Victorias power crisis reaffirms need for National Energy Summit and nuclear discussion

Leader of The Nationals David Littleproud said Victoria’s power crisis, leaving around 530,000 homes
without power after six transmission towers near Geelong toppled to the ground in wild weather
overnight, proves the need for a National Energy Summit and a broader discussion on nuclear.
Mr Littleproud said the broken transmission towers were a stark reminder of the difficulties in
transmitting power from the regions to the cities but would become an even bigger problem under
Labor’s reckless race to 82 per cent renewables by 2030.
“If we don’t put all options on the table, we will be left with an extra 28,000 kilometres of new
transmission lines, which, when there are storms, increases the risk of taking out more transmission
lines weakening our grids reliability,” Mr Littleproud said.
“That’s a lot of transmission lines to get such an enormous amount of renewable energy from the
regions to the cities. What has happened overnight shows the fragility of that model.
“If small scale nuclear plants were built where retiring coal fired power stations are now you could
minimise the need for new transmission lines, reducing the risk of these incidents.
“Why wouldn’t we use some common sense, not just in the generation of energy, but reducing the
amount of transmission lines that we have, so we don’t have this crisis again in Victoria?
“Today, I urge the Prime Minister to once again reconsider my request when I first became Leader of
The Nationals to call a National Energy Summit.
“The Nationals have called for this for more than 18 months.
“We need a sensible conversation about all the energy alternatives that are there, which includes
putting nuclear back on the table. Let’s take away the nuclear energy ban and fight this out in the
marketplace.
“To think we might now have up to 200,000 homes without power until Sunday isn’t good enough.
“Victorian households and Australians deserve more than the chaos they are experiencing caused by
the unreliability of power lines, which Labor now wants even more of.”