Joe Hildebrand: Peter Dutton’s nuclear gamble drops a giant rock in shallow puddle of Australian politics

In politics the line between crazybrave and just plain crazy is often impossible to see, the difference only ever really known after the bomb has dropped and the smoke has cleared, writes Joe Hildebrand.

In politics the line between crazybrave and just plain crazy is often impossible to see. The difference between the two is only ever really known after the bomb has been dropped and the smoke has cleared.

Peter Dutton’s nuclear gamble is at best crazybrave. He has gone all-in on a high card and a prayer.

Firstly, credit to him for courage. One of the new nuclear technologies scientists are developing involves highly-concentrated fuel sources known as “power balls”. The opposition leader seems to be sporting a couple himself.

Dutton has also gone out on the front foot in naming the sites of the proposed reactor. This is to head off the inevitable scare campaign from Labor that they could be cropping up in anybody’s backyard like a pantomime villain.

Peter Dutton’s nuclear gamble is at best crazybrave. Picture: NewsWire / Nikki Short

Also the sites are already home to existing or recently disused power generators, so it’s not like they’ll be astride the Three Sisters or Great Barrier Reef.

But besides the naming of the location there is not much of a plan at all.

Dutton has not provided even a ballpark figure of what the reactors would cost, the existing conventional reactors would take 15 years to build and the technology to make small modular reactors commercially viable doesn’t even exist yet.

Speaking of which, just a month ago Angus Taylor was saying that the Coalition’s nuclear reactor plan would be commercially viable and not need taxpayer subsidies. Now Dutton is saying they would be wholly owned and operated by the government.

One can only hope his shadow treasurer got the number of the bus that hit him.

Dutton’s LNP colleague and would-be premier David Crisafulli has already ruled out allowing nuclear power in Queensland.

The nuclear power plant of Flamanville, north-western France, as the Flamanville 3 nuclear power plant is ready to start. Picture: AFP

Besides which NSW Premier Chris Minns, Victorian Premier Jacinta Allen and even the presumptive next Queensland premier David Crisafulli — Dutton’s LNP colleague — have already ruled out allowing nuclear power in their respective states.

That makes five of the seven reactors dead on arrival before they have even left the house.

In other words, whatever the merits of nuclear — which should undoubtedly be constantly considered — Dutton’s plan as it stands will almost certainly never get off the ground.

So why does he so doggedly keep dropping this giant rock in the shallow puddle of Australian politics?

Voters will continually be reminded of how much their power bills have increased and Labor’s awkward pledge that they would be $275 lower by next year.

The truth is it’s not really about nuclear power at all. The reactor debate is a Trojan horse to keep energy prices and the cost-of-living crisis front and centre of Australian hearts and minds.

Every time he is attacked for it or questioned over it, he has a chance to remind voters of how much their power bills have increased and Labor’s awkward pledge that they would be $275 lower by next year.

Meanwhile there is plenty of red meat to keep his base energised by taking swipes at renewables along the way.

The climate wars may never be fully won or lost in this country, and Dutton’s nuclear plan may never make it to the try line. But if everyone is talking about power prices then at least he is playing a home game.

Originally published as Joe Hildebrand: Peter Dutton’s nuclear gamble drops a giant rock in shallow puddle of Australian politics