Labor’s three-eyed fish may bite back

Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton. Illustration: Emilia Tortorella

Cynicism is now the greater threat to Peter Dutton’s nuclear ambitions than outright opposition.

More people than not support the concept of nuclear power as a net-zero solution to Australia’s energy crisis.

Younger voters especially.

But even among the hardened rural types who stand to have one of these things in their backyards, supporters outweigh opponents.

Yet debate still lingers in the theoretical. A majority of voters may now support the concept, but fewer would believe that it really is ever going to happen.

This is also precisely the reason why Anthony Albanese’s three-eyed fish campaign is doomed to fail. No one could seriously fall for it.

Who could accept that this is an honest position for a prime minister to take on an issue that demands a more serious and mature debate?

Cynicism is true of anything in politics. It’s not specific to nuclear. The difference is that Australians have been socialised to an anti-position due to a political mistake.

John Howard admits as much. He was blackmailed into accepting the Greens’ demands almost 30 years ago that to prolong the life of a nuclear reactor dedicated to medical research, we would outlaw nuclear reactors to power our homes and industry.

To most people, even Howard, this now renders as farcical. Not to the Labor left.

Albanese is now at risk of being on the wrong side of the ideological debate. As Howard admits, there has been a sea-change – a global shift – in opinion. Albanese reeks of full-blown ideology.

Sensible people reject ideology. And they can smell it.

While there might be cynicism about Dutton’s idea, there is also an electoral hunger for leadership.

This is what Dutton is trying to play in to.

Voters oscillate between wanting Canberra to get out of their lives, and times they want its leaders to lead.

The trick for politicians is to pick the timing.

Misreading this mood can have brutal consequences.

Labor now risks a repeat of the 2019 dilemma. In trying to reduce the issue to one of cost, Labor rarely wins.

Defence Minister Richard Marles, who demands to be referred to in his other role as Deputy Prime Minister, on Friday could not articulate what the total cost of the renewable energy alternative would be.

Pressed repeatedly, he could not deny the Coalition estimate that the cost of the Labor plan, including solar, wind, batteries and transmission, would exceed the $1 trillion that Dutton had put on it.

Labor has invited an argument on ideology that, it would appear, has already been lost. As much as Albanese may lament the falling of Whitlam, it ain’t the ’70s no more.

But Marles has also ensured that the argument over cost is now a live one.

As for Dutton’s rejection of Labor’s climate change targets, any erudite reading of Coalition policy would confirm that nothing has changed whatsoever since Scott Morrison.