Interview with 1206 2CC DRIVE

LEON DELANEY: Federal Member for the seat of Eden-Monaro and Federal Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories, Kristy McBain has criticised Peter Dutton and David Littleproud for failing to consult with regional communities in their nuclear energy plans. The Minister joins me now. Good afternoon.

KRISTY MCBAIN: Good afternoon, Leon.

DELANEY: Thanks very much for joining us today. As Minister for Regional Development and Territories, I presume you have a lot to say about defending regional communities. And obviously, if the opposition intends to press ahead with their nuclear plant, they'll have to consult with somebody sooner or later, won't they?

MCBAIN: You would have thought that they would have done that already, but instead, what we saw was Peter Dutton and David Littleproud holding a press conference in the middle of Sydney, not going out to any of the seven proposed sites for nuclear reactors, not having a conversation with any local councils or community members about what they feel nuclear power would bring or detract from their region. They're just treating regional communities like mugs and trying to railroad them into a process without any choice. That's really detrimental to regional communities, particularly those who are already looking at a range of manufacturing or other energy sources to transition out of traditional coal industries.

DELANEY: Ok. There is, however, some evidence that the general idea of relying on nuclear energy to help us reach our zero emissions target is gaining some traction amongst the voters. We've seen opinion polls showing around 40 per cent of people firmly in favour of deploying nuclear energy. And if you add together the people firmly in favour with those who are open to the idea, you get up to somewhere around 60 per cent. That's a lot of voters, isn't it?

MCBAIN: When you also look at the same polls, though, the numbers flip as soon as you say, would you host a nuclear reactor in your regional location. That changes substantially. People want access to cleaner and cheaper energy. At the moment, when you've got electricity bills that have been going up, people want to know that there are plans in place. That's exactly what the Albanese Labor Government is doing. In six days’ time, every electricity customer connected to the grid will be getting a $300 rebate off their energy bill. We know from a range of studies already done, renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy and that's why we've made a target for 2030. We know that renewable energy companies could and should do community consultation better in our regions, which is why we've backed that with a $20 million investment in our last budget. This specifically speaks to the concerns some of our communities have over tick the box consultation, which the Opposition have called out as a problem, and then exacerbated that by not consulting with communities over these seven locations.

DELANEY: You talked about people being reluctant to have nuclear facilities in their backyard. And, of course, that extends to the Chief Minister of the ACT, who has today suggested that the ACT might be vulnerable to a future Coalition Government, should that government choose to locate any kind of nuclear facility in the ACT, either a waste storage facility or even a nuclear power generating site. Andrew Barr said that the ACT is constitutionally at a disadvantage in relation to, for example, being made a nuclear waste site. Is he right to be concerned about that?

MCBAIN: Constitutionally, both the ACT and the Northern Territory are at a bit of a disadvantage at the moment. We know that a range of our states already have nuclear bans in place, so not only does Peter Dutton have to be able to fully explain and cost his plan, he's also got to get over state legislative hurdles. There is a big concern to be answered here, and we still don't have a low-level nuclear waste site for medical nuclear waste. I'm not sure where any large nuclear waste site would be for these proposed nuclear reactors in our community. There are a range of hurdles and it is a poorly thought out plan with limited, actually zero detail about it, other than the seven sites. It's something that the Coalition have put out there with no detail, no costing, and they still have no idea how it actually work. Now, we've got communities that are rightly annoyed that they were never consulted in the first place about the seven locations.

DELANEY: Of course, in terms of a nuclear waste dump, Australia is already committed to storing its own nuclear waste from the nuclear submarines that we're about to acquire. So, we're going to have one anyway, wherever it's going to be. Surely we could accommodate waste from a power generating sector as well.

MCBAIN: We've got nuclear submarines coming online. They are small cells that are encapsulated. We're talking about waste which is the size of coke cans, as opposed to tonnes of waste that are generated through large scale nuclear reactors. Very different in nature and very different in size as well. The Defence Force has already said that any nuclear waste that will have to be stored and disposed of will be done so within their footprint.

DELANEY: Now, before we run out of time completely, which we're close to doing. Yesterday, Craig Emerson released his report after his inquiry into the Food and Grocery Code of Conduct, which until now has been voluntary. He's recommended it should be made mandatory how is that going to contain the growing cost of living crisis when people go shopping at their supermarket?

MCBAIN: The number one focus that we've had is relieving cost of living pressures. It's why we asked the ACCC to do a deep dive into supermarket pricing, because groceries are one of the family's biggest expenses every week or every fortnight, depending on how you shop. We've engaged Choice to do price comparisons every quarter, so that people can actually compare apples with apples, quite literally. We know that we've got one of the most concentrated sectors in the world in supermarkets across the country. By making the Code mandatory, it comes with quite substantial penalties for breaches, up to $10 million for breaches of that code, which is quite significant. There is a cash disincentive if supermarkets are found to be doing the wrong thing. Why that's really important is because we want suppliers of fresh produce to get a better deal at the supermarket. At a time where we see supermarket prices going up, we haven't seen the equivalent for our suppliers or our farmers. It's really important that if there are changes, that they're also being passed on to our wholesalers as well. The review recommended eleven changes. We've adopted all of those eleven recommendations and we are really focused on making sure we've got a sector that is working for the Australian consumer, also working for Australian producers.

DELANEY: Allan Fels, the former head of the ACCC, says that Craig Emerson's report doesn't go far enough. He says that the ACCC should have powers to order divestiture.

MCBAIN: Divestiture is a great word, but it doesn't work in some of our regional communities, where we don't actually have a lot of choice. We might only have one provider. If we're serious about saying sorry, you've got to get rid of some of your supermarkets, that leads leaves a whole bunch of regional communities without a supplier at all. What we need to be doing is working with the sector that we have, and saying we expect fair treatment of our suppliers and we expect consumers to be getting a good outcome. What I would not expect is for consumers in some of our regional communities not to have access to any supermarket at all. And divestiture powers do not help us in that respect.

DELANEY: Kristy, thanks very much for your time today.

MCBAIN: Always good to be with you, Leon.