Australians are no closer to clear answers about what nuclear power could cost, with Labor and the coalition overly confident in their competing estimates, experts say.
The coalition's plan to build nuclear power stations has gained plenty of attention in the first week of campaigning, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese routinely criticising the policy.
"The Liberals need to find $600 billion to pay for their nuclear reactors," he said this week.
But experts say the debate is mired in cherrypicked figures and comparisons that don't stack up.
Labor has taken its $600 billion tag from the highest figure from an analysis by the Smart Energy Council - a renewable energy lobbyist - while omitting a lower $116 billion estimate from the same report.
Thomas Longden, an energy systems expert at the University of Western Sydney, said the $484 billion range in the analysis highlights the uncertainty about what nuclear might cost.
"A transparent presentation of those results is really important," he said.
Estimates of nuclear costs are unreliable but Labor could have clarified that the $600 billion is based on cost blowouts in the UK, Victoria University's Bruce Mountain said.
"I don't have any confidence in anyone's predictions of what it would cost to develop nuclear in Australia," Professor Mountain said.
Mr Dutton, meanwhile, has continuously claimed the energy transition will be 44 per cent cheaper with nuclear than the combination of renewables, storage and gas that Labor backs.
Tony Wood, Energy Program Director at the Grattan Institute, said it's unclear what's being costed and compared as politicians throw around their claims about nuclear.
"If the question is how much the nuclear plan would cost, the correct answer is 'no one knows'," he said.
"The comparison that the opposition uses ... is fundamentally flawed and subject to huge uncertainty risks."
Nuclear costs are one of several claims made during the first week of campaigning.
AAP FactCheck examined a misleadingly trimmed video which made it appear as if the prime minister had confirmed he will govern with the Greens.
The video, which was shared by the Liberal Party on Facebook, cuts most of Mr Albanese's remarks, in which he explicitly says he would not negotiate with the Greens.
Elsewhere, experts told AAP FactCheck that coalition claims about migration rates following COVID-19 are missing key context, including the role of the party's own policies in extending visas.
The coalition has suggested Labor has lost control of the migration system, but just two years ago Mr Dutton called on the government to lift migration rates to appease employers.
CLAIMS REVISITED
AAP FactCheck has been debunking election claims for several weeks. That hasn't stopped some of the key political players from repeating them.
* Anthony Albanese repeated misleading claims several times last Friday that Australians would be $7200 worse off if Peter Dutton was prime minister.
* Mr Albanese repeated a debunked claim on Wednesday that Fair Work Commission submissions from Labor directly resulted in minimum wage increases.
* Peter Dutton repeated a debunked claim on Wednesday that all additional public servants hired under the Albanese government are based in Canberra.
* Mr Dutton repeated a debunked claim several times over the past week that Labor's energy plan is "renewables-only".
Visit AAP FactCheck's website to read all of these checks in full.
