In the olden days, politicians would use the Christmas break to have a break, and give us a break from them. Remember Acting Prime Minister Doug Anthony running the country from a caravan at New Brighton?
These days, the absence of parliamentary sittings at this time of year, along with much in the way of real news, is just an opportunity to push political agendas into a less crowded media environment, or in the case of Peter Dutton and friends, blatant misinformation.
Consider the Coalition’s nuclear costings this week, an edifice of rubbery figures and nonsense designed to shape BBQ conversations over the summer, in the best tradition of John Winston Howard.
In the strange, glowing world suggested by Frontier Economics, and propagated by Peter Dutton, Nationals leader David Littleproud, shadow treasurer Angus Taylor and shadow energy minister Ted O’Brien, a 50,000 strong fully trained nuclear workforce can be conjured into existence immediately, nuclear waste can be stored and transported for free, accidents never happen, and $10,000/kW nuclear energy is cheaper than $1,800/kW solar energy.
How much?
As the Climate Council and others have pointed out, that $10,000 figure cited by Frontier Economics is itself extremely dodgy.
Costs at the latest nuclear plant in the UK, Hinkley C (under construction since 2017 and still not complete), have blown out to over $27,000/kW. New plants in France, Finland and USA are over $15,000/kW.
The Coalition wants us to believe it can get elected federally with a workable majority, then immediately overturn national and state legislation banning nuclear energy, simultaneously acquire the necessary land and planning approvals in record time, override the objections of the people who live near these toxic facilities, find a place to dump the waste and then pick up multiple ‘off-the-shelf’ nuclear power plants from somewhere, ready to run perfectly, first time. It all sounds a bit tricker than the car parks which have challenged Liberal and National governments in the past.
If any of these stages run into delays (which are inevitable), coal and gas will have to pick up the slack and Australia will have to pick up the bill, in the absence of new renewable energy or battery investment.
There’s no discussion in the Dutton plan of where the money will come from to prop up the existing coal-fired power stations, (which even their owners don’t want to do), and the figures only vaguely make sense with the assumption that Australians will demand about half the energy over the next twenty years that the Australian Energy Market Operator expects them to.
The growth in electric cars and other forms of electrification would have to reverse for this to happen.
As for climate impacts (supposedly one of the reasons for going nuclear), Australia’s already pathetic 43 per cent emissions reduction target by 2030 would need to be scrapped under the Coalition’s energy plan, with Climate Council modelling suggests that Australia’s domestic emissions would actually rise by about one billion tonnes, at a cost of around $240bn to the Australian economy, not to mention the environmental impacts.
While it’s true that nine per cent of global energy capacity currently comes from nuclear power (perhaps increasing to a maximum of eleven per cent if planned projects come online), the International Energy Agency says 560GW of new renewable power was installed in 2023, compared with 7.1GW of nuclear, and these trends show no sign of changing direction.
Peter Dutton’s self described ‘visionary’ plan is swimming completely against the global energy tide.
Lies and scares
Of course dealing with reality is not the point of any of this.
In the best tradition of right wing nutjobs everywhere, the idea is to suck up oxygen, stick it to your political opponents, and maintain the destructive status quo (coal and gas), while providing just enough detail to suggest you have an actual plan to deal with the climate emergency and Australia’s energy needs, when you don’t have any such thing.
If nuclear nonsense isn’t enough to stop the family BBQ or Christmas dinner, there’s always flags to rabbit on about, with a side helping of dog whistling to keep your racist uncle happy.
For the record, in spite of what Peter Dutton said last week, Australia doesn’t have a single official flag (that mishmash of the Union Jack and the Southern Cross which has only existed in its current form since 1908) – it actually has a number of them, including the Aboriginal flag, which was designed in 1971. Israel’s national flag, which Peter Dutton was happy to be filmed in front of recently, is not among them.
Unfortunately, the Labor government’s ongoing attempts to do (comparatively) sensible old-fashioned politics in response to all this stupidity is not going to cut the mustard in today’s hyper-partisan environment.
They will need to sharpen their attack, strategy and policy in 2025 to avoid the giant potato-shaped boulder threatening to crush them like Indiana Jones.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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