Labor’s backflip over a taxpayer-funded, gas-fired power station in the Hunter Valley was based on short-term political motives, not conviction, and relied on a heroic assumption that green hydrogen would be commercially viable by 2030, the government says.

Amid concerns for three of its seats in the Hunter Valley, federal Labor has dropped its long-held opposition to plans by the government to build a $600 million gas-fired peaking plant in the Hunter Valley to provide back-up to the burgeoning renewable energy sector.