Albo v Plutonium Pete: energy politics is a numbers game

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, cooling towers at the Civaux nuclear power plant in France, and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton

The arguments for and against nuclear power in Australia are confounding for everyday folk like me. I honestly don’t know who to believe. So I’m not believing anyone.

Unless you’ve been hiding deep in your underground radiation shelter these past few weeks, Peter Dutton plans to build up to seven nuclear reactors on sites around the nation at a cost of about $331bn over the next quarter of a century.

Is that a lot of money these days? It’s a shade less than our three-way deal with the US and the UK (AUKUS, as if you didn’t know) to build eight nuclear-powered submarines.

Is that a better deal than Dutton’s seven power stations? The subs are priced at $368bn and for only $37bn more we can have eight of them and scare the pants off China. Now coal (which both parties now say they want us to stop burning at home) we export and sell mostly to China. That earned us $91bn last year.

So does that mean if we continue our hypocritical policy of being the world’s second-biggest coal exporter we can pay for Plutonium Pete’s nuclear power stations with just four years of coal revenue?

I know I must be wrong here otherwise Mr Dutton would’ve pushed that piece of splendid economic analysis when he released his somewhat vague nuclear policy. If you like word puzzles you might have noticed nuclear is an anagram of unclear.

Though I must say, in fairness, that Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s estimated $387bn plan for renewables is not as clear to me as are the giant windmills now striding across rural landscapes everywhere, including the trout fishing territory of Tasmania’s central plateau.

Even if it is planet-saving technology, it does seem that people are keener on wind and solar farms when they don’t have them in their backyard. As with all of this stuff, the dollar price can go up depending on how hard you look, and which report you Google.

That way, if you have wi-fi in your bunker, you can easily work up Bowen’s scheme as costing as much as $625bn.

A consulting outfit called Frontier Economics gave Peter Dutton the much lower $331bn number. And he’s sticking with it.

You can do your own research. The problem is, go fishing online and which economic expert and what think tank do you believe? Unfettered by economic literacy, I can’t help noticing that renewables will have to fill a 60-gigawatt gap opened by retiring coal- and gas-fired power stations.

Now, 46 per cent of Australia’s total electricity generation last year came from burning coal, and consequently as power users (don’t take a deep breath) each of us emitted 5.3 tonnes of CO2. But that’s only one source. Another estimates a figure three times that.

So how much coal is that?

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan tour the fire area of the Grampians.

You can look it up for yourself and pick a figure that suits your position, but in anyone’s language it’s “shiploads”. Literally shiploads of extra coal. Which we can send to China to burn because we won’t do that here anymore. Apparently the carbon emissions stay in China. In fact, we are like the drug dealer who’s stopped using his product because he knows how dangerous it is but is still selling it because it’s a good business.

Coal’s good for regional economies and regional votes, and most importantly of course we need the coal money from China to pay for those nuclear submarines, which will protect us from China. And here’s the thing. We flog the coal to China, and they burn it to produce the vast array of solar panels and windmills needed to replace energy from the coal we aren’t burning at home. Please, someone, tell me what it is I’m missing?

Meanwhile, mainland Australia roasted this week. Sweltering voters grudgingly running up big bills for airconditioning will probably blame the government even though Albo has only been in power for one term. Though it does seem longer. He has fitted in so much. Dividing the whole nation including Indigenous communities, scoffing caviar and champagne in the Chairman’s Lounge, insouciantly announcing the purchase of a $4.3m clifftop pocket-mansion at Copacabana, all the while reminding us for the umpteenth time how he “did it tough” as a kid growing up with a single mum in a council flat.

And last month he did a Biden, granting a pardon to a bunch of drug smugglers. Which has of course achieved what Albo always does so well, a division of opinion. Peter Dutton, once a Queensland copper, is of course much richer than Albo. Does that mean his back-of-the-envelope calculations on the cost of nuclear versus renewables are better informed by his business smarts?

Energy Minister Chris Bowen holds a press conference in Sydney. Picture: Jeremy Piper

Plutonium Pete is really playing some wildcards here. It is most unlikely a promise to build nuclear power stations anywhere near you will clinch this election. No more than Albo’s preference for salmon over skate, in Strahan last month, might deliver a majority of Tasmanian seats to Labor.

“There comes a tide in the affairs of men” and all the polls show it is running out for the Albanese government. Only some fair-dinkum and far-reaching popular reforms will save Labor. How about free tertiary education so Australian kids can afford to enter professions, in lieu of importing our qualified workforce from overseas? How about better Medicare, especially for dentistry, and how about proper funding for state education and childcare?

Those are issues for the Labor heartland. It’s only a matter of money and there’s an unlimited supply of that, apparently.

There’s no doubt right now Albo is on the nose with the electorate and some in Labor are contemplating the awful prospect of having to get a real job by the end of summer, or coming back as well-paid advisers.

Once they would have changed horses. It was so much easier back in the days when my old friend Graham Richardson would have tapped the PM on the shoulder and said, “Mate it’s time. The dogs are barking, and Copacabana is calling”.

Charles Wooley is a Tasmanian-based journalist.