In finally unveiling the cost estimates for his nuclear power plan, Peter Dutton has laid out the Coalition’s key themes for next year’s election fight: the cost and reliability of energy, the pressure on Australians’ way of life and the role of political leadership in both.
The Coalition is using this one contentious, audacious policy to try and channel all the uncertainty and insecurity Australians are expressing about life now and life in the future and turn it into electoral support.
Dutton declared on Friday that Australia was at “a crossroad”. He was referring to the choice between two different energy policies, but he made it about more than that.
“I think at the next election, there’s a choice between the prime minister and what you’ve seen of his leadership style and abilities over the course of the last two-and-a-half years, and our plan, which will be a vision for our country,” Dutton said.
“We have to make the decisions that are in our country’s best interests, and it takes the strength of the Coalition to be able to do that because we’re better economic managers.”
The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, spoke of the nuclear energy policy in terms of legacy – “a legacy for our nation that ensures that we have the standard of living that we have today”.
The shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, called the policy “visionary”.
“We’ve seen our standard of living collapse in front of us,” Taylor said. “Right at the heart of that is the complete failure of this government to deliver on their promises on energy.”
The style of the collective pitch did little to shift the suspicion that this policy is at least as much about political messaging as it is about the best form of energy for Australia.
The opposition leader seems to want to leverage both the personal momentum he has against his opponent and the credibility that gets attached to economic modelling, using each thing to reinforce the other. He’s effectively saying: you can trust me, so you can trust all the detail behind this big policy promise, plus all the detail in this big policy promise is obviously credible, so you can trust me.
But in linking his grand nuclear energy plan directly to his own credentials relative to his opponent, Dutton is taking a risk. Modelling is only as good as the political parameters that are set for it. In this context, it’s designed to sell a policy position that was fixed long before the numbers were done.
He’s banking on people only hearing the basic message that his plan is cheaper than the incumbent’s and not hearing that this is actually an apples-and-oranges comparison between two completely different scenarios with different variables.
He’s also banking on not having to explain such discrepancies in too much detail himself. At his Friday news conference, alongside the party’s energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien, and others, he called O’Brien forward repeatedly to answer questions on the detail.
The criticism that Dutton and his colleagues level at Anthony Albanese is that he’s not across the detail, that he’s not up to the job. It wouldn’t be a good look if the same idea started to take hold about him.
There was just a glimpse of that risk on Friday, when Dutton misspoke in responding to a question about whether his energy plan would reduce fossil fuels slower or faster than the government’s renewables-heavy version.
“I don’t make any mistake at all for making very clear to the Australian people that our priority is to bring their power prices down,” he said, substituting a mistake for an apology – literally.
There will be much scrutiny of these costings because, thus far, it’s about the only pre-election policy detail available from the opposition. There should be a lot more. Just like all that Labor does and promises to do, every Coalition policy needs to be able to withstand rigorous interrogation.
So does the bloke who’s behind it.
