Interview with Tom Connell, Sky News

TOM CONNELL (HOST): Welcome back. The Coalition has finally unveiled its nuclear costings. It's talking about its plan, which will cost more than $300 billion, but also saying Labor’s will be even more. Joining me now is Assistant Climate Change and Energy Minister Josh Wilson. Thank you for your time. Your 30 second reaction, if I can start with that, on what's been announced today.

JOSH WILSON: We can understand why it took them so long to release this ridiculous set of costings. And they've done it on Friday the 13th in the shadow of Christmas. Sometimes you look at things like this and you try and find one thing that stands out as being poor. In this case, your eyes are literally assaulted by all the ugly bits and pieces. I mean, it's one of the ropiest bits of policy proposition I've ever seen. And it just reinforces the incredible risk that Peter Dutton sort of offers to the Australian people. I mean, if he got the chance to inflict that policy on Australia, households and businesses would be paying for it for decades and decades and decades.

CONNELL: Ok, in terms of what they're saying around Labor's policy, I mean, so far that big commitment to cut power bills that Chris Bowen announced didn't happen. Is that damaging to you that the transition cost has a big question mark next to it?

WILSON: Well, we're picking up the pieces, aren't we. We're cleaning up the mess after a government that didn't manage to have a national energy policy for three terms and actually saw a reduction of energy generation in the Australian system. So, we've come to government at the time of global inflation spike and the war in Ukraine with that mess that the coalition left to us, and we are getting Australia on track. We've taken measures straight away to deliver energy price relief to households, to put a cap on gas prices, both things that the coalition actually opposed. And we are building towards a better future. And a better future involves the cheapest form of energy, which is renewables. The most expensive form of energy, in addition to being the slowest, most uncommercial, inflexible, uninsurable form of energy, is nuclear. And it is bizarre when you look at this, a policy proposal. The sort of the numerical trickery that is involved in them coming up with a number that is notionally lower than the path we're on is astounding. When you start from the fact that their plan presumes that Australia will use 30% less energy in 2050. It's kind of like they're saying, hey, look, we can build a cheaper house than what is currently on offer, provided the bricks are completely free and you don't have a roof. That's essentially what they're trying to put before the Australian people. It is a fraud. It is a con.

CONNELL: Well, that's part of it. That's part of it. The other aspect is, for example, that if you have more baseload, you need less overall. That's true, isn't it? If you go down a higher renewable path, you actually need more renewables to allow for the fact that they're not always working, there's not always sun or wind. So, that aspect I'm not expecting you to agree with the final dollar amount. The two sides are not going to. But there is a logic to that, is there not?

WILSON: No, there isn't, Tom, and I don't know where that's come from. There isn't a logic. The assumption, in order to come up with a number that they hope might fool some Australians in the hope that they could treat the Australian community as idiots, is that we will need 30% less total available power in 2050. And that is just fundamentally wrong. But in addition to that, it's based on the most wildly optimistic assumptions about the cost and delivery timetable for nuclear. It presumes that the energy needs of the entire states of Western Australia and South Australia will be met by a technology that doesn't exist in the form of small modular reactors. The project that was the darling of the coalition, the darling of Ted O'Brien, the NuScale project has gone up in a puff of smoke. The CEO of NuScale said that when you realise you're riding a dead horse, it's time to dismount. That project, delay after delay and cost increase after cost increase until it went bust and it took $900 million of US taxpayers funds with it. And yet that is the proposition that they …

CONNELL: Let me jump in, not much time. I want to get a couple more in. The need for less energy. So, this is the step change versus the progressive AEMO-modelled both of these, one I think had a 43% chance, other 42. So, if the Coalition is going to 42% chance, that's hardly pie in the sky stuff, is it?

WILSON: Everything in it is pie in the sky. I mean the proposition, Tom, one number people should hold onto, is that they are saying that in 2050, 38% of Australia's electricity will be provided by nuclear, 38%. In the United States right now it's eighteen and a half percent. It's fallen to a 25-year low.

CONNELL: The question is around AEMO’s assumption.

WILSON: Let me just finish on this point because this thing is shot through. They they have taken the proposition that AEMO and ISP have put out, which is frankly, it's a public document produced by independent market experts and energy experts, and they have tricked it up to come up with one number in the same way that they've tricked up their proposition to come up with something that's miraculously lower. It is a joke, and I do want to finish on that point because it's a very, very serious one. The United States has fallen to a 25-year low in terms of the proportion of nuclear energy in their system. It has contributed around 20% for about the last 40 years. It's fallen to eighteen and a half percent. The United States actually projects that by the time they get 2050 it will fall to 12%. Why? Because nuclear is the most expensive form of power and last year they added 39 gigawatts of new renewables and zero gigawatts of new nuclear. But Peter Dutton reckons Australia's should go from zero to 40%.

CONNELL: Let me ask you finally about Woodside's approval over – I know you're in Cairns, but over in your normal neck of the woods – in WA. Do you agree with the proponents saying this is going to help renewable energy around the world or the study done on this suggesting it might actually displace renewable energy around the world?

WILSON: Oh, look, I guess I'm not going to pass commentary on what a company says about the role of a project that they're seeking to go forward with in relation to how those things are looked at and approved. There should be rigorous environmental approval processes. The Albanese Labor government has done that in the environment space. We're trying to make that stronger with the introduction of an independent EPA in due course. We've certainly done that on the climate side by reforming the Safeguards Mechanism and making sure that Australia is on the legislated path to 2050. But I would expect that with that project, as with all projects, that it's subject to proper, rigorous assessment processes.

CONNELL: Josh Wilson, appreciate your time. Thank you.

WILSON: Thanks, Tom.