Gary Hardgrave:
Look, it’s time for our weekly Ministry of Common Sense. We cut through the bureaucratic red tape. There’s plenty of it. Take a machete to it. The political spin. I’m giddy to try and find some solutions which just might make some sense. So we’ve been looking today at the language being massaged to mask this deception to subterfuge. The government and the energy market operator, AEMO, they’ve now dropped their massive new 25-year roadmap to guide us towards net-zero in the electricity grid. It’s a great way to get net-zero is to have no electricity at all. No electricity being generated. You think I’m making that up, but looking closely at the language, the mathematics, it feels like common sense has completely left the building.
Adam Creighton, we know him as an excellent writer about all things economics. He is now the Senior Fellow Chief Economist at the Institute of Public Affairs and joins us. Adam, we just want some straight talk about this. I don’t think we have enough electricity. I’ve been doing the comparative public policy look at New York State in America. They’ve got the same problem there. They’ve told big tech to go away, a moratorium because they haven’t got enough electricity. We’ve got the same problem here, haven’t we?
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Certainly, that’s true. Look, I actually find all the talk about data centres moving to Australia somewhat hilarious. Because as you just pointed out earlier, why on earth would they? Unless they were forced to by legislation, which is the case in some cases. Because they’ve got to build their own power stations, they can’t use the grid. And then, of course, there’s the wage costs and then the electricity costs themselves and the remoteness. So I don’t think they’ll be coming.
But yeah, the language in the latest AEMO report is somewhat hilarious. I mean, blackout has been banished and now we have involuntary load shedding which is a very funny phrase. So obviously it’s not voluntary load shedding, it’s involuntary. But there is also kind of voluntary blackouts too, if you like. That’s called demand side participation. So that’s when you sign up in advance to have your power turned off and you are compensated somehow financially. But it can happen suddenly still so that’s demand side participation.
They also want households and neighbourhoods to become virtual power plants. So that’s on the assumption that every house has a battery, they all have an electric car, and that sometime in the future when there is a shortage of power somewhere else in the grid, a third-party can take control of your household batteries and your car batteries and redirect that power into the grid. I mean, it all sounds somewhat fanciful and, look, frankly, it’s never going to happen but that is in the plan. That is in the AEMO plan.
Gary Hardgrave:
The incentive of this… I was talking to a mate. I don’t have a couple, only a couple. One bloke I know in Germany said you got to have cinder block fireproof walls built for your batteries because there is that chance if you’ve got a battery that’s not as competent as some of the others, that they could heat up and catch fire like a cheap rechargeable battery for some sort of household appliance and you’ve got to be very careful about that.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah.
Gary Hardgrave:
So who’s going to pay for the insurance of my house if I have a battery-
Adam Creighton:
Well-
Gary Hardgrave:
… that could be then consumed by the grid?
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Look, that is exactly right. That’s a very good point. Frankly, the grid is just not up to every house in the street all charging their cars at the same time. It just can’t happen. So there’s got to be massive public investment with charging stations, grid upgrades. I mean, AEMO talks about the extra 6,000 kilometres of transmission line that has to be built across the country to connect all the wind turbines and the solar panels. I mean, that is absolutely massive.
6,000 kilometres, just think of all the community opposition that every 100 kilometres of that is going to generate. So I mean, as if they’re going to finish that on time. I mean, I feel sorry for the writers of the thing because it’s 150 pages. There are very smart people doing it and they have been told what the parameters are. You can’t have nuclear. You can’t have coal. You can basically only have solar and wind and a little bit of gas and you’ve got to come up with this plan, which is never going to happen. The word nuclear is not mentioned once in the whole 150 pages, even though the Liberal Party, the National Party, and now One Nation all support nuclear power. So unless Labour thinks it’s going to be in power for 25 years, it’s a stupid plan.
Gary Hardgrave:
Well, the other thing that’s got me, Adam, is we can dig the uranium out of the ground, send it to India-
Adam Creighton:
Yes.
Gary Hardgrave:
… but we can’t use it here.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah.
Gary Hardgrave:
Am I missing something here?
Adam Creighton:
No, that’s hugely embarrassing. It’s hugely embarrassing and it’s so annoying when you hear Labour talk about how, “Oh, they’re so expensive, nuclear power plants, et cetera, et cetera.” Well, they’re not. I mean, the Koreans and the Chinese can build them extremely cheaply. They’re extremely modern. They’re extremely effective. I mean, certainly, I understand that we’d never use China to build one but there’s nothing stopping us using the Koreans or the French to build a nuclear reactor for us and they could build it fairly cheaply. Of course, these things work 24 hours a day. They go for 40, 50 years. They can be extended another 10 years. Whereas, these turbines and solar panels, they only last about 15, 20 years and then they have to be replaced so they’re not renewable at all.
Gary Hardgrave:
You’re the economics guy. I studied economics, therefore I’m not an expert. But I do wonder, if they’re not factoring in the replacement cost of the infrastructure like the solar and the wind into the equation, how is this actually an honest roadmap?
Adam Creighton:
Well, look, they make very generous assumptions about how long these things last. They often put in 30 years when it should be more like 18, 9, 20, as I understand it from talking to actual engineers in the business. Even then, towards the end of the life, they’re not as effective. So it’s not like they’re 100% effective until the 18th or 19th year. They decline in effectiveness. Also, no one realises but… The sunniest and the windiest spots have already been taken up, right?
