I start by acknowledging the traditional owners of our country. I acknowledge the Ngunawal and Ngambri people on whose land this parliament meets. I also acknowledge the Dharawal/Tharawal, Gandangara and Dharug people, the traditional owners of the electorate of Werriwa. I acknowledge country not just because of the convention; I acknowledge our first people because it is the right thing to do, because, in some small way, I want to acknowledge their pain and to add my voice to ensure that recognition and reconciliation are things that we, as a nation, find a way to do as soon as possible.

I am disappointed to be making a speech in the parliament again that will point out that, 12 years since the apology, we are still not anywhere near meeting all of the targets that we set then and only two of the seven have been met. While it is good that the early childhood education and the year 12 attainment targets have been met, it is disappointing there is little change for any of the other five measures, and it's blatantly clear that so much more work needs to be done with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders to improve the way they live and their opportunities. It's a tragedy that our First Australians are dying too soon, are educated far less, are incarcerated too often and suffer more preventable disease. The numbers show this tragedy in real terms. Sixty-four per cent of the burden of disease on our First Australians is preventable. The unemployment rate of First Australians is 21 per cent—four times the current non-Indigenous employment rate. Over one-quarter of incarcerated adults in this country are First Australians and nearly half of all juveniles incarcerated are First Australians. The research shows that First Australians are more likely to be incarcerated than African-Americans.

In 2017, suicide was the leading cause of death amongst our First Australian children aged five to 17. In that same year, one-quarter of all Australian children who died by suicide were First Australians. One in 10 households in public housing is Indigenous. It is the social impact of these raw numbers that should break the hearts of all Australians, but what these statistics don't measure, what they hide in each and every point on a graph, is a person like you and me—it's a mother and father who won't see their baby grow; it's a family that doesn't have parents, aunties or uncles to tell them their history, teach them language or identify their ancestors.

Eight Indigenous Australians have been members of this place, and we celebrate their achievement with them, but it is the Constitution of this land that must also celebrate our First Australians. I acknowledge the work of the member for Barton, Linda Burney; Senators Malarndirri McCarthy and Pat Dodson; and the Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt. There is no question that our First Australians have long been and continue to be the subject of cultural and systemic discrimination. While we can't go back and correct the wrongs of the past, we have the ability and the power to stop those wrongs continuing and stop them now. We just need the will to truly want to change the future.

We should start with the recognition of our First Australians in the Constitution. We should accept and listen to truth-telling. We need to work with our First Australians to improve their quality of life. This report should be the line in the sand, but we've tried so many times to draw that line. From Wave Hill Station through to Redfern and this place, these lines cannot continue to mark the gap. This gap must close and it must be done here. We must finally end the drawing of such lines. There is no option. We must act and we must end the shameful history of the systemic discrimination against our First Nations people. We have the generational opportunity to improve the lives of our First Australians. We must learn from them, but we must learn with them, and we must close the gap.

I rise to make my contribution on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on the Environment and Energy's report Not without your approval: a way forward for nuclear technology in Australia. I acknowledge the work done by the secretariat and members and thank all those who made contributions to this report.

I think it would be fair to say that I find the recommendations of the report to be disappointing and not a reasonable conclusion in the second decade of the 21st century. I acknowledge and concur with the dissenting report compiled by Labor members and the remarks by the member for Fremantle in this place today. I was privileged to be a member of the House of Representatives environment and energy committee in the 45th Parliament. I note with interest that the expert contributors to this report are still in agreement that it is the uncertainty of energy policy which needs to be addressed by this government. That was the first recommendation of a report by this committee in the 45th Parliament entitled Powering our future: inquiry into modernising Australia's electricity grid. I further note, with disappointment, that three years later the government has still to respond to that report.

The government frequently lectures about its economic credentials, yet it has not taken expert advice that has one clear message: providing energy security, certainty and stability in the grid will in turn drive down prices. Certainly Mr Ian Macfarlane, Chief Executive of the Queensland Resources Council and a former energy minister, agreed in the evidence he gave to the committee for this report. He said:

Until we settle on a single energy policy you'll continue to have the investor uncertainty that is creating all sorts of issues combined with the unreliability of the grid, due to different mixes of energy which don't sustain the frequency and, therefore, are prone to blackouts and shortages of energy at certain peak periods. So it would be, in my opinion, a great outcome to achieve a single national energy policy.

The government is continually hampered by the many contrary views within its ranks. It seems as though the need to ensure the numbers in its party room has this government too paralysed to do anything at all.

Nuclear power does not provide the circuit-breaker the government is looking for. It will not enhance the government's economic credentials. Nuclear is not a cheaper alternative. The committee heard evidence from Dr Ziggy Switkowski—it is in the committee Hansard of 29 August 2019, page 2—that 'there is no coherent business case to finance an Australian nuclear industry'. He further added that 'one of the things that has changed over the last decade or so is that nuclear power has got more expensive rather than less expensive'.

