Peter Dutton’s plan for a nuclear power grab

The Coalition’s punt on seven uncosted taxpayer-funded nuclear reactors is a “basket case from beginning to end” and a disruptive form of “new climate denial”, according to Chris Bowen.

The minister for climate change and energy is responding to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s long-awaited elaboration of his nuclear plan, which he presented on Wednesday without serious details such as cost, modelling for claims of cheaper power and a firm timeline for delivery. In so doing, the Coalition is tying itself to an uncertain energy solution more than a decade away – even if the existing nuclear bans can be overturned.

Nevertheless, with this proposal Dutton has declared that the next election will be a referendum on energy and nuclear policy, taking advantage of waning public support for renewable energy and the Albanese government’s failure so far to sell its transition plans to households reeling under cost-of-living pressures.

While the government, unions and climate groups have begun a campaign to tear down what Treasurer Jim Chalmers called the “dumbest policy ever”, they are facing accusations of complacency and slow climate action. Labor is charged with not looping regional communities in on the next “gold rush” and ignoring a way to “ensure that no one’s left behind” by assisting with electrification.

“They think that the 2022 federal election was like landing at Normandy on the 6th of June,” says RedBridge Group pollster Tony Barry. “They think they’ve won the war. It’s like, ‘Nah, you’ve got 200 kilometres to go to get to Berlin.’ Don’t start high-fiving each other.

“There is basically softening public support for renewable energy – and to be frank Dutton has picked it pretty well – and the sector and governments need to start prosecuting the case again,” the former Liberal Party strategist says.

“Because public opinion is never static. It’s constantly changing and evolving and moving. The Voice started at 65 per cent and ended at 39 per cent.”

The similarities with the referendum don’t end there. In embracing Nationals policy, much as he did with the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum, Dutton has radically reshaped the election fight.

This time, however, it is the opposition leader who faces accusations of a lack of detail. The nuclear proposal represents the very type of information vacuum ridiculed by the Coalition during the Voice campaign.

And now, instead of doggedly opposing a bold idea and seeding doubt and fears, the Liberal leader has to sell this landmark one as a positive – while attacking Labor – to get an electoral mandate for nuclear power.

“It is a fantasy and a so-called policy announcement that raises more questions than answers. And that’s because they know the answers and they know the answers are really bad,” Bowen tells The Saturday Paper.

“Really bad on cost. Really bad on time. Really bad on modelling. And having wandered around the country for two years complaining that we do renewables without consultation, alleging that, they just picked seven sites with no consultation with anyone.”

Dutton sees a way ahead as a sustained attack on renewables. He has picked up not only on recent surveys suggesting young voters are more open to nuclear power but also on angst over the near-term costs to households of renewable infrastructure such as solar panels – costs that were not addressed in the latest budget. Moreover, recent polling suggests the longer-term expense of nuclear versus renewable power hasn’t cut through for much of the population.

“They are proposing the most expensive form of energy,” Bowen says. “They are underlining their climate denial. This is just new climate denial. That is all. It’s an excuse to slow down renewables. Any climate conscious voter will see through that.

“If they want to run on cost of living, again, why haven’t they released costed modelling? Because they know it will put power prices up. They have chosen this ground and they’ll have to defend the indefensible.”

Dutton is apparently buoyed by unreleased Coalition polling in the seven seats that are proposed sites for reactors. The locations were released this week after months of delay, and as had been mooted for weeks – they are the end-of-life coal-fired power station sites at Mount Piper and Liddell in New South Wales, Loy Yang in Victoria, Collie in Western Australia, Callide and Tarong in Queensland, and Northern in Port Augusta, South Australia.

In response to opposition from the affected Labor state governments and some of the surprised owners of the tagged sites, the Coalition says it has legal advice it can compulsorily acquire the sites with “just compensation”.

Costings for the proposed projects would be announced before the election at the “appropriate timeframe”, according to the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor.

One large-scale nuclear power plant, under CSIRO modelling, would cost $8.6 billion.

The plants would be Commonwealth-owned and taxpayer-funded, in a shift from accepted economic liberalism within the Liberal Party. This is being sold within the Coalition as a model similar to the national broadband network and the Snowy 2.0 hydro power project.

All Dutton would say about the cost is that it will be a “big bill – there’s no question about that”. He points to the billions of dollars being spent on the renewable energy transition under Labor, as well as the thousands of kilometres of transmission infrastructure.

As for their start date, of the seven proposed reactors, two are envisioned to become operational somewhere between 2035 and 2037 – timing that conflicts with CSIRO modelling that suggests 2040 at the earliest.

For where the radioactive waste would go, Dutton suggests to the same place as the AUKUS nuclear submarine waste.

 

What Dutton really wanted to riff on with reporters this week was the current high power prices and cost-of-living pain.

“I’m very happy for the election to be a referendum on energy, on nuclear, on power prices, on lights going out, on who has a sustainable pathway for our country,” the opposition leader said.

RedBridge’s Tony Barry contends, based on recent polling, the government and climate groups have not done a good job selling renewable energy. It’s a situation, he argues, that has allowed the Coalition to see an advantage, particularly over poles and wires.

It is even a problem for rooftop solar converts.

“Whenever you do these focus groups on renewables, just randomly you get two or three people per group who’ve got solar panels and they are ropeable,” he says.

“Because it’s just like, ‘I did all my calculations based on 15 cents, 20 cents a kWh, and now it’s 5.5 cents a kWh and yeah, it’s just going to take longer to pay off … I’ve been lied to, the government told me this and now it’s been changed.’ ”

Independent MP Helen Haines can see what is being exploited in the Coalition’s cost-of-living focus.

