Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Low Emissions Future) Bill 2025

Senator ASKEW (Tasmania—Chief Opposition Whip in the Senate) (15:54): I move: That this bill be now read a second time. I seek leave to table an explanatory memorandum relating to the bill. Leave granted.

Senator ASKEW: I table an explanatory memorandum and seek leave to have the second reading speech incorporated in Hansard. Leave granted. The speech read as follows— The Environment and Other Legislation Amendment (Low Emissions Future) Bill 2025 (Low Emissions Future Bill)will enable Australia to meet our international climate targets and deliver the low emissions future that Australians want.

This Bill lifts blanket bans and restores the option to consider nuclear energy on its merits. Specifically, it does three things: lifts the moratorium on nuclear energy, removes investment prohibitions and enables research and support. To lift the moratorium, the Bill repeals section 10 of the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act 1998 and repeals several sections of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999.

These reforms would enable nuclear development while preserving environmental and radiological safety controls. It enables the option for investment by amending the Clean Energy Finance Corporation Act 2012 to repeal the existing section 62, removing "nuclear technology" and "nuclear power" from the list of prohibited technologies, allowing the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) to potentially invest, provided other criteria are met.

Finally, it allows research and support by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), by amending the Australian Renewable Energy Agency Act 2011 to allow ARENA to exercise its functions in relation to "clean emissions energy technologies", which includes civil nuclear energy and nuclear technologies. This means ARENA would be able to advise the Minister on nuclear technologies, and work towards improving the competitiveness and increasing the supply of clean emissions energy technologies in Australia.

These amendments will put Australia on a path to lower emissions, led by competitive markets and private enterprise. Which, let's face it, if Australia is serious about lowering emissions and maintaining our commitment to the Paris Agreement, we must be technologically neutral. In 2016, Australia joined 100 other countries in ratifying the Paris Agreement—a commitment to hold "the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels" and pursue efforts "to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels".

At the time Australia signed up, we had a strong track record on international emissions reduction targets. We beat our first Kyoto target by 128 million tonnes and we beat our second Kyoto 2020 target by 430 million tonnes. With that track record, there was no reason why anyone would have thought that Australia would not have been able to meet and beat our 2030 Paris target.

But then the Albanese Government was elected and now Australia is no longer on track to meet the lower emissions targets that the Coalition government signed up to and to which Australia remains committed. Labor went to the 2022 election making these two promises: cheaper power bills and a 43% emissions cut and an 82% renewable energy target by 2030. Yet, under this Government, power bills are up 30 per cent and emissions are now only back at 28% on 2005 levels, which is the same as when the Coalition left office.

Moreover, the renewable energy rollout is significantly behind schedule and there is an increasing backlash in regional communities to a rollout of renewable energy projects without community support and social licence. Now, the Government has put out a 2035 emissions target—a target which assumes the government achieves its 2030 target, which experts have overwhelmingly said it will not.

Both Treasury and the Climate Change Authority have predicted that Australia would need to exceed 90 percent renewable coverage to achieve that emissions reduction, while also quadrupling wind power and doubling roof top solar—clearly irrational and fanciful assumptions. Today, Australia faces two urgent, intertwined needs: the demand for reliable, affordable energy to power our future industry and prosperity, and the desire for clean generation to replace legacy power plants.

So, how can we address these two needs? The answer increasingly points toward nuclear power. By any rational measure, Australia should be a natural home for a thriving nuclear energy industry.

Australia holds approximately 28% of the world's uranium—more than the next two countries combined—and we have the need in heavy and medium industries that require constant sources of baseload power. We've told Australians that they can dig uranium up, ship it overseas and watch it power the homes and businesses of other nations. Yet, we prohibit their use at home.

This prohibition is not strategic; it is historic, having emerged from a hasty ten-minute Senate amendment in 1998. Today, 413 nuclear reactors operate globally, generating a record 2,817 terawatt-hours in 2024 and providing clean baseload power that supports decarbonisation goals. While Canada, South Korea, the United States, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Poland, and Sweden have all recommitted to nuclear to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement, Australia is the only developed nation in the G20 that bans itself from even considering nuclear energy.

