Interview with Prue Bentley, ABC Victoria Statewide Drive

PRUE BENTLEY: The Coalition is expected, as I say, to release its costings this week. So, whose numbers do you trust? Josh Wilson is a WA Labor MP and Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Josh Wilson, good afternoon.

ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY, JOSH WILSON: Good afternoon, Prue. How are you going?

BENTLEY: Yeah, look, I'm well now, the nuclear debate for it in Australia was for a very long time, as Simon was talking about, based on safety and waste and those sorts of things. Cost seems to be now the real sticking point for people. How much it will cost. Is short term cost, though the best metric to decide the most stable energy source for the country in the long term?

WILSON: Well, nuclear isn't necessarily the most stable energy source in the long term. So, we can put that to one side and it's not really about upfront costs. I mean, the GenCost report looks at capital costs and operational costs and lifetime costs. So, it's looking at the entire cost across different kinds of energy. And this is the 6th or 7th edition of the report, which is not put out by governments, put out by the CSIRO and AEMO. You know, they are independent scientific and economic and energy system experts. And in every single one of these reports, they make it clear that nuclear is the most expensive option, in addition to all of the other problems, some of which Simon was talking about.

So, it is, you know, I guess Peter Dutton has to cling on to the wreckage of his one single policy idea, his nuclear fantasy, without detail that he's been promising us for six months. But, you know, I think Australians should put some faith into the public, independent scientific and energy system experts that have stood us in good stead over a long period of time when they make it clear that if we were to ever go down that path, Australian households would pay the price.

BENTLEY: Would we be even talking about this if your government had fixed our gas supply or domestic gas supply shortage? We currently get a lot of gas out of the ground, but we send it all offshore. And gas, your government has even said should be part of the firming.

WILSON: Well, gas is part of the system now and it will be part of the firming for a period longer than coal. But we came to government two years ago to clean up a mess. It was a mess that resulted from a Coalition government that did not for its entire three terms, its entire decade in power, have a national energy policy. And during that period of time, the amount of energy generation in the system declined and coal fired power stations came to the end of life and started to shut. Now that created the crisis that we're dealing with. We are cleaning up that mess while Peter Dutton stands outside and snaps the broom over his knee and throws rocks at the windows and says get on with it. I mean, that's how ridiculous the situation is. You know, you can't very well point the finger at a government that in two years has already increased renewable energy by 25%, which has started to bring down wholesale prices. As we take on the responsible task that Australia 100% needs, I mean, the world is going through an energy transformation, we have the opportunity to be a renewable energy superpower because of our comparative strengths when it comes to renewable energy and innovation and entrepreneurship and all of these things. We were denied that opportunity because we had a government that for ten years did nothing. And we are getting on that path. To have Peter Dutton throw stones from the outside and try to perpetrate this fraud on the Australian people by suggesting that there's this nuclear fairytale in defiance of the science and the economics that will come along in 15 or 16- or 17-years time and make everything better is frankly ridiculous.

BENTLEY: That said, what are we going to use as firming? Because renewables do rely on the sun to shine and the wind to blow and we don't have the sort of storage that is capable of holding all of the energy that we would need for on demand right now. So, gas seems to be the thing that people say should be used, but we just, we don't have enough of it, do we?

WILSON: Well, I think first of all people should hold onto the incredible progress that we've made. I mean, once upon a time when the Labor government early in the 21st century said let's get to 20% renewables, there were people in the Coalition who said that that would never occur. Well, we've got to 40% now. Victoria has tripled the proportion of renewable energy just as a state jurisdiction since 2015 – that is remarkable.

Renewables don't just include wind and solar, and wind and solar are available at different times of the diurnal cycle. There are times when the sun isn't shining, the wind is still blowing and we get a better value range of wind when we start to include offshore wind, which we never saw any of under the previous government, we will now begin to see for the first time under the Albanese government. We also have hydropower which doesn't depend on either the wind or the sun. And then we have battery storage. And one of the really fascinating things and heartening things about the GenCost report is that the cost of long duration battery storage declined by 20% last year. That technology is improving all the time. So, we're on the right path. We've already made huge progress, and we've got much more progress ahead of us as we start to bring in technologies like green hydrogen which again provide that sort of storage capacity. All of those things that will carry us towards a future that we will control, be controlled by Australia, not by foreign nuclear manufacturers. And there's only two or three nuclear manufacturers in the world. Who is it that we're going to be in hock to if we should ever make the disastrous mistake of going down that path? We can control our own future with cleaner, cheaper, self-sufficient Australian made renewable energy. And I think that's the better future that Australians expect.

BENTLEY: I'm speaking with Josh Wilson who is a WA Labor MP and also the Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy. Can we talk about not just the monetary costs but the social cost? Renewables require a lot of transmission line infrastructure and that is having a big impact on community, not to mention the costs of delays. Has that been factored into your plans?

WILSON: Well, absolutely. I mean we were elected with a $20 billion rewiring Australia program. People should remember again, this is another one of the furphies that Peter Dutton likes to push around from a government that did nothing for 10 years. Transmission upgrades are always going to be necessary. It's like our energy system as a whole. You've got old coal fired power stations that are coming to the end of life. You've got an old transmission system that the former government didn't invest in and that needed to happen in any case. And it would certainly need to happen if Peter Dunton's nuclear nightmare ever came true. But we are making that investment because it is part of how you get more renewables and more storage into the system. And we think that that's the responsible thing. If you talk about social costs, though, and those kinds of impacts, I mean, just imagine what it would be like if you suddenly had some of these incredible communities around Australia, including the Latrobe Valley, as it makes this transformation and benefits from all these new technologies and new jobs that are clean and green and part of the sort of future Australia should have, and instead replaces it with nuclear reactors, with all of the risks to environmental and human health that that would involve.

BENTLEY: If Labor does lose the next election, do you believe that the Coalition will have a mandate for nuclear?

WILSON: Well, I don't. I guess I'm not looking at the next contest in those kind of bleak terms. I'm optimistic about the fact that the Australian community made a clear choice in 2022. They'd had a decade of waste and neglect. They decided to turn the corner and to elect a government that was going to look forward, that was going to look to the future and start to invest in the things that allow us to seize all those opportunities to become a renewable energy superpower, show leadership in our region. So, I have faith that the community will back itself in, that it will back in the choice and the change of direction they made in 2022. But people should certainly think, as they go to the ballot box whenever it is next year, that Peter Dutton wants to inflict the nuclear nightmare on Australia as a nation which would not deliver any power for 15 or 16 or 17 years, but if and when it did arrive, would mean $1,200 extra per household and $600 billion out of the Commonwealth budget. That's $600 billion that will not be available for pensions or the social safety net or education or schools or the PBS or any of those things, because unlike renewables, nuclear is uninvestable, it's uninsurable. You know, there's not a dollar of private money that will go into it. It will be entirely paid for by the Australian taxpayers because of a folly that Peter Dutton has come up with in the absence of any better ideas.

BENTLEY: Josh Wilson, thank you for your time today.