Hon Patrick Gorman MP Joins 6PR Mornings Interview

GARY ADSHEAD, HOST: Alright, let's go to the Government now, Patrick Gorman, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, of course he's the Federal Member for Perth as well. He joins me, thanks for your time, Patrick.

PATRICK GORMAN, ASSISTANT MINISTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: Thank you, Gary, and congrats on a wonderful innings on 6PR.

ADSHEAD: Probably shorter than I expected. Now then, Patrick, I just want to ask you this the other day when the CSIRO came out with their look at the cost of nuclear energy and the transition, etc. They certainly poo-pooed what the Opposition are telling us. Do you accept Frontier Economics saying that your plan will cost close to $600 billion up to 2050?

GORMAN: No, I'll listen to the Australian Energy Market Operator who've given us very clear advice. Our plan out to 2050 costs about $122 billion. Our plan gets private investors into the market supplying a range of different energy sources, from firming through gas, through to battery storage, solar and wind. The plan that we've had released today by Peter Dutton and the Liberals is all about whacking it on the national credit card, some hundreds of billions of dollars of debt and nothing to show for it for more than a decade.

ADSHEAD: What about the arguments though, around baseload power and that what you're planning doesn't factor enough of that in, in terms of our security?

GORMAN: Solar and wind, with firming, both through battery storage and gas peaking, that is the path forward. It's the cheapest path forward. It's also the fastest path forward, because we can build these things now. It's exactly what we're doing. I've been down to Collie. I've seen the batteries being installed. We've done the consultations for Bunbury offshore wind. We've got huge take up of solar here, all around Perth. Happening now. Why would we kick the can down the road for a couple of decades, where WA is the afterthought of afterthoughts in Peter Dutton's plan? I just heard Angus Taylor on your program saying, 'oh no, we didn't forget about Collie.' It's pretty clear that they did. The Frontier Economics costings that have been put together - and I'll note Frontier Economics normally do costings for like music festivals and live entertainment, that's one of their specialties apparently - they forgot to include Collie in the costings. That just shows, even after all this time, we were promised in May, it's now December, we finally seen the homework. It's not up to scratch. This is not a credible plan. And there is no plan for Collie full stop.

ADSHEAD: Obviously he countered that by saying 'well, you know, this is based on the NEM, the National Electricity Market, and that the assumptions lead to the West Australian coast as well.' But yeah, you're right. I mean, the report says we do not include Western Australia or the Northern Territory in this analysis. They do say that.

GORMAN: I thought it was also telling one of the other things that has never been explained by Peter Dutton or Angus Taylor or anyone, is we've got two major grids in Western Australia. The other one is, of course, the North West Interconnected System that powers a lot of pretty important industry here in WA. They've got no plan for the North West Interconnected System at all. And again, that just shows just what a scrappy, un-thought-through plan this is. And people have been waiting for a long time. And I think the people in Collie, who I've spoken to over the course of this year, I think they'd know now who's fair dinkum about actually doing the hard work to plan for their future, and who's just giving them, well not even false hope. Giving them lip service. And I'd say it's a pretty embarrassing day for Rick Wilson as well, as the Liberal Member who represents Collie in the Federal Parliament. He promised them that he would get them a nuclear reactor. He's failed. He's failed on his one big promise today.

ADSHEAD: You're saying, sorry, so you are saying emphatically that this Frontier Economics report should have looked at how Collie would be impacted? In terms of the installation on the time frame of an installation of a small, I think it's a small nuclear reactor, is what they're talking about there, and there's no reference to it.

GORMAN: That's a question that Peter Dutton has to answer. Why didn't they do that work? He eventually - after a few trips where Mr. Dutton came to Western Australia and refused to go down to Collie - he eventually did go down for one meeting. I think people, where you're planning radical change, really radical change. You're planning to put nuclear waste storage, you're planning to put nuclear reactors in these communities. I think you do deserve I think all West Australians, whether they live in Collie or whether they live here in Perth, I think all West Australians will go, 'well, what is the plan for WA?' Because just kicking the can down the road is not a plan. Western Australians want affordable, reliable energy as much as anyone else. And now what's really clear after this plan has been released, the only party who has a plan to make sure that WA has the energy we need for the jobs and industries of the future. The only party who's got that plan is Labor.

ADSHEAD: Listeners certainly have issues around wind turbines, by saying that you can install as many as you want through private enterprise cooperating with government and state government, but they need replacing. You know, every couple of decades they need replacing. It's an expensive operation that's ongoing, whereas the Federal Opposition will argue that nuclear is there for generations.

GORMAN: The thing that we also know is that the maintenance of nuclear power plants is also a very expensive, labour-intensive piece of work. But when it comes to offshore wind, the modelling that we've done for Bunbury offshore wind, which will be about 40 kilometres off the coast, you won't see much, that's about 7000 jobs in construction. Yes, there is ongoing maintenance and replacement. That generates another 3,500 jobs in the South West, and gives us about 11 gigawatts of energy. Now that's going to power huge new industries as we get to see the electrification of a whole range of things that we do in terms of critical minerals processing, we want to make sure we've got the energy. We've got to make sure we've got it sooner rather than later. And I don't want to see jobs leave Western Australia, or indeed leave Australia, because we do another decade of what happened the last time the Coalition was in power, which is just delay getting the amount of energy we need into the grid.

ADSHEAD: Last question, because, as you know, when it comes to elections and campaigns, there's going to be two figures that'll be out there. There'll be $331 billion that the Coalition says it can do it with, and then there'll be $594 billion that they'll promote is the cost of you doing business in terms of the renewable and other energy sectors. If it's that simple, are you worried that people will just believe the $331 billion figure?

GORMAN: I know that the voters of Australia and here in the West recognise that these sort of things are big, serious projects. I don't think that Peter Dutton would be able to credibly walk into any boardroom in WA and put those costings on the table and walk out with people agreeing with him. Even the costings that were put out today, they only looked at the operating costs. They didn't do all of the work for the construction costs. CSIRO says this will cost about $145 per megawatt hour for the nuclear plan that Mr. Dutton's put forward. The costs in his costings is only going to cost $30 per megawatt hour. There's a pretty big discrepancy. And I think when people start to see this picked apart, they'll recognise that just as they were so loose with their costings, they forgot to include Collie in them, they've been loose all across the board, and that the actual dollars and cents don't stack up. And when that's the case, voters don't vote for it. We've seen that time and time again. And this one doesn't stack up.

ADSHEAD: Patrick Gorman, thanks very much for your time.

GORMAN: Thanks Gary.

ADSHEAD: Good on you, mate. Thank you. That's the Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, putting the other argument of a debate that you are going to hear right up until whenever the election is called, probably around April/May.