The International Energy Agency has been clear: achieving the Paris Agreement will require more, not less, nuclear power. At COP28, the 28th "Conference of the Parties" to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the declaration to triple nuclear energy by 2050 was launched by over 20 countries to keep the 1.5°C goal within reach. Then at COP29, six more countries joined the declaration, bringing the total to 31 nations formally supporting the tripling of nuclear capacity.

The rest of the world knows what needs to be done to lower emissions, why is Labor blind to it? The Prime Minister and senior ministers have repeatedly claimed that "no one would invest" in nuclear generation and that "no private investor" exists for a nuclear plant. This claim is a convenient tautology and a circular fallacy.

The truth is simple: no one can invest in an industry that the law forbids. The absence of proposals is a product of the ban, not proof of a lack of market appetite. The prohibition ensures there are no investors, and the absence of investors is then used to justify the prohibition.

Continuing to deny even the possibility of nuclear energy isolates Australia from its allies, handicaps our effort to lower emissions, and signals to investors that ideology trumps evidence. That's why the Low Emissions Future Billnot only lifts the moratorium, but also removes investment prohibitions for the CEFC and expands ARENA's functions to clean emissions energy technologies, which includes nuclear energy.

The amendments to the CEFC Act and ARENA Act, are not about dismissing the role that renewables play in the energy transition. It's about ensuring the government is technology neutral in its approach to the energy transition. Adding the concept of "clean emissions energy technologies" to the ARENA Act, allows ARENA to still exercise its existing functions with respect to "renewable energy technologies".

Enabling ARENA to research and support nuclear technology is not an argument against renewables, it's an argument for realism. There's no denying that wind and solar have an important role to play, but they need baseload power. Nuclear energy could be that baseload.

The Bill also enables someone to be appointed to the Board of ARENA if they have experience or knowledge in the field of clean emissions energy technologies. Noting the fact that $180,000 of taxpayer money was spent changing the name of the Net Zero Economy Agency to the Net Zero Economy Authority, this Bill does not seek to change the name of ARENA to account for the addition of this new concept.

While nuclear is not a renewable energy, it is an energy source that is consistent with the constitutional basis of the ARENA Act. Section 14 of the Act sets out the constitutional basis for ARENA and explicitly includes giving effect to the Climate Change Convention and Paris Agreement by "supporting activities and projects that could reasonably be expected to control, reduce or prevent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouses gases".

Both the Climate Change Convention and Paris Agreement take a technology-neutral approach to emissions mitigation. Given this, why wouldn't the ARENA Act also take a technology-neutral approach? The same can be said for the CEFC Act too.

Despite the fact that the constitutional basis for the Act explicitly includes giving effect to the Climate Change Convention and Paris Agreement by investing in "clean energy technologies that could reasonably be expected to control, reduce or prevent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouses gases", the CEFC is prohibited from investing in nuclear technology and nuclear power.

Item 13 of the Bill removes nuclear technology and nuclear power from the list of prohibited technologies. Nuclear technology and nuclear power will still be required to meet the criteria in sections 59 and 60 in order to be considered a complying investment under the Act. Therefore, CEFC is not forced to make any particular investment, it only enables the CEFC Board to consider such an investment.

Removing the legislative bans does not commit us to building a nuclear power plant. Nor does it mean we will have nuclear energy in a year's time. It simply allows market forces to determine optimal technologies based on competitive economics rather than political preferences.

The Climate Change Convention and Paris Agreement allow for a technology neutral approach to emissions mitigation. Let's make our legislative framework acknowledge that. The time to sit in the stands with our hands in our pockets is over.

Australians want action on climate. They want lower emissions and they want lower power bills. By lifting the moratorium, we are not locking ourselves into nuclear energy, we are unlocking the possibility of a cleaner, stronger, more secure energy system.

We owe it to Australians to look at every option, not just the ones that fit a political ideology. I commend the Bill to the Senate. Senator ASKEW: I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.