

JENNET: That was the build that’s back?

WILSON: No, that was the, a separate one, another one. But you know, NuScale went down the path that all nuclear projects tend to go, which is very rosy-eyed aspirations that are then followed by lengthy delays, massive cost blowouts, and ultimately, in the case of NuScale, the project collapsed, and it took $900 million of US taxpayers’ funds with it.

JENNETT: All right, look, I do want to get to Future Fund. But one more on COP since you were there, and I’m sure you were advancing the case for Australia to host COP31, along with some Pacific partners. Now, Türkiye remains in the race. Are you getting close to the point of having to admit this won’t be viable for Australia unless Türkiye is to drop out very soon. Simply because it’s a big project to pull together, and you’re under two years now.

WILSON: Oh, well, look, there’ll have to be a COP31 in 2026 and we think that Australia’s case of hosting it with the Pacific is a very, very persuasive one. So, we remain hopeful. As you say, Türkiye has put its hand up, and we respect that. But I can say that while I was at COP, there were some very positive considerations, very strong support from the Pacific, and we think that COP31 would be a fantastic opportunity to help the world see climate change, particularly through the Pacific perspective. The perspective of the Pacific blue continent that we share, this is an area that will be dramatically affected by climate change. It’s an existential risk for many nations in the Pacific, and an existential risk that’s not a long time into the future. And we think that together, Australia and the Pacific are making a very strong case. We hope that that’s resolved in our favour as soon as possible.

JENNETT: Okay, still in the race, then. So, on Future Fund, I don’t need to summarise what the Treasurer has announced today. Is the Future Fund’s book currently under-done for Australian-based energy investments, or, more particularly, clean energy investments?

WILSON: I don’t think that that’s the view, and certainly that’s not the way that the Treasurer has presented it. I mean, the Future Fund actually is a significant investor in solar and wind projects. I think it has something like a billion dollars invested in projects of that kind. It makes it one of the largest investors in those kinds of projects, and that’s a good thing.

JENNETT: So why do they need a mandate?

WILSON: Well, I think it’s, as the Treasurer said, that the Future Fund is a really important and successful feature of institutional life in Australia. But, we should always look at those things in terms of how we can make them better and stronger in future. And all the Treasurer has done, and the Finance Minister has done, is ensure that when the board makes its independent decisions, taking the exact same response to risk and return as it always has done, prioritizing stability of investment and high return to the Fund, it should look at the potential of investing in those kind of priority areas, all other things being equal. And that’s a good thing, because they’re in Australia’s best interest.

JENNETT: All right, that’s the case made. I think we got the response from the Fund as well that they adopted this. And we’ll go forward.

WILSON: I’ll just say, is it at all surprising that Angus Taylor basically says ‘no, no, no, no, no’? I mean, has there literally been anything in the last two and a half years of this Parliament that the coalition has been prepared to take a faintly constructive approach to? I just think it’s bewildering.

JENNETT: All right. Well, we’ll take that up with subsequent guests on this program. Josh Wilson, really appreciate it as always. Thanks.

WILSON: Thanks, Greg.