“I think household budgets aren’t seeing the reduction in power prices that they want to see, but we won’t see that reduction in power prices unless we get on and do the renewable energy transformation,” she tells The Saturday Paper. “So, I think it’s a difficult tension right now.”

The government did make a popular decision in the budget with the $300 energy bill rebate to every household and the additional energy bill relief to small businesses.

There is a bigger missing retail piece, however, according to independent Senator David Pocock, as the Albanese government seeks to emulate the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act with its recently announced Future Made in Australia plan to encourage investment in the transition to net zero emissions.

For Pocock, going electric in all homes and businesses presents the opportunity for households to reduce their bills to “next to nothing”. But the up-front costs make it a social equity issue.

“People want to do the right thing, unlock those savings, but we still see this up-front capital, which makes it really hard for, say, the majority of households,” the ACT senator tells The Saturday Paper.

“We need finance mechanisms and ways to ensure that no one’s left behind so that the people feeling cost of living the most can unlock those savings.”

The latest figures from the Clean Energy Regulator show there are more than 3.8 million solar roofs in Australia, more than a million of which are in Queensland. The figure for battery storage is far lower, at less than 100,000.

Last month, the government started unlocking its $1 billion Household Energy Upgrades Fund, from a wider $1.7 billion energy savings package, to speed up energy efficiency and electrification. It came from a Greens deal in late 2022 to pass the government’s legislated cap on gas prices, one of the efforts to tame power bill spikes.

Yet only $60 million is going out in the first round – that’s through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, allowing non-bank lender Plenti to offer green loans with discounted interest rates for household energy upgrades.

“Sixty million of $1 billion two weeks ago! It’s just sitting there. At the same time, we’ve seen the US announce billions of dollars for solar onto social and low income households. These are the things we should be doing right now,” Pocock says.

“We’re seeing everything kicked down the road, and then they will say, ‘Well, oh, hang on, you know, the $300 energy rebate.’ Sure, households will be grateful for it. But the people I’ve been talking to say, ‘Well, that doesn’t really touch the sides.’ Like that will be a blip.”

Bowen says the rest of the money will come. “That’s just $60 million of the one billion. Then we’ve also been rolling out in the social housing money. We’ve been rolling out the local government money, but to suggest that nothing’s happening here is just not correct,” he says.

“Our rooftop solar penetrations are higher than the United States by many orders of magnitude. And Americans come here to learn what we are doing and what they can learn from it.”

Non-profit group Rewiring Australia says it has been engaging with the energy minister and the parliament to present the best possible electrification policies to the government over the next few months.

In its pre-budget submission, it proposed a HECS-style scheme to allow more Australians to access cheaper energy.

“Rewiring Australia’s ambition is to see the federal government allocate billions of dollars on-budget,” the group’s executive director, Dan Cass, tells The Saturday Paper.

“This will make tens of billions in federal loans available to households, saving consumers hundreds of billions through energy bill reductions.

“There is no other climate policy with such a powerful public benefit multiplier. And this does not even tally up the benefits in emissions reduction and delivery of the 82 per cent renewables target.”

Meanwhile, with the reignition of the climate wars, misinformation and disinformation are swirling online. Offshore wind projects, which the government champions and the opposition has also backed in the past, have encountered some furious opposition from local business owners, fishers, climate sceptics and environmentalists.

There has been continued erroneous citing, for example, of a study that does not exist, linking turbines to whale deaths.

“I think there’s definitely some legitimate concerns there. And we’re also seeing tactics that have been used elsewhere, in the US, around the way that areas are sort of astroturfed, and you see this amplification of certain views and some sort of misinformation,” Pocock says.

The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, who has been touring communities protesting proposed wind farms, reinforcing his party’s opposition, says his party is addressing anger in regional areas that he says are bearing the brunt of the energy transition.

Though Littleproud backs household solar and batteries for the cities, he is against industrial-scale renewable energy, particularly “industrial wind farms” and transmission lines running across the landscape. This view seemingly pits him against leading Liberal moderate Simon Birmingham, who says there is “absolutely a place for large-scale renewables as part of a technology-neutral approach”.

“We only want to represent the 30 per cent of Australians outside capital cities,” Littleproud tells The Saturday Paper. “And when our people hurt, we actually feel not just the obligation, it is built in our DNA that we stand up for them.

“We need to open our minds to doing it better, because we’re feeling the pinch.”

As a regional independent, Haines calls out the Nationals leader.

“I think that what Mr Littleproud is failing to do is go beyond describing a problem. And he’s not actually creating or working with communities to create a vision for what this can be for rural and regional Australia,” she tells The Saturday Paper.

“In really remote Australia, Aboriginal communities are getting off diesel power generators and getting into solar and battery power for their community and sharing that power and cutting their energy bills to almost nothing and getting energy security. That shouldn’t be a unicorn story in regional Australia. That should be the norm.”

The member for Indi says it is vital the government gets the messaging right for rural and regional Australia and assists communities on the journey.

“They need to address not only those communities that are transitioning away from fossil fuels,” Haines says. “They really need to be, in parallel, casting their eyes out to the renewable energy zones and how we generate, store and transmit power in a way that really sees regional communities experience the next gold rush.

“If they can bring a reality to that policy space, I think we would see a much greater acceptance and a desire to engage in this.”

Chris Bowen says that polls testing the popularity of different forms of energy show the most popular form of energy is solar, followed by wind and gas. Coal and nuclear round out the bottom of the field.

“I know that this is a more complicated story than people in the cities want action on climate change and people in the bush don’t like it. It’s just not true,” the climate minister says.

“Peter Dutton and David Littleproud are not talking to the average regional voter, they’re talking to Sky after dark and Sky after dark alone.”

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