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Snowy Hydro 2.0 – The whitest white elephant in Australia

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Despite promises of being one of the world’s largest batteries for only $2 billion dollars, Snowy 2.0 is shaping up to cost over $10 billion and only supply a fraction of promised capacity.

Transcript

As a servant to the people of Queensland and Australia, I speak about the Auditor-General’s performance audit titled, No. 33—Performance audit—Snowy 2.0 governance of early implementation: Snowy Hydro Limited.

Some background for those who may be new to this project: Snowy 2.0 is an extension of the Snowy Hydro project, hence the name. In 2017, Prime Minister Turnbull announced the cost of Snowy 2.0 as $2 billion. This report states that the cost is now $5.1 billion plus billions of other costs, totalling well over $10 billion. The completion date is out to 2025, so we can expect further cost blowouts. The project involves using electricity from unreliable sources like wind and solar to pump water from a lower reservoir, Talbingo Dam, through underground pipes to an upper reservoir, Tantangara Dam. Water is then sent back down to Talbingo Dam, generating electricity on the way. Snowy 2.0 is referred to as a ‘big battery’ because water is stored in the top reservoir until it is needed. The same turbine is either pumping water uphill or generating electricity from the water coming down. The total pipe length is 27 kilometres. Generally, water is pumped up during the day—provided the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. The water is then released down the pipe to generate electricity in the evening peak, when it’s most needed. As the sun does not shine and wind goes quiet at night, pumping water back up the hill overnight, ready for the morning peak, will need coal power. The upper reservoir may hold multiple days worth of water and, at some point, the dam must be refilled, especially as Tantangara Dam is currently only 17 per cent full.

Pumped hydro only works when the dam has water in it. For every megawatt of power generated by water coming down the hill, the turbine needs 1.3 megawatts of power to get the water back up, because of losses. In total, 30 per cent more coal is used in Snowy 2.0. Pumped hydro, put simply, entails generating electricity 2.3 times to be used by consumers once. This is not cheap electricity; it’s actually really expensive electricity. The solar and wind fairy tale needs pumped hydro as a way of storing unreliable wind and power generation, which occurs mostly during the day, and moving that capacity to the evening peek, when unreliable solar and wind can’t provide baseload power.

Maximum generation for Snowy 2.0 is an impressive 2,000 megawatts, but here’s the catch: annual generation is listed in this report as 350,000 megawatt hours. Running at full capacity, Snowy 2.0 will generate electricity for only 175 hours a year. To put that into perspective, my home state of Queensland used 68 million megawatt hours last year. Snowy Hydro will contribute the equivalent of half of one per cent of Queensland’s power each year, one-tenth of one per cent of Australia’s annual generation, at a cost of $5 billion and rising—and that doesn’t include all the costs. This madness will send us broke. There’s a far better way: a 2,000-megawatt coal-fired power station is able to run at 2,000 megawatts 98 per cent of the time, 24/7. Liddell in the Hunter Valley generated nine million megawatts last year.

For less than the cost of this green fairy tale called Snowy 2.0, a coal plant can produce at least 25 times the amount of electricity. That’s why Germany’s Greens coalition government is turning Germany’s coal-fired power stations back on. Shutting ours down when we see what’s happening in the rest of the world is criminal irresponsibility. Prime Minister Albanese is promising reduced electricity prices while at the same time building horribly expensive power generation. The Prime Minister’s agenda will fail, and he will take Australia down with him. Instead, One Nation will build baseload power stations, reduce the cost of electricity, restore grid reliability, restore grid stability, restore Australian manufacturing and restore the income of working Australians.

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Prime Minister backstabs the people who voted for him

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The Prime Minister has caved on an election promise. After telling Australia the truth to get elected, that Bill Shorten’s net zero target would destroy the country, he has signed up to the exact same promise. Gutless, sellout, liar, there aren’t enough words to fully describe this backstabbing of the Australian people.

Transcript

Senator ROBERTS (Queensland) (09:39): Well, well, well, the Labor Party, as part of the precursor to the Albanese-Bandt coalition government, calls this a stunt. The Labor party is exactly correct. It is a stunt. The No. 1 issue here is integrity and the Greens’ complete lack of integrity. They have never provided the empirical scientific evidence for their claims. First it was Greta: ‘We’ll rely on Greta.’ Then it became, ‘We’ll rely on the Queen.’ Now, it’s, ‘We’ll rely on the Pope’—and most of them are atheists. My goodness, what are we coming to in this country? This mob is hijacking jobs—manufacturing jobs, coalmining jobs, farmers’ jobs. This is an absolute disgrace, because they show no integrity towards the people of this country; they show no integrity towards this parliament, none whatsoever. They tell lies and they make up stuff.

We now see them calling for the science. I want the science. I challenge Senator Waters to provide the empirical scientific evidence that proves carbon dioxide from human activity affects the climate and needs to be cut. She failed to provide it 11 years ago. She ran—

The PRESIDENT: Senator Roberts, please resume your seat. Senator Thorpe, on a point of order?

Senator Thorpe: A point of order, Mr President: the senator over here has called us ‘liars’, and I think that is unparliamentary, is it?

The PRESIDENT: Senator Thorpe, he was referring to the Greens as a whole. My view is that that is not unparliamentary. I will check with the Clerk to be sure, given I’m relatively new to this role. My ruling is correct. Please sit down, Senator Thorpe.

