Labor’s nuclear resistance is about politics, not science or economics | David Penberthy

Nothing in what Federal Labor says about nuclear power has anything to do with science, writes David Penberthy.

There is a tedious hits and memories quality to the ALP’s bloody-mindedness about the apparent evil of nuclear power.

It reminds me of the 1980s when those yellow stickers were all the rage featuring a smiling sun logo under the words “Nuclear? No Thanks!”.

I know, because I stuck one on my 10-speed racer when I was at high school, having watched the nuclear war horror film “The Day After” in our Year 10 social studies class, terrified as we all were of an apocalyptic conflagration with the pre-Gorbachev USSR, or the prospect of another Three Mile Island disaster.

It makes you misty-eyed hearing Albo and Chris Bowen and Tanya Plibersek raise the spectre of nuclear power stations coming soon to a neighbourhood near you.

Possibly your own neighbourhood if you’re unlucky to be on Peter Dutton’s nuclear-powered death list, fish with three eyeballs set to pop up in the pond in the local parks, kiddies walking to school in gas masks, playing with spent plutonium rods in the local slag heap with a half-life of a billion years.

It’s the early 80’s again.

Pass me the bong while I light some incense and slip into my Roman sandals.

I’m going to get my old treadly out of the shed and ride into town for some street theatre.

Surely it is only a matter of time before the pragmatic people in the ALP start making their presence felt on this issue.

Labor is embarrassing itself with its stance, its only vaguely credible defence for which is a flimsy CSIRO report scotching the economics of nuclear power generation.

Minister for Environment and Water Tanya Plibersek and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during Question Time. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Martin Ollman

I have a lot of respect for the CSIRO for their knowledgeable work on the environment.

But as economists, the people at the CSIRO make terrific scientists, and should have stuck to their day jobs.

It is laughable that when so many developed countries either use or are expanding their use of nuclear energy, and making it pay, a group of scientists in Australia pretending to be economists have declared the whole thing doesn’t stack up.

But let’s just deal with the ALP and their absurd inconsistencies on this issue.

First, AUKUS.

Australia has no greater champion of the AUKUS deal than Anthony Albanese.

The AUKUS deal contractually obliges Australia to do two things – build nuclear-powered submarines and dispose of some of the most highly radioactive nuclear waste known to man.

Nuclear? No Thanks!

Next comes the question of cost.

The key criticism of Federal Labor is that nuclear will cost the public too much and the Commonwealth too much.

This is genuinely, side-splittingly funny coming from a Government that has presided over a 30 per cent increase in power bills and which subsidises and directly funds renewable projects up the wazoo.

None of this is an anti-renewables diatribe. I’ve got solar and two batteries. I have no doubt renewables are our energy future.

But no-one can argue credibly they our energy present, in terms of affordability and reliability. That’s where the argument for nuclear power comes in.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen at the Energy Nation forum at the Sheraton Grand Sydney. Picture: John Feder/The Australian.

Here’s a free tactical tip for federal Labor, too – Energy Minister Chris Bowen is the worst possible front man to lead the charge against Dutton on this.

Working as I do on talk-back radio, if you want to fire up 100-odd listeners in three seconds flat on cost of living questions, say these two words into a live radio microphone – “Chris” and “Bowen”.

This guy has had a sympathy bypass and a credibility bypass when it comes to the cost and efficacy of our energy system.

He possesses a unique brand of detachment which I’d attribute to his cradle-to-grave existence as a public figure.

From his meteoric, Doogie Howser-style rise as wunderkind western Sydney mayor just out of short pants, to his latter-day existence as a federal MP, this is a man who has never had to pay to fill up his own car, and has had all his office power bills paid for, and his home power bills subsidised by you and me.

He cannot pretend to care about the cost of anything when he’s presided over the vanishing $275 power bill relief, the subsequent $300 sop to paper over the cracks, and doles out billions to renewables while arguing nuclear power can’t wash its own face.

As per the 80s with the yellow stickers, all the usual suspects are falling into line with their agitprop, with Australia’s most left-leaning government first cab off the rank to denounce Dutton.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen at the Clean Energy Council & Energy Efficiency Council Clean Economy Jobs Fair in Melbourne. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Hearing Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen give advice on anything to do with energy is pretty funny, given that her Government is on the record as arguing wrongly that there’s no gas in Victoria, and is openly fighting with Federal Labor which thinks there is gas in Victoria, and that it might be a good idea to keep using it so we can underpin renewables projects.

Let’s just be clear. Nothing in what Federal Labor says about nuclear power has anything to do with science or logic.

It has everything to do with politics.

In fact the two people with the most to fear at the local electoral level from taking a pro-nuclear stance are probably Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek, whose seats of Grayndler and Sydney have long been susceptible to a Greens assault.

Indeed, the former Marrickville and Leichhardt Councils in Sydney, now known as the Inner West Council, have a decades-long history of designating their little necks of the woods as nuclear-free zones.

It’s one of the key reasons no-one was ever allowed to build a scale model of the Chernobyl power station on the Balmain Peninsula and send molten yellowcake spewing into the Harbour.

Nuclear? No thanks!

None of that is, of course, what’s being proposed by the Libs.

But let’s not let common sense get in the way of anything here, lest we end up with Fukushima happening at our local pub.

Originally published as Labor’s nuclear resistance is about politics, not science or economics | David Penberthy