The dirty secret powering the "green" future

Last month I moved a motion in the Legislative Council calling on the Cook Labor Government to end its ban on new uranium mining projects in Western Australia. The case is not complicated. We hold some of the largest known uranium resources on earth. 

Global demand is climbing as countries look for reliable, emissions-free power and greater energy security. South Australia mines and exports uranium under proper environmental and regulatory approvals, and has done so for years. Yet here, since 2017, WA Labor has refused to approve a single new project because of ideology.

The Prime Minister has just signed a deal with India to export unenriched uranium worth potentially billions a year. Western Australia will get none of it. Asked whether it had considered the economic potential of a WA uranium export industry, the Government said it had "no plans to change its existing policy."

That's their whole answer to the question of potential jobs, investment and royalties: just ‘no’. 

The Zempilas Liberal Opposition has committed to lifting the ban if elected, unlocking up to 9,000 jobs across the life of approved projects and a new billion-dollar export industry. My motion asks the Government to stop standing in the way and let projects be assessed on their merits, through the same processes that govern every other resource development in this state.

https://youtu.be/NNrsExOOn80?si=zWr_2Pc8gKkPcO4m

The dirty secret behind the "green" future

If you haven't seen Liam Bartlett's 7NEWS Spotlight investigation, The dirty secret powering Australia's green future, it is well worth a watch.

Bartlett went into Chinese-controlled mines in some of Africa's poorest nations, that are the source of cobalt, copper and nickel for wind turbines, batteries, solar panels and electric vehicles. Tens of thousands of children work those mines. A woman in the Democratic Republic of the Congo told the crew that cobalt from children is very cheap, and that the Chinese companies don't care about the children's health.

Australia has its own reserves. Cobalt Blue holds the rights to the world's largest known pure cobalt deposit, outside Broken Hill. It remains worthless, because China has flooded the market with cheap, dirty Congolese cobalt.

And here at home, forests and prime agricultural land are being torn up for solar farms, wind projects, transmission lines and mega batteries. Cartographer Steven Nowakowski has mapped every proposed project in the country. His word for the result was "dystopia."

We are being asked to call this environmentalism, while the one technology that delivers reliable, low-emissions power with a fraction of the land footprint is not being supported at home. 

The Australian Greens have claimed the moral high ground on the environment and humanity for decades, and yet their policy settings have delivered the opposite. And, in their fanatical crusade to create a fantasy low energy world, powered only by generation methods approved by their cult-like obsession, they remain stubbornly opposed to the evidence in front of them. 

Unlike much of the environmental movement globally, the Australian Greens and their Labor counterparts refuse to even entertain the transformative role that nuclear energy could be playing in a secure and prosperous Australia. As nuclear chemist, Tim Gregory points out in his book, Going Nuclear, “Developed nations with low energy needs do not exist.”

It is the least advantaged who suffer most. 

The Greens and Labor would have you believe that, while nations like China and India rapidly build both coal and nuclear power generation capacity, Australia should limit itself to expensive and unreliable wind and solar that is almost exclusively sourced from the very nation that consumes more coal than the rest of the world combined. 

While I am in support of maximising the export potential of Australia’s mineral and resource wealth, it staggers me that we seem prepared to sacrifice our own future, prosperity, and security for the sake of the net zero zealots who remain happy to allow nations, other than our own, to benefit from cheap reliable energy. .

Western Australia has a long and proud history of responsible resource development. We are more than capable of regulating a uranium (and even a nuclear) industry to the highest environmental and safety standards. What we need is a government willing to let us.

It's time to lift the ban.

Regards,
Phil