THE COST OF NUCLEAR
The Coalition’s plans to embrace nuclear power could add hundreds of dollars to the average annual power bill, a new report has claimed. Research from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis suggests Peter Dutton’s plan to build seven small nuclear reactors across five states could lead to household electricity bills increasing an average of $665 a year, or $972 for a family of four, the AAP reports.
Johanna Bowyer, one of the co-authors of the report, said in eastern Australia nuclear-generated electricity costs would likely be 1.5 to 3.8 times higher than current electricity generation. AAP reports she also claimed, based on the international examples, costs associated with construction could reach $90 billion. “For nuclear power plants to be commercially viable without government subsidies and generating 24/7, electricity prices would need to rise to these higher levels to allow the nuclear power plants to recover their costs,” she said.
Guardian Australia highlights that the Coalition is unsurprisingly disputing the report, with Ted O’Brien, the opposition’s climate and energy spokesperson, saying the modeling, based on projects in the US and Europe, “does not reflect Coalition policy”. O’Brien said it followed other critiques “where a dodgy piece of analysis cherrypicks the worst-case scenario projects and pretends that it’s common practice”.
The Australian led overnight on the fact Dutton will deliver a speech in Sydney on Monday about his nuclear plans. The paper states Dutton will still not reveal the Coalition’s costings and modeling for his policy and says loosely that the opposition will “unveil its full energy policy package before December”.
Meanwhile, Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen has released departmental analysis based on the limited information available relating to the Coalition’s policy, The Australian reports. It says the analysis forecasts two scenarios with demand-supply gaps of 49% and 18% by 2035. “He’d [Dutton] take to our finely tuned electricity system planning with a sledgehammer,” Bowen writes in the paper this morning.
As Dutton prepares to defend his nuclear ambitions, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is preparing for his trip to America this weekend for the Quad meeting in US President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware. The ABC reports “regional security” will be discussed in the meeting also involving Japanese PM Fumio Kishida and Indian PM Narendra Modi. The national broadcaster is keen to point out half of the Quad leaders will actually be out of office in the next few months — Kishida has said he will step down at the end of this month and Biden… well, we all know what happened there.
Biden is, in fact, out and about today responding to the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut its benchmark interest rate by half a percentage point. The New York Times reports the 81-year-old will tell The Economic Club of Washington the economy has finally reached a turning point, but he will stop short of “declaring victory”.
Following the news yesterday that the unemployment rate stayed at 4.2% in August, the Commonwealth Bank now reckons the Reserve Bank will lower the official cash rate 0.25 percentage points in December, rather than its previous prediction of November, AAP reports.
LATEST US POLLING
As Biden celebrates the Fed’s decision on Wednesday, The New York Times reports new polling shows while his Vice President Kamala Harris overwhelmingly impressed voters in her debate with Donald Trump last week “she has failed so far to seize a decisive advantage in the presidential campaign”.
The poll, by the Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Siena College, found 67% of likely voters said Harris did well in the debate compared with 40% for Trump. A majority of voters in every racial group, age bracket and education level gave her a positive review, the paper said. Nationally though, Harris and Trump are locked at 47% of the vote each. The NYT said it was surprising the vice president was leading Trump 50% to 46% in the key swing state of Pennsylvania, which has generally trended more Republican than the nation overall.
Pennsylvania is seen by many analysts as the state that could decide the 2024 US election. A separate poll from The Washington Post claims the candidates are essentially tied in the state (after excluding minor candidates) at 48% each among likely voters, with Harris at 48% and Trump at 47% among registered voters.
Elsewhere in world affairs, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has said, in a televised address from an undisclosed location, that the deadly blasts this week targeting the militant group’s pagers and walkie-talkies “crossed all red lines”, Reuters reports.
“The enemy went beyond all controls, laws and morals,” he said, claiming the attacks “could be considered war crimes or a declaration of war, they could be called anything and they deserve to be called anything. Of course that was the intention of the enemy”. The New York Times reports Nasrallah vowed “retribution will come”.
Lebanon and Hezbollah have blamed Israel for the attacks, which killed 37 people and wounded about 3,000, Reuters added. Israel has not directly commented on the attacks.
The BBC reports Israel Defense Forces were carrying out fresh air strikes on Hezbollah targets in Lebanon as the speech aired.
ON A LIGHTER NOTE…
A 500-year-old engraving rescued from a tip by an 11-year-old boy has sold at auction for £26,500 (A$52,000).
The Smithsonian Magazine reports Mat Winter, now 24, spotted the print in a woman’s car, among the rubbish she was preparing to throw out. “I thought it looked interesting and asked if I could have it. She was more than happy to give it to me … It’s been tucked away in a cupboard at home with all my other antique finds for the last 13 years,” he said.
The BBC quotes Winter as adding: “It’s got so much detail to it, and something told me that’s worth something but I never really knew what.”
