It was nothing if not audacious.
In a speech that avoided answering one of the biggest questions hanging over his policy to build nuclear reactors at seven sites around Australia, Peter Dutton posed a very similar one about his opponents and their plans to phase out fossil fuels.
“Who will bear the costs of this transition?” Dutton asked in an address to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia on Monday, before answering it himself. “Australian households will – in their power bills.”
Dutton’s speech to a lunchtime event titled “A nuclear-powered Australia – could it work?” contained no new information about his nuclear plan and was instead an exercise in relativism via admission. To paraphrase: my energy policy might cost a lot, but theirs will cost more and mine is more reliable.
“Yes, our nuclear plan does have significant upfront cost,” Dutton said. “… But a whole new and vast transmission network and infrastructure won’t be needed.”
He has still provided no evidence to support this statement, nor any further detail beyond naming seven sites and indicating he favours small modular reactors.
This speech was not about providing that detail. It was about making truthy-sounding arguments designed to generate an impression, not information.
He had a few messages that clearly came straight from the focus groups, starting and ending on a plea for “pragmatism, not politics”, rebuking the Albanese government for being “juvenile” and “childish” and accusing it of avoiding “a sensible discussion” about nuclear power.
What is evident from Dutton’s speech is that he knows, as the government does, that it won’t be arguments about three-eyed fish or even earthquake fault lines that will swing voters for or against nuclear power as they think about which way to vote. It’s what it will cost and whether nuclear can actually address Australia’s energy challenges.
Dutton was cosying up to renewable energy, suggesting he’s all for it, but that it needs more grunt to get Australia through. He’s trying to suggest his policy is about climate responsibility, not denial, and balances environmental and economic imperatives.
“We can have cheaper, cleaner and consistent energy if we adopt nuclear power,” he said. “And zero-emission nuclear power is our only chance to reach net zero by 2050.”
He didn’t mention having to keep coal in the mix for a lot longer. But that’s certainly what his Coalition partners, the Nationals, have been saying with a nudge and a wink, whenever they are in receptive company.
Referring to the government’s policy, Dutton used the false label “renewables-only” seven times and “renewables alone” once. He suggested that the government’s pledge to an ongoing role for gas was support in name only. Tell that to the Labor party members and constituents who are outraged that its future gas strategy embeds that particular fossil fuel in the energy mix to 2050 and beyond.
The opposition leader said Labor was lying about the “true costs” Australians would bear in its planned transition away from coal-fired power to cleaner forms of energy, calling this an “absolute scandal” while saying precisely nothing specific about the cost of his own.
“We will release our costings in due course, at a time of our choosing,” Dutton said.
Calling his own policy idea “truly visionary” was the closest he came to acknowledging that nuclear power could not be up and running in Australia for at least two decades.
“We can’t switch nuclear power on tomorrow,” he said, adding one more little caveat about legislative obstacles. “Even if the ban is lifted.”
Not when, if.
Instead of cold, hard facts, Dutton’s Ceda speech relied on warm, fuzzy assurances. With the emphasis on fuzzy.
“Clean nuclear energy is reliable,” he insisted. “It will underpin renewables. It will get the cost of electricity down. It will keep the lights on.”
In which decade, he didn’t quite say.
