Foolish Labor and union antinuclear memes insult voters | Paul Starick

Childish memes of mutant animals insult voters and help Peter Dutton’s nuclear power campaign, writes Paul Starick.

Nuclear power has more chance of actually happening in Australia than ever before, particularly if Labor MPs continue to patronise and insult voters.

The hysterical and juvenile antinuclear memes of mutant animals and apocalyptic wastelands being pumped out by some federal MPs and unions will help, rather than hinder, the Coalition’s bid to build nuclear power stations.

An antinuclear meme from federal Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh. Picture: Supplied

Cartoonish scare campaigns about nuclear safety put ideology before political common sense, just as many within Labor did when campaigning for last October’s Voice referendum.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is setting the agenda with the Coalition policy, released on Wednesday, to build seven government-owned nuclear reactors, mostly on the sites of coal-fired power plants in five of Australia’s six states. One would be in Port Augusta, on the site of the former Northern Power Station, a coal-fired plant that closed controversially in 2016.

There have been some crucial changes since the last serious push for nuclear power in Australia, when John Howard in 2006 promised a “full-blooded” debate and triggered an ultimately fruitless federal inquiry into nuclear energy.

Now, both major federal parties are fully committed to AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine construction in Adelaide as the centrepiece of a $368bn project – the biggest national enterprise in Australian history. Plus, electricity prices have skyrocketed and nuclear safety fears have dramatically eased.

Labor MP Dan Repacholi has posted a meme of a three-eyed fish suggesting the Coalition’s nuclear plan is environmentally dangerous. The Opposition said this undermines AUKUS. Picture: Instagram

There is a rank hypocrisy in signing up for installing nuclear reactors into submarines in a capital city – at Adelaide’s Osborne Naval Shipyard – then raising fears of nuclear safety.

But this is what Labor frontbencher Andrew Leigh and Hunter MP Dan Repacholi, a former coal miner, have done.

On the day Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Premier Peter Malinauskas were visiting Osborne Naval Shipyard, it was revealed this witless duo had issued memes of a three-eyed koala and fish respectively.

But their childish efforts were outdone by the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union, one of three major unions at Osborne, representing about 300 workers there.

Many of them were protesting over a pay dispute on Friday afternoon, outside the shipyard, as the Marles and Malinauskas convoy departed.

On the day Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Premier Peter Malinauskas visited the Osborne Naval Shipyard, it was revealed the three-eyed koala and fish memes were issued. Picture: Brenton Edwards

In a shining example of idiocy, the AMWU has joined the antinuclear meme frenzy, despite their members at ASC standing to benefit from working on building and maintaining AUKUS nuclear-powered submarines.

The AMWU issued a meme of a grim reaper-like figure wading in a pond in an apocalyptic landscape – presumably in the aftermath of a nuclear meltdown. “If we go nuclear, the regions will pay,” the headline reads.

Many years ago, the AMWU had responsible leadership at Osborne. For example, they in 1998 raised through The Advertiser the serious issue of the newly launched Collins Class submarine HMAS Farncomb being stranded with flat batteries in Darwin Harbour.

Of late, though, the AMWU has demonstrated a propensity for childish and irrelevant attacks that undermine their cause. In late May, the union issued an unduly personal assault on veteran ASC chief Stuart Whiley, lampooning him as the Devil and calling for his sacking because his executive team – not him – was conducting pay talks.

Premier Peter Malinauskas is among those politically astute Labor figures with a consistent position on nuclear. In December, 2022, he argued Adelaide-based submarine construction would bust “ill-founded” ideological myths about nuclear safety. But he said nuclear power would be uneconomic for Australia and introducing more expensive energy sources would be “madness”.

This is the sensible way to attack a nuclear power policy that hinges on whether power bills come down – not by trying to produce the cleverest meme raising ill-founded fears about nuclear safety.