Winter eventually took the engraving to Jim Spencer, director of Rare Book Auctions. Spencer initially had low expectations, that is until he inspected the artwork. “I opened the package, removed the bubble wrap and staggered back in awe,” The Smithsonian Magazine quotes Spencer as saying. “My hands were shaking as I held it up to the light. The laid paper was absolutely right for the period. The quality of the engraving was exceptional beyond words. I knew that only one person could’ve produced something like this — it had to be the hand of Dürer himself.”
The artwork turned out to be a print of famed German Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut engraving Knight, Death and the Devil dating from 1513, the magazine said.
“The final result [the auction sale] is testament to the enduring importance of Albrecht Dürer. Everybody is really pleased with the outcome,” the BBC quotes Spencer as concluding.
Say What?
They’re not terribly clever questions.
Anthony Albanese
The prime minister got a touch frustrated during his interview with ABC’s Patricia Karvelas on Thursday when the host asked him about his favourite topic — the government’s stalled housing reforms — and whether negative gearing and capital gains tax concessions would be considered in negotiations with the Greens.
CRIKEY RECAP
Australia’s biggest radiology company has handed over the private medical scans of potentially hundreds of thousands of patients, without their knowledge, to a start-up company that will use the scans to train artificial intelligence, in what privacy experts say is a practice that the law should protect against.
Australian healthcare technology company Harrison.ai says it is a “US$200 million+ company” backed by some of Australia’s biggest start-up and health names including Blackbird Ventures, Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar’s Skip Capital, and the ASX-listed Ramsay Healthcare. Its board includes Tesla chair Robyn Denholm, and both the federal government and the opposition have touted the company.
Harrison.ai’s flagship product is a tool that can read chest X-rays and help clinicians detect observations like collapsed lungs or stents. The company says this tool, along with a similar one for brain scans, is now “available to one in three radiologists in Australia and clinics in Europe, UK, APAC and US”.
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland’s department hired a consultant to review its gambling advertising policy who is an old acquaintance of hers and a former colleague of 10 years, Crikey can reveal.
Rob Nicholls, a digital policy expert, academic, and proprietor of the boutique consultancy firm Nicholls MMC, worked at the law firm Gilbert + Tobin for 12 years starting in 1998 and sat in the office next to Rowland’s after she joined the firm in 2000. They both quit the firm in 2010, according to their LinkedIn pages.
In January, Nicholls was hired by the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts to perform a “wagering advertising reforms impact analysis” at a maximum contract value of $27,500 including GST.
There’s no suggestion of wrongdoing, including by Nicholls, who signed a conflict of interest declaration and was open about his connection to Rowland when contacted by Crikey earlier this week.
Harris’ accession has turned out support among women, but also deepened Republican support among white men overall, from 12% (under Biden) to 17% (with Harris as Democratic candidate). That, plus the college/non-college gap within female voters, spells deep trouble in the swing states.
That this has hit a new pitch is signalled by the decision of the powerful Teamsters union — i.e. the transport workers — to not make a presidential endorsement because the union is split between its pro-Democrat leadership and its pro-Republican base.
This signals a new level of estrangement between Democrats and the white working class, because the strongest link between the party and the class was hitherto in areas where unionisation was, or had been, strongest. Union members are less atomised, have different sources of information etc.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Hunter Biden’s sentencing on federal firearms charges delayed until December (The Independent)
Mohamed Al Fayed accused of multiple rapes by staff (BBC)
UK leader Starmer is facing flak for taking freebies. He says he’s done nothing wrong (Associated Press)
Earth will get a second ‘mini-moon’ for 2 months this year (CBS News)
‘I am beyond excited’: Kylie Minogue announces biggest tour in a decade (The Guardian)
THE COMMENTARIAT
Labor is flirting with a double dissolution, but such threats only work when the people you’re threatening take it seriously — Brett Worthington (ABC): The whole debate over Help to Buy has been a pantomime that dominated the Senate but failed to deliver anything of substance this week.
It’s been more than 200 days since the shared-equity scheme passed the House of Representatives. Labor brought the issue up for debate in the Senate knowing it didn’t have the votes to pass it — but that was the point.
The government wanted its bill voted down, so it could accuse the Coalition and Greens of standing in the way of helping renters buy a home.
It was pure politics.
The only trouble was that Labor was again reminded that it might be in government but it doesn’t have control of the Senate.
Why this is the housing fight Albanese had to have — David Crowe (The Sydney Morning Herald): Albanese seems at times like someone who is minding his manners at a dinner table while the guys to his left and right lunge past him to grab the food. Nobody asks politely for the salt and pepper at this political banquet — so the only response for the prime minister is to get the elbows out.
That is why Labor needed this impasse in the Senate. Labor took a hard line against the Coalition and the Greens by pushing back on every complaint about its housing policies, even at the risk of defeat in the Senate. And there were no distractions like the census dispute earlier this month: Australians watching politics from afar would have seen the government talking solely about a key factor in the cost of living.
Labor tried for an outcome, and got obstruction instead. It did not get the law it wanted, but it got the argument it needed.
