Any day now, we’ll get the full details on the Coalition’s nuclear proposal. “[Peter] Dutton is preparing to release the long-anticipated costings of his party’s nuclear policy this week,” read a line in a Sydney Morning Herald story just this morning.
If you feel like you’ve heard that one before, you’re not wrong. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the many, many Coalition nuclear (non) announcements from the past few years.
June 5, 2022
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton announces his new frontbench, including Ted O’Brien in the climate change and energy portfolio. Three years earlier, O’Brien had chaired an inquiry into nuclear energy and declared it “should be on the table for consideration as part of our future energy mix”.
August 2, 2022
Dutton announces he has “initiated a formal internal process to examine the potential for advanced and next-generation nuclear technologies to contribute to Australia’s energy security and reduce power prices”. O’Brien is put in charge of the review.
July 7, 2023
Dutton uses a speech to the Liberal-aligned think tank Institute of Public Affairs to call for a debate about removing Australia’s ban on nuclear power — “a step that was not taken during the nine years of Coalition government, in which he was a senior member”, as Guardian Australia noted at the time. In his speech, Dutton says he would like to convert coal-fired plants into sites for small modular reactors — a proposed future technology that is still under development and whose “economic competitiveness is still to be proven in practice”, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
August 16, 2023
A story in The Australian Financial Review says Dutton is likely to “formalise the Coalition’s official position on nuclear power, including possibly overturning the 1998 ban”. It notes “the Coalition has yet to decide its official position to take to the next election, but recent comments suggest a pledge to overturn the 1998 ban is looking increasingly likely”.
Meanwhile, on December 21, 2023, CSIRO’s GenCost report finds “electricity produced by renewables is cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear power and is expected to remain the lowest cost power source for decades to come”, as The Sydney Morning Herald reports.
March 5, 2024
ABC News reports: “Opposition Leader Peter Dutton says he will be up front with voters about where the Coalition is looking to place potential nuclear reactors when the party announces its policy in coming weeks.”
March 12, 2024
Dutton attacks the CSIRO’s credibility, saying its December nuclear power report has been “discredited”, is “not a genuine piece of work” and that it’s “not relied on”. That same day, The Australian reports a drop from the Coalition that says Dutton is “considering a range of options for community incentives … including potential subsidised electricity prices for local industries, upgraded community infrastructure, and transition packages for workers to higher-paid jobs”. The same story says the Coalition is “close to announcing a final energy policy”.
Later that week, CSIRO’s chief executive Doug Hilton defends his agency and its findings, saying: “The GenCost report can be trusted by all our elected representatives, irrespective of whether they are advocating for electricity generation by renewables, coal, gas or nuclear energy.”
April 2, 2024
The Australian reports Dutton is “poised to release a major incentive package for coal communities to move from coal-fired power stations to nuclear energy, promising higher paying jobs and industry energy subsidies”. The story says “the Coalition will release the first major plank of its nuclear energy plan within weeks”.
May 24, 2024
Dutton, who at this point still hasn’t revealed exactly where his proposed nuclear plants will be built, claims communities that already have coal power stations would be supportive of nuclear energy: “When you look at the communities where there is a high energy IQ, that is where they’ve got a coal-fired power station now, people are in favour [of nuclear] because they understand the technology.”
June 16, 2024
“Peter Dutton has again refused to reveal key details on the Coalition’s nuclear power policy, declaring he would consider announcing his alternative 2035 emissions reduction goal if the government released modelling on interim climate targets,” reads a story by NCA NewsWire. “Mr Dutton said he would reveal the opposition’s energy plan within ‘weeks’ in March but again declined to spell out the full details of his vision for Australia’s energy transition.”
June 19, 2024
Dutton finally reveals part of his nuclear plans, including the proposed locations of seven nuclear power plants. But the announcement says nothing about the estimated costs. In an analysis piece for ABC News, RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas wonders whether the detail-starved announcement is “cunning genius or … political self-destruction”. The piece features a paraphrased comment from a senior Liberal suggesting “the delay in releasing the figures was to rob Labor of the ability to question the economic basis of the policy — you can’t pull and pick apart numbers that haven’t been provided”.
August 20, 2024
Guardian Australia notes that nothing new has become known about the Coalition’s nuclear plans, including details on costs and evidence to back up claims made months earlier: “More detail had been expected before Parliament returned last week, but none was released.”
September 19, 2024
The Australian reports: “Amid rising expectations of a March election, the Coalition will unveil its full energy policy package before December.”
The following day, a report by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis says “the Coalition’s plan for seven nuclear power plants would lift power bills for average households by $665 a year based on estimated costs of six overseas nuclear projects”, according to Guardian Australia.
September 23, 2024
Ahead of a speech by Dutton to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, the Australian Associated Press reports the opposition leader is “expected to reveal further details on the Coalition’s plans for a nuclear energy-powered Australia”. But following the speech, the news reports sound more like this: “Peter Dutton ducks cost question on Coalition’s nuclear reactor plan.”
December 5, 2024
The Sydney Morning Herald reports Dutton “will reveal his costings for seven government-backed nuclear plants as soon as next week” and that the Coalition will claim its energy grid plan “would cost less than Labor’s”.
Aaaand today, December 9, 2024, a new CSIRO report, which has reportedly “changed its modelling to accommodate criticism from the Peter Dutton-led Coalition that it had unfairly favoured wind and solar energy sources”, still finds nuclear power would be “about 50% more expensive than renewables”.
Dutton complains the CSIRO is “bagging” the Coalition’s plan, even though the group hasn’t seen it yet: “It just looks to me like there’s a heavy hand of Chris Bowen in all this, and I don’t think people want to see that.”
When do you expect to see Peter Dutton’s nuclear plan? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
