Dutton’s nuclear spin is an alibi, not a policy

In the week after the Liberals’ disastrous result in the Aston by-election, Peter Dutton finally came to a firm position on a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous Voice to parliament: he would oppose it. But he wasn’t only against something: he was in favour of things too. Specifically, he wanted symbolic constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians, and legislated local Voices.

We haven’t heard much about those proposals in recent months. A suggestion from Dutton that he would hold a second referendum to deliver constitutional recognition – which received significant attention from the press - was quickly disposed of.

Illustration: Jim PavlidisCredit:

In other words, time made undeniable what should have been obvious to close observers at the time: the positive elements Dutton put forward were never the main game. They were, in effect, an alibi: a positive alternative to point to while prosecuting a sharply negative campaign.

About the negative campaign itself, as some noted at the time, Dutton may have had little choice. It would have been exceedingly difficult to coax the entire Coalition into supporting the Voice; perhaps even into taking some middle line and neither supporting nor opposing it. Doing so would have risked a damaging internal dispute. After Aston, the announcement brought the side together in common cause (notwithstanding the resignation of Indigenous affairs spokesman Julian Leeser) and reminding MPs that Dutton was one of them.

Two weeks ago, the Liberals lost another byelection. This one was different: the Liberals got a swing towards them. The general political consensus, though, was that the Dunkley result was fairly boring. What was interesting: a few days later, Dutton seemed to repeat his post-Aston behaviour, with a reinvigorated push on a new policy, this time on nuclear energy.

It was hard to know precisely how planned out this was. Initial reports added little to what had been reported a few weeks earlier – that the Coalition would announce sites for six nuclear reactors – except the fact the announcement would have other details, such as on waste disposal, and a date, before the budget.

By last week, that date had firmed up: we will now find out the sites within a fortnight. Since the first reports we have also seemed to get a shift away from small modular reactors to the possibility of building larger reactors. (This will be interesting, too, should it happen: a year to the day before the Dunkley byelection, Dutton said he was opposed to “the establishment of big nuclear facilities”.)

Whatever the shape of the final policy, there are two fascinating parallels with Dutton’s post-Aston opposition to the Voice. The first is that the important thing is not the policy but what the policy allows Dutton to avoid. As with ending Indigenous disadvantage, he avoids a fight with Labor over whether the issue itself – in this case climate change – is important. This is a confirmation of the political framework put in place by Scott Morrison, in which the question is not whether emissions should be reduced but about how to do so.

There has been much talk, from Labor, of ending the climate wars. In one sense, that is now true: Dutton is laying down arms. Rather than talking of economic wrecking balls, he is making the case that Labor has no “credible pathway” to meet its emissions targets – that’s why we need nuclear. As the centre of Australian politics shifts, this “not what but how” approach allows Dutton to position the Coalition on the “right side” of various debates, while still allowing him to argue with the
government.

Just as importantly, nuclear allows Dutton to avoid fights within the Coalition. That is because it is not a real policy. Few people in energy believe nuclear is a good answer to anything much at this stage in Australia’s energy transition; as the CSIRO has made clear, large reactors are too large for our small grids, and small reactors are still unproven commercially. By being able to point to nuclear, which isn’t close to happening soon, nobody in the Coalition has to get exercised about spending money on meeting targets they don’t believe in.

The second parallel to Aston is that, having avoided these disputes, Dutton can narrow his fight to local battles against specific renewable projects, which may well turn out to be an issue in some regional or outer-suburban seats held by Labor. This is the point of all of the avoidance, the culmination of the strategy. Unsurprisingly, politicians tend to cling to their successful tactics from the past. Dutton’s nuclear push is very similar to his brief push for constitutional recognition of Indigenous people: a fairly empty promise that provides an alibi for a ferocious negative campaign that unifies the Coalition.

An interesting aspect of this fight against large-scale renewable projects is that it is closer to the strategy pursued by the teal independents at the last election than it might seem. Those campaigns are now seen through the lens of broader issues such as climate and gender. But the local aspect of those campaigns was crucial too: the sense that the pandemic had reminded us of the importance of our local communities. Dutton’s tactic here has potential. Of course, this is no reason to treat his policy at all seriously.

Two final notes. Last week, there was brief excitement when Dutton indicated he supported
Anthony Albanese’s preference for four-year terms. The argument usually put for this is that
governments can focus on the long term rather than the short.

Also last week, we learned the United States was not ordering quite the number of submarines one might have expected given the AUKUS agreement. We sometimes complain that governments don’t focus sufficiently on the long term, but in one sense we have gone too far the other way, with these long-range decisions which are hard to assess, likely to shift, and which essentially postpone significant debate. The original stage 3 tax cuts – scheduled to take place years after the legislation was passed – fall into this category too.

One reason our major parties seem to get themselves into these muddles is their desperation to avoid battles with their enemies: within Labor, this urge has often seemed its major driving force. The other reason, more obvious on the Liberal side, is to avoid internal disputes. In Peter Dutton’s Coalition, this over-emphasis on unity as a massive political achievement seems to be constraining its ability to think seriously about where it wants to go, rather than simply what it might campaign against.

Sean Kelly is a regular columnist and a former adviser to Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.

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