Small modular reactors do not exist anywhere in the world, and the committee heard evidence from academics that paper based designs are always the most efficient. And they're right: everything works on paper, and it's cheaper too. But experts suggest it is conceivable that it could well be into the 2040s before such a plant would be ready for generation, because there is not currently a ready-made workforce in Australia to provide the sort of expertise that is required to plan and build such a plant, let alone the time it will take to consider where that plant might be located, as I'm sure much of the Australian population will not want one in their neighbourhood.

Nuclear power is in decline all over the world. Countries like Germany and France have been planning to and starting to decommission their plants. For them, the risk of accident or nuclear leakage and the damage that it in turn does to all life is too high, and quite obviously there is no economic advantage to keeping their plants operating.

Renewables like wind and solar, combined with technology that provides battery and base-load power, are a much cheaper alternative. In fact, that's what we see now in South Australia. The Tesla battery has saved South Australian consumers $40 million each year since development. That number's set to increase by a further $47 million as its energy output increases and it supports the grid during times of peak supply deficit.

Nuclear power is not a cheaper energy source. Without even looking at the operating expenditure, waste management and further infrastructure, the last power plant built in Canada cost Can$14.5 billion—and that was just under 20 years ago. In fact, Hinkley Point C in the UK will cost the British public between 55 billion and 91 billion pounds in government subsidies over its lifetime. We all know who would shoulder the burden of investing into a dated and expensive energy source: it would be the Australian taxpayers. A nuclear power plant has only ever been delivered through heavy government financial support. The only thing that will assist the power grid and support cheaper power in Australia is a proper energy policy that will give investors and governments certainty into the future. Certainty attracts and harnesses investment.

Nowhere in the world has truly found a safe and permanent way of dealing with the waste generated by nuclear facilities. Since the Three Mile Island disaster in 1979, there have been at least 19 incidents at or involving nuclear power stations. The most recent in Fukushima was caused not by human error but by a natural disaster, and no amount of planning and safety protocols can keep a nuclear power plant safe in these circumstances. We've just seen over the last few months how widespread a single natural disaster can be. Nine years after Fukushima, the area cannot be accessed and much of the population—human, flora and fauna—are starting to be affected by the radiation that leaked after that earthquake and continues to do so.

Nuclear won't just drain taxpayer funds; it will drain our most precious resource, water. Nuclear power production uses an extensive amount of water, and while this country continues to suffer longer and more extensive droughts, nuclear energy would simply further deplete the extremely limited water resources in our regional areas.

Nuclear power is not the answer for the rest of the world. Belgium, Germany and Switzerland are already in stages of decommissioning their reactors. Of Germany's total power generation mix in 2017, 38.5 per cent was from renewable resources. In the same year, nuclear made up 13 per cent of the total power generation mix, and Germany's use of coal was just 15 per cent.

It's time this government developed a plan for something. It has been warned for years about the need for a national energy policy, but, as usual, it doesn't listen to the experts. Let's actually be smart about our energy future and develop the framework needed to transition Australia to a lower-cost, lower-emission, higher-tech industry that will create jobs for years.

We don't have to talk about Paris agreements or targets, or whether we're going to meet them. But what we do know after the disastrous summer is that we have to reduce our impact on this planet, its resources and the climate, and we need to do it now. It's time for the name-calling and blame-apportioning to go. We just need to resolve to provide energy by cleaner and greener means. And, if it's not for ourselves, then it's for the future of our children and grandchildren. Nuclear does not provide that solution.

I congratulate you on your new role, Deputy Speaker O'Brien. Over the past weekend, significant flooding has hit parts of south-west Sydney, including the electorate of Werriwa. Three hundred millimetres of rain lashed the region, with the Georges River peaking at just over five metres, making it the largest flood since the 1980s. Properties have been inundated, residents evacuated and schools and roads closed. I take this opportunity to commend the great work of the emergency services and local councils over the last few days. However, I condemn the government for its lack of action on local infrastructure. Once again, Cambridge Avenue at Glenfield had to be closed. Despite numerous representations to government and speeches in this House by many members for Werriwa, the road still remains a causeway. A major artery linking the growing cities of Liverpool and Campbelltown, the roads sits mere metres off the water line of the Georges River, and it is regularly blocked when it rains. The upgrade is listed as a priority initiative by Infrastructure Australia, who, unlike the government, recognises that with the development of the Moorebank Intermodal Terminal more congestion will be added to this already inadequate thoroughfare. As with so many other important infrastructure projects in south-western Sydney, I call on the government to get on with the job and fix Cambridge Avenue.