Senator Thorpe interjecting—

The PRESIDENT: Senator Thorpe, there is no point of order. Senator Roberts, you have the call.

Senator ROBERTS: Let’s make it clear: I did not call the Queen or the Pope a liar. I called them ‘not scientists’. They’re not scientists. But this is what the Greens rely on in the fact that they cannot provide the science. The Greens show no respect for science, no respect for humanity, no respect for the people of this country, no respect for hardworking Australians, and no respect for the farmers that they will gut with this 2050 net zero.

I also remind the Senate that it’s now day 772 since I challenged Senator Larissa Waters and Senator Di Natale in this parliament to a debate on the empirical evidence and also on the corruption of the science. I point out that there is no science that backs this up from the CSIRO, and I’ll have more to say about that next week. There is no science from the Bureau of Meteorology, none from the Chief Scientist—I can tell you a story about the previous Chief Scientist if there is time—none from the Australian Academy of Science and none from the IPCC. In fact, we had the Labor Party’s Kevin Rudd dancing around in 2007 saying 4,000 people in white lab coats endorsed his claim. The reality is that only five academics in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change endorsed the claim of warming, and there’s doubt those five were even scientists.

We’ll hear more rubbish from the Greens, claiming that they have science, but the one thing that they are always consistent on is that they never produce the empirical evidence to justify their claim. They see a picture of a tree frog, a picture of a koala, a picture of a dolphin, and they say, ‘This is the science.’ That’s it; it’s complete rubbish. This has been going on for 11 years, Senator Waters.

Let me point out, Senator Gallagher, that the issue of utmost importance is the integrity of this parliament, the integrity of this country, the integrity of state parliaments, and the integrity of the people of this country and their jobs and their livelihoods. That is of utmost importance to One Nation, and I wish it were of utmost importance to every single person in this Senate, but clearly it’s not.

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$19 Billion dollars a year – for nothing!

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While the Liberal/National party tears itself apart over net-zero and Labor wants us to follow the Greens off a renewable cliff, Australians are paying BILLIONS of dollars for subsidies that are making electricity more expensive and killing manufacturing jobs. We have the best and cheapest coal in the world right here, yet our electricity prices are three times as high as China. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was deliberate sabotage from our gutless leaders.

Transcript

Thank you, Madam Acting Deputy President. The core issue here is integrity. We see the Nationals Party and the Liberal Party tying themselves in knots, the coalition unravelling, according to some, the coalition all over the place, according to others. Depends who we listen to. But the core issue is the complete lack of integrity from the Labour Party and the Greens. This parliament, according to Senator McAllister, has seen all manner of scrutiny. Oh, really?

I can remember Senator MacDonald up here, standing, Senator Ian MacDonald, when he was a Senator here, standing up saying that this parliament has never, ever debated the climate science. Never. So this is all being done on nonsense. In fact, the science has never even been brought into this chamber that says we need to cut carbon dioxide from human activity, that we need to go to renewables. Never. Always the parliament tends to go to the second question, how do we do it, rather than should we do it?

The core question, if we’re really being faithful to and serving the people of this country and the taxpayers and the energy users who are being bled dry, is should we do this madness, not how do we do it. How do we do it comes second. The parliament too often in this country goes to the second question.

No one, no one has ever presented the empirical scientific evidence in this parliament, either House, that says carbon dioxide from human activity needs to be cut. It is now day 770 since I asked Senator Richard Di Natale and Senator Larissa Waters a fundamental question. Where is your empirical scientific evidence that shows carbon dioxide from human activity needs to be cut? That’s it. They dodged it. They have never come back with the evidence.

They refuse to debate me. I asked Senator Waters this more than 10 years ago, almost 11 years ago. In fact, it is 11 years ago this month. And she refused to debate me then. Senator Waters then talked about a waste of money. Oh, really? When we’re spending $19 billion a year on this rubbish, destroying our energy sector, destroying manufacturing jobs, exporting them to China.

We send them our coal. They generate electricity using our coal after we’ve shipped it thousands of kilometres. And they sell it for 8 cents a kilowatt hour. We use the same coal here in this country, some of the best coal in the world, and we sell our electricity at 25 cents a kilowatt hour. Why the difference?

Why is it three times as much here? Because of all the renewable regulations, subsidies and climate rubbish. That’s why. Not only do we export our coal, we export our manufacturing jobs, because the number one cost of manufacturing these days is electricity. Not labour anymore. Electricity. We’re gutting jobs, throwing people on the scrap heap. No livelihoods. For nothing. Because no one has ever presented the science that says we need to do this. They run from it.

In One Nation we welcome the debate. We welcome a debate on the science. We will welcome putting both coalitions, the Liberal Nationals and the Labour Greens coalitions, under scrutiny. The policies of the Liberal Nationals coalition are so close to the policies of the Labour Greens coalitions. Where’s the difference, I ask you, other than in slightly in degree?

This is an absolute disgrace with what we’re doing to this country, what this parliament is doing to this country, what this parliament is doing to the taxpayers, what this parliament is doing to jobs of real people, everyday Australians’ jobs getting gutted. And it’s based on a lie. And Al Gore’s making out like a bandit, because the crook has made hundreds of millions of dollars out of this scam, along with several other people, academics, politicians, government agencies.

It just goes on and on and on. This has got to stop.

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