The Coalition’s nuclear energy ‘policy’ would make Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy blush. Michael West reports on a media and political scam on the Australian people.
“Good job fellas!” Chair Tanya Constable and her fellow coal lobby executives down at the headquarters of the Minerals Council of Australia will be toasting Peter Dutton and his stenographers from the Murdoch press with aplomb.
The MCA is the peak lobby group for foreign controlled coal mining multinationals in Australia. It will be the same deal with the gas lobbyists at Australian Energy Producers who rep for Chevron, Exxon, Woodside, Santos and Shell.
After many false dawns, Peter Dutton’s nuclear costings have finally lobbed, or another press release at least. And it’s a public relations coup! Across the nation the Murdoch mastheads are splashing with fairytale headlines claiming that Australians will save, yes save, $264B if they embrace Peter’s energy policy instead of Labor’s renewables roll-out.
We still can’t actually see the modelling, the details, but the Coalition has leaked its fairytale to the media duopoly in return for cravenly fictitious media coverage.
When we see some actual detail we will cover it … wearily. Suffice to say, as we have said many times before over the past two years, this isn’t about building nuclear reactors. If it were even remotely commercially viable, somebody from somewhere in the world, somebody in the private sector would have made some commercial proposal by now, knowing that they could avail themselves of hundreds of billions of Australian public money.
They haven’t – because they know it’s a joke. It is also worth noting the utterly scurrilous suggestion that $264B can be saved under Peter Pan’s plan.
Neverland, true story, really
Just like the Peter Pan himself who spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythical island of Neverland as the leader of the Lost Boys – interacting with fairies, pirates, mermaids, and sometimes actual children – Peter Dutton and his Coalition playmates spend their time making sh*it up.
This is really a story about politicians and media hoodwinking the public. They are barely pretending these days, or perhaps it is truer to say they are pretending even harder.
For those who have not seen it it is worth checking out this bit of play-acting by US news network CNN. Simply theatre, US government PR, just as The Australian is doing Coalition PR. And it shows just how low corporate media has fallen, rendered itself nothing more than an organ to achieve political outcomes.
🇸🇾🇺🇸🚨‼️ FAKEST FAKE: “Clarissa Ward and her CNN team find a prisoner still in Assad’s Air Force Intel HQ in Damascus.”
📋 This is what they want you to believe:
– 5 days after the compound was freed CNN walks in
– Everything is long cleaned out and all doors are opened, except… pic.twitter.com/rWpb2tyiX5— Lord Bebo (@MyLordBebo) December 12, 2024
This nuclear caper is the Coalition’s fantastical zenith, a fable designed simply to serve their paymasters in the fossil fuel lobby by keeping coal and gas burning for longer.
How will it play out? As some observer on Twitter so aptly put it, and we are paraphrasing here, “This from the mob that can’t even build commuter carparks in 9 years”.
Given, in order to make nuclear power a reality, the Coalition would have to first win government, then change the laws in Parliament, then establish the requisite safety and regulatory organisations and identify the sites, gain community permissions and a host of other things, that would soak up their first three year term.
Assuming they were fair dinkum and they miraculously got this done, we are in 2028. They claim they can get the first plant operational by 2035 is pure Neverland.
According to Phil Coorey on the AFR, who appears to be having trouble taking it seriously: “The first (reactor) would be built in 2035 if a small modular reactor, or 2037 if a large power plant. The modelling, which has been described to The Australian Financial Review, operates on the basis the first plant would be operational in 2036, four years earlier than the earliest possible date deemed feasible by a separate CSIRO analysis”.
These Santa Claus assumptions are based on the most optimistic timeframes in efficient countries already operating nuclear energy industries such as China. The assertion of a plant built in ten years would make even the Tooth Fairy herself blush. Even 20 years is too bullish given realistic project times in other countries.
SMRs by the way are a pipe-dream. There are only a couple of pilot plants operating in the world.
Meanwhile, Energy Minister Chris Bowen is busy rolling out the RE. Actual projects. He awarded 6.4GW of new zero emissions capacity this week supported by 3.5GWh of Battery Energy Storage in completion of the first Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS) Generation Tender.
And counter to the spurious Coalition argument that the RE roll-out would be more expensive than nuclear, there are actually real corporations involved in new energy; yes, actual investors when the government ‘crowds-in’ finance from the private sector. The nuclear fantasy merely assumes a $331B spend of public money – the quintessence of corporate welfare.
The winners of Bowen’s first large scale auction under the CIS were Squadron Energy, Windlab, France’s Neoen Australia (Brookfield), UK-based Elgin Energy, Lightsource, the Philippines ACEN Australia of the Philippines, the Future Fund, Queensland Investment Corporation, AGL’s Tilt Renewables, and local developer Edify Energy.
“The first CIS Generation tender was supported by over 40GW of investor interest across 84 proposals, setting the stage for more successful competitive tenders ahead, sufficient for Australia to have a strong chance of delivering on Minister Bowen’s ambitious 82% renewable energy target by 2030,” wrote energy analyst Tim Buckley this week.
In other words, as all the credible experts in the space such as CSIRO and AEMO say, it is happening anyway – wind, solar, pumped hydro and battery storage – and we don’t need Peter Pan and News Corp’s loony nuclear frolic to transition.
If the Coalition did somehow manage to win office and command a majority it could waste at least three years pretending to get nuclear going then come up with another ‘expert’s report’ saying it’s not feasible. That would serve the fossil lobby by slowing the pace of the RE roll-out by a few years. Job done.
As is more likely, they win office in minority government, they can still dilly-dally for a few years pretending it’s feasible and wasting the time of every man woman and child on the Island.
Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.