By PHILIP HOPKINS
THE Coalition has reaffirmed that nuclear power will be a part of its energy platform at the next federal election.
The Leader of the Nationals, David Littleproud, said after the last election, the National Party left the Coalition until there was certainty over a technology agnostic approach to the energy grid that includes nuclear energy.
“It’s as simple as that. It will be in some form part of the grid that we will take to the next election. And you can’t run an economy of the scale, size of Australia on an all-renewables approach,” he told Sky News in an interview.
“Portugal and Spain had a red hot crack. They got to 77 per cent renewables and they lost their grid for over a week-and-a-half. We need baseload power.”
Mr Littleproud said Anthony Albanese’s scare campaign at the last election was a $600 billion lie. Frontier Economics showed that the total grid – 38 per cent nuclear energy, 50 per cent renewables and the balance was coal and gas – was $331 billion.
“And now we see that their all-renewables approach will be well beyond $1.3 trillion,” he said.
“The government’s not prepared to tell us what this all-renewable madness will be…. we are deindustrialising our country.
“And unless the adults take back ownership and get some baseload power back into the grid where the rest of the world is following particularly with nuclear energy, we’re going to be left behind and we’re going to be poorer for it. “
While the Liberals seem to have come on board with nuclear, he indicated the Coalition had not settled on net zero. Mr Littleproud said he would like to settle the position sooner rather than later.
“Net zero isn’t the only way in which to reduce emissions. This Labor net zero is destroying our country. And net zero has become more about trying to achieve the impossible rather than doing what’s sensible,” he said.
“What’s sensible is not going down an all-renewables path to give us baseload power, to understand that we can’t mitigate reduction of emissions across the globe when we’re only a bit over one per cent. And when the rest of the world isn’t doing the heavy lifting, particularly China, the United States and India, our country is being pegged and disadvantaged by a pledge that is deindustrialising our country and without any common sense. “
Mr Littleproud said The Nationals would finalise their position.
“(Senator) Matt Canavan is working through those processes for us now in terms of making sure that we have the real data, and then we’ll work in with the Liberals and hopefully get them to a position that they can settle sooner rather than later. But part of that will have to be a sensible energy policy that includes nuclear energy,” he said.
