Why doesn’t the Coalition talk about its nuclear policy anymore?

Peter Dutton discusses the Coalition’s approach to energy and nuclear power.

Have you seen the Coalition’s nuclear policy? Have a good rummage around. Try to retrace your steps. Maybe it has fallen between the couch cushions? Don’t tell me the dog got a hold of it.

There was an unconfirmed sighting two days ago, as reported in the Bairnsdale Advertiser in East Gippsland, Victoria under the imposing headline, “Coalition Nuclear Policy Unpacked”.

This proved illusory. The Bairnsdale ’Tiser merely chronicled a community meeting held by the East Gippsland Climate Action Network where a spokesman, who isn’t a member of the Coalition but is an engineer, explained the policy and raised several concerns about it.

Last week another breadcrumb on the nuclear energy policy trail was spotted when former Senate candidate for the Nuclear Disarmament Party, occasional harmonicist and environment minister in the Rudd cabinet Peter Garrett wrote an opinion piece for Nine newspapers. Unsurprisingly, he was against it. In the absence of any polemical response from the Coalition, I was left to wonder if Garrett had merely written the piece to publicise the re-release of Hercules – EP on vinyl with two new tracks.

So, where could the Coalition’s nuclear policy be? Furthermore, has the absence of any reference to it been driven by an internal partyroom brawl over the correct pronunciation of nuclear – you say new-clear, I say new-cular, let’s call the whole thing off?

I recall attending a soiree back in June 2024 where several Liberal Party apparatchiks were in attendance just days after the Coalition released its nuclear policy. At the time it was a bare-bones plan to build seven nuclear plants in five states, two small modular nuclear reactors, with a lot of artist’s impressions.

I heard much of the voluble positive chatter from afar. I turned to a mate and offered my opinion: “It’s terrible politics.”

“At least,” my mate said, “it’s got people talking.”

That was 15 months – a political eon ago. Now it appears it is being talked about only in Bairnsdale. Excitable party hacks aside, nuclear energy was always going to be a much harder sell to the Australian people who basically fall into three camps – why not, opposed and damned opposed.

Shortly after the policy was released and right on cue, Paul Keating offered a statement pronouncing his dislike for the policy and offering some free character assessment of Peter Dutton to boot. A walking thesaurus of invective, the former prime minister described the Opposition Leader as “a charlatan – an inveterate climate change denialist. A denialist now seeking to camouflage his long-held denialism in an industrial fantasy – resorting to the most dangerous and expensive energy source on the face of the earth – nuclear power.”

It’s not the most expensive energy source, by the way. That’s good old liquefied natural gas.

There has been more meat applied to the policy since, most of it released during the Christmas rush in 2024. One of the five large-scale reactors, would be firing up at Traralgon’s Loy Yang power station, just 150 clicks from Bairnsdale.

Meanwhile, in the world of realpolitik, perhaps there is a fatalist’s sense that the policy could shift from the theoretical into the actual only if, while in government, the Coalition could garner support to revoke the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Act and federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act.

It almost certainly would need the support of crossbenchers in the House of Representatives and in the Senate to do so. The two acts, introduced in the early years of the Howard government, were merely symbolic, designed to ward off political scare campaigns. The black-letter law remains like an albatross around the neck of nuclear energy proponents. But for the sake of argument, I figure a year to overturn those two acts. Then on to the states where required legislative changes are even less likely. Let’s be kind and give that three years.

Then to the sites, with NIMBY protests and environmental impact statements up the wazoo. Even generously, it would mean soil turned on a large-scale nuclear reactor not a day earlier than 2030. From there, 20 years minimum for the build. And that’s only if the Coalition can find the policy first. Win, lose, or draw, the Coalition will be frustrated because Energy Minister Chris Bowen remains wide open to all manner of verbal assaults on Labor’s energy policy, its shortcomings, its shortfalls and its pitfalls.

Without wanting to state the obvious, Bowen, in cricketer’s parlance, is prone to wave the bat outside off. Terrible footwork. Of course, the Coalition’s recent silence on nuclear policy is in direct contrast to millions of households around the country that recoil in horror every time they glimpse their electricity bills.

The greater shame of the disappearing policy is that the nation won’t consider nuclear options for decades, despite some quite stunning advances in small modular reactors. They remain expensive, not only to purchase and assemble but also in projected costs of electricity generation.

We can safely expect improved performance and economies of scale as production gears up in a world that is screaming for zero-carbon technology. Taking that option off the table for the foreseeable smacks of arrogance and bad planning. I expect the door will remain closed on SMRs, only for it to rear up and become another source of political dispute in the middle of the century.

Alas, I don’t expect to be around for that momentous occasion. I’ll be in Bairnsdale looking for the Coalition’s nuclear policy.