SA advocacy exposes Albanese government’s farcical stance on nuclear power

There’s bipartisan consensus in South Australia to explore the nuclear power path but federal Labor looks increasingly out of touch.

SA Premier Peter Malinauskas, left, and Nuclear Powered Submarine Taskforce chief Vice-Admiral Jonathan Mead. Picture: Dylan Coker

It was an ideological clash that exposed the divide between the Cold War-influenced journeymen of Labor’s Left and the pragmatic approach of new Labor figures unencumbered by the weight of history. When South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas called for a national conversation about the merits of nuclear power last December, Anthony Albanese responded with near-nuclear force.

“I have a great deal of respect for Mali but everyone’s entitled to get one or two things wrong,” the Prime Minister said when Malinauskas showed his hand as a nuclear agnostic and possible advocate. “It just doesn’t add up. That’s essentially the problem. Every five years we have this economic analysis of whether nuclear power stacks up, and every time it is rejected.”

Just a few clicks east from Albanese’s inner-western Sydney seat of Grayndler – which local councillors declared a nuclear-free zone in the 1980s, thus averting any Chernobyl-style meltdowns on Marrickville Rd – emotions were running even hotter in Tanya Plibersek’s seat of Sydney. Plibersek – who like fellow Left faction member Albanese cut her political teeth fighting Trotskyists across Sydney university campuses in the ’80s and ’90s – extrapolated a nightmare scenario from Malinauskas’s remarks.

Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek got heated at suggestion of a national conversation about nuclear power. Picture: Liam Kidston

“I don’t know if there are people on your street who want a nuclear reactor in the local park,” she warned.

Their reactions were rendered more over the top by the fact Malinauskas had not said Australia should create a nuclear industry overnight. He simply said we should talk about it, especially given the need to decarbonise our economy when renewables do not yet provide a reliable and affordable substitute for fossil fuels.

It’s a long stroll from last December to the present day, with Australia’s nuclear debate having been up-ended by one seismic development – the signing of the AUKUS deal, which stipulates that by 2050 Australia must have the technology and site to process spent nuclear fuel used to propel submarines.

Against that backdrop, the Albanese position on nuclear energy looks even more farcical, almost a continuation of Labor’s risible and half-pregnant three-mines policy.

We now have a situation where under AUKUS and as a signatory to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons we are going to build nuclear-powered subs, house their waste, but apparently aren’t even allowed to talk about a domestic nuclear industry.

There was a major shift in South Australian politics this week, which means the state is at the forefront of this logically inevitable debate about the creation of a local nuclear industry. SA became the first state in Australia where both sides of politics are on a unity ticket when it comes to exploring the merits of going down the nuclear path, with SA Opposition Leader David Speirs using his budget in reply speech on Tuesday to call for a re-run of the SA Royal Commission into the Nuclear Fuel Cycle.

Under AUKUS Australia is going to build nuclear-powered subs and house their waste.

In his original comments last year, Malinauskas said as far as he was concerned the only argument against a nuclear industry was an economic one, in that he wasn’t sure the business case for nuclear power stacked up. “I get frustrated with a nuclear debate that has emerged in Australia recently because you’ve got people on the left who seem to be flat-out opposed to nuclear power for ideological reasons, despite the fact we’ve got a climate challenge and wanting to decarbonise,” Malinauskas said.

“Then we’ve got people on the right who seem to be utterly in favour of nuclear power, without any reference to the cost of it.

“It strikes me as starting to become one of these polarised debates that has been consumed by the culture wars, rather than an evidence-based discussion on what is good for decarbonisation and what is good for price.”

Now, Speirs is arguing that with energy prices spiralling beyond the reach of many people, and governments unwilling or unable to provide meaningful relief for families and businesses trapped in the middle, the de facto ban on discussing nuclear power has to end forthwith.

“We could end up with an energy-based underclass in this nation if we do not get energy policy right,” Speirs said. “It may very well be that consideration of nuclear energy in some form, likely small modular reactors, will be necessary.

“Perhaps it is the time to reopen that royal commission again – have a royal commission 2.0 – and start thinking about what South Australia’s role could be in that fuel cycle, some seven years since we last considered it.”

SA Opposition Leader David Speirs argues the de facto ban on discussing nuclear power has to end forthwith. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

Speirs’s reference to the 2017 royal commission headed by defence expert, former SA governor and retired rear admiral Kevin Scarce was an important one, as it reflects what is majority thinking in the SA Liberal Party – and probably also in the SA Labor Party. There is a view in SA politics that the Scarce royal commission was a huge missed opportunity for the state, cruelled only when then Liberal opposition leader Steven Marshall withdrew bipartisan support, forcing then premier Jay Weatherill to shelve the idea for fear of going it alone ahead of the 2014 poll.

Weatherill is of the view that public understanding of the issues became so advanced during the royal commission process that there would have been majority support for the nuclear waste storage plan in SA – and an open mind about the commission’s finding that nuclear should be explored as an energy source provided the numbers stacked up.

Seven years on, with a bipartisan consensus in SA that these ideas are well worth pursuing, there is a risk for federal Labor that it looks dated and myopic because of its steadfast refusal even to countenance discussion of the topic.

It’s an opportunity already identified by Peter Dutton, who used his own budget reply speech to advocate nuclear energy. And amid a cost-of-living squeeze, the biggest kick-along for the nuclear debate will have come in the form of letters sent to every household this month by AGL, Origin and every other power provider showing that bills have gone up by 30 per cent. Right now, many Aussies probably wouldn’t care if you could generate power by burning whale blubber or old car tyres, let alone a safe and sophisticated nuclear industry that bears no resemblance to the Chernobyl and Three Mile Island era that Labor’s Left faction warriors still remember so well.