Peter Dutton in nuclear strike at Anthony Albanese

Peter Dutton has the support of a majority of residents in regional communities where nuclear power generators will be built under the Coalition’s controversial plan.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

Peter Dutton has the support of a majority of residents in regional communities where ­nuclear power generators will be built under the Coalition’s controversial plan, as he accuses the Prime Minister of international “appeasement” on renewable energy and climate change targets.

The Opposition Leader on Saturday will rally the Liberal Party faithful around his nuclear ­ambitions at a meeting of the party’s federal council, claiming that Labor’s renewable-energy-only plan will cost the nation $1.3 trillion.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles on Friday refused to rule out the total cost of Labor’s renewable energy model running to more than $1 trillion as a war over cost, energy prices and climate change targets now looms ahead of the next federal election.

Mr Dutton will address the meeting armed with tightly held polling conducted separately by the Liberal Party and the Nationals, and obtained by The Weekend Australian. It shows more than 50 per cent of residents in communities support a nuclear replacement option for coal across all seven sites, taking in two Liberal held seats, four Nationals seats and one Labor seat.

While the research doesn’t ­signal electoral enthusiasm for nuclear, and could be regarded as soft support, those in favour ­significantly outnumbered those opposed in most seats polled.

Liberal Party strategists believe the results expose a political risk for Anthony Albanese’s ­attempts to build a safety scare ­campaign around nuclear, with the number of people who support nuclear in some seats almost ­double the number opposed.

Mr Dutton, in his speech on Saturday, will accuse Mr Albanese of steamrolling communities concerned about large-scale ­renewable projects and declare a renewables-only rollout will ­“destroy” the economy and send businesses broke.

“The government’s renewables rollout and rewiring the ­nation will cost $1.3 trillion at a conservative estimate,” he will say. “Labor’s domestic energy policy has become a policy of international appeasement. Yet the government won’t even meet its 2030 targets …

“We shouldn’t forget that Australia contributes a little over 1 per cent of global emissions.

“I will not sign up to an ­arrangement where unachievable emissions targets and a reckless ‘renewables only’ rollout destroys our economy, makes businesses go broke, and sends families ­bankrupt.”

Mr Dutton will say that the ­Coalition’s plan is a credible path to meeting commitments for net-zero emissions by 2050.

“The Coalition’s energy policy will see Australia achieve our three goals of cheaper, cleaner and consistent power … And we will join the other 19 top economies in the world which use zero-emission nuclear power, or are taking steps to put it in their mix,” he will say.

Former Liberal prime minister John Howard has also hit out at Labor for running a “pathetic” meme scare campaign depicting three-eyed fish, claiming therehad been a sea-change on nuclear energy since he was last in office.

Mr Howard said he had been blackmailed by the Greens and the Democrats in 1998 to ­accept an amendment that banned ­nuclear energy, in order to extend the life of the Lucas Heights ­nuclear medical research facility “because Labor wouldn’t ­support it”.

“But there has been a sea-change on this issue,” Mr Howard said. “And Labor’s response has been pathetic. Fancy having cartoons and memes on a serious subject. Where is the serious intellectual response?

“I was told by CSIRO and the chief scientist when I was PM, that the only reliable source of baseload power was fossils fuels and nuclear.”

Former prime minister John Howard in his Sydney office. Picture: Jane Dempster

The Weekend Australian has obtained the detailed polling data for four of the seven sites in the Liberal held-seats of O’Connor in Western Australia and Grey in South Australia, the Queensland seat of Maranoa held by Nationals leader David Littleproud and the Victorian Nationals-held seat of Gippsland.

The highest level of support according to the polling conducted over the past two months, was in Maranoa where 59 per cent of those polled supported replacing the Tarong coal-fired power station with nuclear when it is due to retire in 2037. This compared with 33 per cent saying they were opposed.

Support was also high in Gippsland, held by Nationals MP Darren Chester, with 55 per cent supporting nuclear to replace the Loy Yang power station which is due to close in 2035, compared with 40 per cent opposed.

In O’Connor held by Liberal MP Rick Wilson, replacing the Collie coal-fired power station with a nuclear option had 52 per cent in favour compared with 38 per cent opposed.

The Coalition will pledge to build seven nuclear power plants across Australia, including at Loy Yang in Victoria. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Support was tightest in Grey held by Liberal MP Rowan Ramsay, where 51 per cent were in favour of a nuclear plant to replace the Port Augusta coal-fired power station, with 45 per cent opposed.

The remaining Nationals seats – the NSW seat of Calare, where the Mt Piper power station isn’t due for closure until 2040 and the Gladstone-based seat of Flynn –also recorded support above 50 per cent but opinion was believed to be more tightly contested than in other seats.

The Labor-held NSW seat of ­Hunter, home to the Liddell power station, also recorded majority support for a nuclear replacement but on thinner margins.

The appeal of well-paid long-term jobs was the greatest incentive for most of those surveyed, according to the research, alongside the promise of greater energy security.

The Liberal Party and Nationals’ research was conducted by Freshwater Strategy.

Anthony Albanese. Picture: Stephanie Dalton

Political research company Crosby Textor, which has traditional links to the Liberal Party, has marked Mr Dutton’s announcement this week of the seven proposed sites for nuclear power generators as the official start of the election of the election campaign.

But Crosby Textor Australia director Mark Gorter said Mr Dutton faced an uphill battle to sell the nuclear plan, even in Coalition-held seats.

“That the Coalition faces an uphill battle selling nuclear ­energy cannot be understated,” Mr Gorter writes in The Weekend Australian.

“It has been reported that the party’s internal polling suggests 55 per cent of voters in Gippsland support nuclear.

“The challenge is that the sitting Nationals MP Darren Chester was elected on a two-party preferred vote of 70.57 per cent in 2022. That means there is around 15 per cent of voters who supported Chester last election who currently do not support nuclear.

“The critical question is whether this dynamic is replicated across other seats, particularly the marginal seats that will decide the outcome of the next election.

“If so, there is potentially ­considerable political gain for Labor. Even if a small amount of these “Coalition but not nuclear” voters could shift to Labor on the basis of a ‘nuclear referendum’, it potentially opens up a pathway for Labor to retain majority ­government.”

However, he said Labor’s scare campaign using emotive memes around the safety of nuclear power also risked backfiring.

“Make no mistake though: memes and political games won’t cut it with economically stressed voters looking for real leadership on the issues that matter to them,” he said.

“The Coalition, by launching the policy now, has given itself time to both reassure its base on the merits of the policy and work to persuade largely disengaged soft voters.

“It would not have been ­possible to achieve both these ­objectives in a 30-day election ­period. In this context, Labor must surely be weighing an early election if they see support swing back to them.”