Mr CHARLES (4:45 PM) —Mr Deputy Speaker Jenkins, may I take this, my first, opportunity to congratulate you on your re-election to high office. It is well deserved.

My grievance today is with the Australian nation for doing too little to research and develop energy from renewable resources. For a very long time we have known that our use of hydrocarbons which we burn to produce energy—and that is coal, oil and gas—would some day come to an end because they are finite resources. We cannot manufacture them from the air, and once they are gone, they are gone.

It is time for us to examine the alternatives, for two very good reasons. The first is that we know the burning of hydrocarbons does affect the atmosphere; whether or not it produces a major greenhouse effect that will devastate the earth, we do know that pumping carbon into the atmosphere is not doing us any good. Secondly, we also know that as these natural resources we now burn begin to run out, begin to dry up, they will become more and more expensive.

Basically, in Australia we burn coal in boilers to produce steam that drives turbines to produce electricity. Our secondary production of electricity is from damming our rivers and producing hydro-electricity.

Australia has never seriously examined nuclear energy as a source, although we have vast reserves of uranium. Nonetheless, a nuclear alternative for Australia is politically unacceptable. However, there are a number of very acceptable alternative energy sources that Australia could use and on which we should be spending more money for research; we should be doing more to develop these alternative sources of energy. They include solar, solar voltaic, hydro-electricity, wind power, wave power, tidal power and geothermal power.

Hydro-electricity generation is substantial and it will continue, but it is unlikely that major new installations will be planned in the future. Solar energy has absolutely huge potential, but the vast areas needed for solar collectors is likely to make this nonpolluting energy source politically and environmentally unacceptable as a complete major replacement for coal, oil and gas—although I can tell you that, during the latest natural gas problem in Victoria, I was delighted to have solar hot-water heating; it was indeed delightful. Wind energy plants have been built, but the power source is somewhat unreliable and unpredictable and, in my view, the towers are visually polluting.

Our potential in two of these major areas of renewable resource energy development has been known for a very long time. It was back in 1963 that John Woods, an English engineer, came to Australia and researched the Kimberley. He produced a paper for the Institute of Engineers in which he described Australia's potential to develop tidal energy. That now is some 38 years ago, and we still do not have a tidal energy plant in Australia. I personally find that unacceptable, but I hope that we are on the way to our first plant.

Tidal energy is really very simple. You have to have an area of very high tides—on average, over five metres—and narrow inlets or bays which can be dammed; the water flows in behind the dam and then, at low tide, back out again and through turbines; the water turns the turbines, the turbines turn generators and electricity is produced. There is a huge number of areas all through the Kimberley that are particularly suited to development of tidal energy.

There are in the world two major installations. One is in France at Rance Bay. That station has been operating now for 30 years, producing 240 megawatts of electric power and with twenty 12-megawatt turbines operating. My understanding is that that station is just now going through a series of maintenance works, bringing those turbines up to scratch again. These facilities generally should have a lifetime of 120 years, with something like a nominal rebuild time for the turbines of 40 years. That means that the capital cost of tidal energy is very expensive but that the operating cost is very low. In 1963 John Woods, the engineer who wrote the paper, predicted that we had enough capacity by several times to power Australia.

In November 1991 a Western Australian government committee tabled a report which dealt solely with tidal energy and the potential for hydrogen transmission developed from excess energy produced in the tidal station. That committee recommended that long-term plans be made to harness Kimberley tidal power as one of the range of renewable energy sources that Australia will need to employ to achieve sustainable development and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The very first station, as I have said, was built at Rance Bay on the west coast of France. The second station, of some 20 megawatts, was built at Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia, Canada, and was commissioned in 1984. Both those plants operate continuously. But now a company called Tidal Energy Australia, driven by another ex-Britisher Mr Peter Wood, has formed a company to build hopefully Australia's first tidal power station at Doctors Creek, Derby. The station would be unique in that it would be the second largest station in the world producing 48 megawatts of power with six 8-megawatt turbines. The output will be continuous because there will be two legs to Doctors Creek. The water will flow into one, be held back by gates and then allowed to flow continuously through the turbines into the second bay and then out to the sea. The station would power Derby, Fitzroy Crossing, Broome and Western Metals.

I understand that the Western Australian government expects to call tenders shortly and have tenders let by the end of January. I commend the government for taking that approach, and I certainly hope that we will see the tidal energy station in operation very shortly after the beginning of the new century.

The second area of potential that we have is that of geothermal energy or hot dry rocks. It is essentially all about mining heat. There are two researchers at ANU, Dr Doon Wyborn and Dr Prame Chopra, who have really interested me in this technology. They have done a tremendous amount of research. They are part of a company called Hot Rock Energy Pty Ltd, and they hope to do experimental work near Newcastle in the Hunter Valley to produce steam from water that they pump down a deep well some four to five kilometres deep. They expect they will hit temperatures of 250 degrees celsius. They will bring the water back up again at that elevated temperature, superheat it and use it to run turbines to produce electricity. The potential there is enormous. There is enough potential in that one basin of the Hunter Valley, I am told, to provide three-quarters of New South Wales total power requirements in an absolutely non-polluting manner. Both of these technologies are known. They are proven. We know it will work. It is time for us to get on with it. (Time expired)