South Australia Premier Peter Malinauskas tackles energy taboos

As Labor struggles to get its lines straight on energy policy, it could do worse than follow the example of South Australia’s pro-gas, nuclear-agnostic Premier Peter Malinauskas.

South Australia Peter Malinauskas, left, at The Australian's Competitive Advantage Boardroom Series in, Adelaide. Picture: Matt Turner.

As Labor struggles to get its lines straight on energy policy, it could do worse than follow the example of South Australia’s pro-gas, nuclear-agnostic Premier Peter Malinauskas.

In a wake-up call for Labor politicians everywhere, the SA Premier said it was time to stare down “ideologues and NIMBYs” in charting an unashamedly gas-fuelled future.

And he escalated his call for a science-based debate around nuclear, saying the Left had been captured by outdated ideology and baseless paranoia, while the Right was championing nuclear on partisan grounds while ignoring its economic shortcomings.

As federal Labor moved to end confusion over its commitment to gas – with Resources Minister Madeleine King releasing a Future Gas Strategy confirming its role to 2050 and beyond – SA Labor can point to years of sustained support for the sector.

Under Malinauskas, SA Labor has supported gas fracking, backed Santos amid Greens-led attacks on carbon capture projects, and eschewed the policies of other state Labor governments which have moved to phase out domestic gas use.

SA’s stance is paying investment returns with airconditioning giant Seeley International shutting its Victorian operations earlier this year and relocating hundreds of workers to SA in protest at the Andrews-Allen government anti-gas policies.

Malinauskas was a longstanding Right Faction leader prior to becoming Premier in 2022. In a half-hour address at yesterday’s Competitive Advantage Boardroom Series, sponsored by The Australian and supported by BHP, he showed why many business figures in SA back his centrist ­approach.

Malinauskas said the key thing people wanted from politicians on energy was consistency.

“Consistency matters,” he said. “Anybody that knows my view about the energy transition and my genuine interest in decarbonisation won’t have to look to far to find a lot of commentary from me on the record about the role of gas in that transition.”

Malinauskas told the story about how a recent street corner meeting in his own electorate had been hijacked by anti-gas ­protesters.

“When they tried to shut down the meeting they rather assertively submitted a whole range of accusations to me about being pro-gas,” he said. “I agreed with every one of their assertions. They thought I was making some sort of guilty confession. The thing is, we are not at 75 per cent of renewable energy consumption in South Australia today, in a way that is leading the world, without gas. Fact. Our commitment to gas in the medium term is substantial and material. Gas is going to have a big role to play.

“All of the people who are anti-gas aren’t going to cop any of this. As soon as you get into nuance, or dare I say objective fact, if you’ve got an ideological position you’re not interested in any of this. The job for us then is to make sure we’re appealing to everybody else who actually has an interest in facts. That’s where consistency comes in. You won’t lose your moral authority when you don’t look like you’re changing position all the time.”

In a statement which could rekindle tensions with Anthony Albanese, Malinauskas reiterated his view that Australia’s nuclear debate was bogged down in ideology and that a science and economics-based approach should prevail.

Last year, the SA Premier was slapped down by the Prime Minister after he said it would be “foolhardy” to dismiss nuclear as a carbon-free source of baseload power. “I have a great deal of respect for Mali, but everyone’s entitled to get one or two things wrong,” Albanese said at the time.

But the Premier is sticking to his guns, expressing frustration at the Left-Right divide that he says makes sensible discussion of nuclear a near-impossibility.

Asked if he still believed the only real impediment to nuclear power was financial, Malinauskas replied: “Exclusively.”

“The science of nuclear is clear,” he said. “It is safe, it is clean. The civil nuclear industry is the elementary component of the nuclear cycle.

“All of the ideological opposition, the NIMBY arguments against it, are ill-informed. They aren’t doing the country much of a service. But I also think the country is not well served by what has now become a cultural war argument where you’ve got the far right saying: ‘Ah, here we go, we’ve got them. We’ve got all these lefties being opposed to nuclear so we are going to build nuclear.’ But then those people seem to be utterly indifferent to what it would actually mean to the cost of electricity. I think that’s nuts. The indifference on the Right to cost and the indifference on the Left to science infuriates me.”

Malinauskas suggested Australia’s stance against nuclear power had been made absurd by the terms of the Aukus deal, which requires us not only to build nuclear-fuelled submarines but house high-level waste generated by their operation, while ruling out any use of nuclear energy.

“We are skipping over that in Australia and we’re going right to the hardcore stuff,” he said. “Fifteen or so kilometres from where we are now, we are going to have a nuclear reactor being put in the back of a submarine that will be below the water.”

Malinauskas also revived the question of SA being a possible site for the nuclear waste storage facility which must be constructed somewhere in Australia by the 2040s under the Aukus deal.

When the security deal was first announced, Malinauskas noted that both former WA premier Mark McGowan and former Victorian premier Dan Andrews were quick to rule put their home state as a venue for any waste disposal.

Malinauskas said he continued to be happy for the calls to fall where they may, based only on questions of science and Indigenous land use, and that if that state ended up being SA he would accept the proposal.

“It is not a question of where states want it or don’t want it. The two criteria should be science and genuine engagement with traditional owners. Once those two conditions are met – and I believe they both can be met – it should be built there. And if that means I am not ruling it out for South Australia, then yes, absolutely.”