Queensland voters will be first to push the button on LNP’s nuclear pitch

If Peter Dutton says he is keen for the next federal election due within a year to be a referendum on nuclear energy, the state election in just four months could be considered the first leg.

How better to spruik your eyebrow-raising pitch, devoid of pesky details like cost and time or unfortunate analysis that Australia doesn’t need it, than someone else’s election.

And what better ammunition to then allow your state parliamentary party mate to back such a plan than it not turning voters away in your home state at back-to-back elections.

Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli with federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton at the 2023 LNP state convention – to take place again early next month, with nuclear likely on the agenda.Credit: Darren England

David Crisafulli may say nuclear is not part of his state LNP opposition team’s plan but that would not seem to matter.

(Even setting aside how the state LNP interpreted the Voice referendum results to dump support for a path to First Nations treaties amid broader party divisions – despite its earlier glowing support.)

At a speech to party faithful in Sydney, Dutton praised “good friend” Crisafulli as someone who would “make an outstanding premier” and lauded his “perfectly reasonable position” on nuclear power.

However, this came in the same Saturday speech in which the federal Opposition Leader said he would work respectfully and collaboratively with state premiers, but did not answer to them.

“Commonwealth laws override state laws,” Dutton trumpeted of the seven proposed nuclear sites a day before his Queensland-based energy spokesperson said some sites might have multiple reactors.

Western Queensland-based federal Nationals leader David Littleproud has said he and Dutton would “expect” the next Queensland premier to fall in line if the Coalition returned to power federally.

These are essentially hypothetical threats about a hypothetical policy: the Coalition can’t or won’t answer even how much electricity it would create without work from a proposed nuclear agency.

But they are hypotheticals worth acknowledging for their reversal of longstanding national energy policy, the potential cost to taxpayers, and delays to efforts to combat the worst of climate change.

Particularly when Australia’s chief scientific research arm and energy market regulator say a nuclear power station wouldn’t be operational until 2040 and at a higher upfront and ongoing cost than renewables.

Nuclear has long been a pet project of some in the LNP – a party formally joined in Queensland and torn between climate change denial and pragmatic action.

Its staying power sits somewhere between the ability to be seen acting with new technologies, while allowing others to fan community tension on wind and solar (and net-zero itself).

Futures for communities around ageing coal-power stations and industrial hubs is another element, especially in decentralised Queensland – something state Labor and their federal counterparts also pitch with their energy plans.

In the past week, Crisafulli has responded to questions about Dutton’s nuclear plan by simply repeating it is not part of his, and something he can’t be “distracted by” in the election campaign.

In doing so, the opposition dismisses its own supporters who back the present pitch for some number of nuclear reactors at some point beyond the mid-2030s.

A new poll for this masthead shows support for nuclear power from most Coalition voters. Of those backing Labor or the Greens, about half supported nuclear or were open to it, with an overall lean towards Labor’s nuclear-free path.

Another in News Corp found support for nuclear power sat at 64 per cent in Brisbane, slightly higher than communities near the two proposed state-owned Queensland sites.

These, Nanango and Yarraman near Tarong, and Biloela near Callide, had slightly higher support for a reactor being built in their state or region than Brisbanites (52 per cent compared with 48 per cent).

But among both cohorts, more than half said a nuclear focus would make them less likely to vote for the Coalition at the federal election. A scenario Crisafulli is surely keen to avoid.

But by ignoring the issue, Crisafulli’s team has set itself on a tightrope in a state attuned to MPs saying different things to regional and urban audiences – or not saying anything.

Unions, environmental groups and Labor are gearing up to make nuclear an almighty state election issue, with Premier Steven Miles pledging to “do everything he can” to block it.

It remains to be seen what an LNP defeat at the Queensland election might do to the federal Coalition’s plans. A state victory would only add more nuclear fuel.