So all these additional panels and turbines are not going to be as effective as the ones that are already been erected and very few people take that into account too. So that’s just another reason why it’s not all going to work. It’s fanciful. As you pointed out, they’ve got to be replaced. That generates huge amounts of rubbish and waste, far more, mind you, than nuclear energy does which can be stored and dealt with safely so-
Gary Hardgrave:
We talk opportunity cost here as well. Again, you’re the economics guru. The opportunity cost of killing off farmlands, ripping mountaintops off, killing off koalas-
Adam Creighton:
It’s huge.
Gary Hardgrave:
… destroying vistas. It’s unbelievable.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Look, I mean, I worked out from Labor’s latest emission targets and it’s basically the size of Tasmania they need for solar panels and wind turbines across the country and that’s all going to be quality land. So you just think the entirety of Tasmania equivalent is just going to be solar panels or wind turbines. Yeah. Look, I know mainland Australia is big but most of it is desert. I’m talking about quality Tasmania style land, green, fertile land so… I mean, no one’s going to accept this when they realise what it actually entails.
Gary Hardgrave:
So Darren at West End says, “Define cheap when it comes to nuclear.” I’m assuming you mean that you could… And I’ve heard anything up to 80 years for really serious nuclear power plants. It’s the fact that they don’t have to be replaced as often as the wind and the solar.
Adam Creighton:
Well, look, I went to Argentina last November for work and I met the head of their nuclear power commissioner who, by the way, built the Lucas Heights nuclear reactor. It was the Argentinians who built that. We couldn’t do it. They had to do it for us. They’ve got two or three big nuclear power plants in Argentina which provide electricity. They were built in the ’70s, I think, or maybe even the ’60s and they’re currently in the process of being extended for another 10, 20 years so that’s 70 or so years from the one reactor. I was talking to this guy about the debate back home in Australia and he just thought it was all very amusing and ridiculous because it just didn’t scientifically make any sense. I mean, they can last a very long time if they’re maintained properly, nuclear reactors. Because they last so long, it works out the power is very, very cheap over a very, very long period of time.
Gary Hardgrave:
So, Adam, I’m a student of public policy. My view is I look from a comparative point of what’s happening in New York where there’s all sorts of debates about great farmland being taken over by wind turbines, by solar panels. Then, they can’t connect it to where the electricity is going to be consumed, that’s your grid problem. But they bring in all of this base load power out of Canada to actually compensate for the fact that they don’t want to burn the coal or they don’t want to burn the gas and they don’t want to burn whatever in New York. So they use nuclear power out of Canada.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Yeah.
Gary Hardgrave:
I mean, it’s evident to me there’s some pretty simple comparisons between, say, New York state part of America and the whole of Australia.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Look, there certainly is and you make the same case with South Australia and Victoria. I mean, South Australia shut down all of its fossil fuels basically, its coal… its last coal station, I think Hazelton Winds, and they’re fully dependent on Victoria’s brown coal basically for when it’s not sunny and windy. The same in Europe. You’ve got various little countries that like to claim they’re fully renewable. But, of course, they all rely on French nuclear power when it’s not windy. So yeah, there is so much hypocrisy. Of course, a country like Australia can’t just draw power from a neighbouring country like they can in Europe and, indeed, in New York State. So we have to have all our own energy. So therefore, relying on the wind and the sun is even more ridiculous in Australia’s case.
Gary Hardgrave:
Well, hopefully when the nuclear submarines start bobbing around our ports, I’ll be able to get a power cable from Bunnings to run the power I need at home to plug it in.
Adam Creighton:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. That’s right. The-
Gary Hardgrave:
I mean, everywhere you turn, this is the point, I guess, about this discussion in the Ministry for Common Sense that there’s just no common sense being applied. I don’t see the next generation plan. I don’t accept that wind, solar, other than on the top of your own roof for your own use… I just don’t see how it makes sense, Adam.
Adam Creighton:
No, look, it doesn’t. I mean, it’s obviously politically popular amongst a sizeable minority of the community and I think that’s always going to be the case. So I think there’s always going to be some political demand for some tokenistic wind turbines and solar panels. But I think in the next five years or so, the bulk of the population are going to realise that it’s not scientifically feasible. Their bills are going to go up astronomically and they’ll get very angry about it.
I mean, all the polling suggests, just on the broader issue of climate change itself, that fewer and fewer people are taking it as seriously as they did 10 years ago because there is all of these… All of these points have been passed, these dramatic points where the world was supposed to end, and it just hasn’t happened. I think as more and more of that fearmongering is proved nonsense, I think people won’t take the claims as seriously anymore.
Gary Hardgrave:
Yeah. No. Fair point. Thanks for being part of the ministry this morning. Adam Creighton, he is from the Institute of Public Affairs, Chief Economist. Great writer and a great researcher. It is just simply a debate. Of course, then there’s the question of why aren’t we adding to the fleet of established coal-fired power stations? Actually investing more in that. Surely, that’s something Queensland should be doing, given we’ve got hundreds, hundreds of years of coal and great experience of growing our economy as a result of it.
This transcript with Adam Creighton talking on Mornings with Gary Hardgrave 4BC from 22 July 2026 has been edited for clarity.
