Another carbon wars election fought over Peter Dutton’s nuclear power policy is a dismal prospect that means renewed political regulatory risk and uncertainty for the billions of dollars of business investment needed to get Australia’s troubled energy transition back on track.

It’s an extra challenge for Australia’s already challenging task of decarbonising a fossil fuel-intensive economy, and it repeats the political systems’ failure over the past two decades to reach a consensus on a stable, market-based and technology-agnostic policy framework.