PM should listen to hardheads

Senior Labor figures and union leaders urging the Albanese government to lift its ban on nuclear energy to protect jobs and help achieve net-zero emissions should be listened to carefully. As Australian Workers Union national secretary Paul Farrow said: “If you really believe climate change is a crisis you should be open-minded to every single emission reduction option on the table.” The nuclear ban “makes no sense” and every electricity option should be available, former federal Labor minister Joel Fitzgibbon, who represented the coalmining electorate of Hunter in NSW for 26 years, said on Monday. They spoke out after French President Emmanuel Macron called on the government to lift its nuclear ban as Australia shunned a declaration endorsed by more than 20 nations at the UN COP28 climate conference in Dubai to triple nuclear energy capacity globally by 2050.

Liberal leader Peter Dutton said Mr Macron’s call to revoke the nuclear power ban was “a cry of common sense”. The matter is shaping as a likely election issue in 18 months. Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, who heads to the COP28 summit this week, is facing opposition claims that the government has isolated itself from its AUKUS allies by refusing to sign up to the nuclear pledge. But Jim Chalmers, an AWU member, rejected any push to lift the moratorium on nuclear power, saying the economics did not stack up. It would take too long for the energy source to come online, the Treasurer said. But the comparative costs of nuclear and renewables are a matter of conjecture.

At this stage, the cost benefits are difficult to determine. As Geoff Chambers reported a fortnight ago, Mr Bowen is planning to gamble with an undisclosed sum of taxpayers’ money by underwriting a fivefold increase in new government-backed renewables capacity. The huge expansion of the Capacity Investment Scheme is aimed at delivering enough battery, wind, solar and pumped-hydro generation to replace current coal-fired and thermal power sources. Conveniently for Anthony Albanese and Mr Bowen, the cost to the budget bottom line, which the public has a right to know, is to be kept secret under commercial-in-confidence provisions.

In July we published research by the Net Zero Australia group, compiled by teams from the University of Melbourne, the University of Queensland, Princeton University and the Nous Group. The figures provided suggested the capital requirement for the transition to renewables would be far more than what Mr Bowen’s department had calculated converting coal-fired power stations to nuclear small modular reactors would cost. Robin Batterham, a former chief scientist and emeritus professor of engineering at the University of Melbourne who chaired the group’s steering committee, argued that decision-makers should not take any option off the table.

Decisions about the nation’s future energy mix, which will have an enormous impact on economic and social wellbeing for generations, must be shaped not by ideology but only after careful, objective scrutiny of the environmental and cost benefits.