Dutton’s atomic bet threatens Coalition chain reaction over climate

Dutton blew this strategy to pieces when he indicated earlier this year that he would soon unveil a far more ambitious project. One that would dramatically escalate the political debate by embracing large-scale baseload nuclear in places like the Hunter and La Trobe valleys, Anglesea in Victoria, South Australia’s Port Augusta, Collie in WA and Tarong in Littleproud’s Queensland electorate.

“He was winning, now he’s losing”, said one strategist of Dutton’s switch from a vague pro-nuclear policy to one that promises specifics.

Rather than keep the heat on Labor’s handling of cost-of-living pain as inflation stays high, the opposition leader’s nuclear venture risks becoming the story.

https://www.afr.com/policy/energy-and-climate/dutton-s-atomic-bet-threatens-coalition-chain-reaction-over-climate-20240425-p5fml7 Jacob Greber Senior correspondent, Apr 25, 2024

A golden rule in politics, attributed to Napoleon, is that you should never interrupt your enemy when they’re struggling or making mistakes.

Peter Dutton’s push to engineer an ambitious nuclear power policy that keeps the Coalition from fracturing over climate policy is as fine an example as you could hope to find of premature politicus interruptus.

Rather than keeping the heat on Labor’s handling of the economy and ongoing cost-of-living pain – see for instance this week’s diabolical inflation data that has all but killed off any interest rate relief this year – Dutton’s nuclear venture risks becoming the story.

It will shunt the Coalition into a realm in which it has to elaborate on its plans for emissions targets; clarify whether it has one for 2035, and come clean on whether it will crab walk away from the Paris Agreement altogether.

Pivoting to nuclear means the Coalition will very likely miss the nation’s current 2030 target (of cutting emissions by 43 per cent on 2005 levels). Dutton and Nationals leader David Littleproud both see nuclear as a way to slow or halt the rollout of renewables and new electricity transmission. The political contrast for voters will be that Labor is already executing a plan to reach that goal.

Many inside Labor can’t believe their luck, already salivating at how to weaponise Dutton’s nuclear policy into a potent political fear campaign at the next election.

It is not widely understood – as has been explained here before – that the 2030 target is an international promise that cannot be watered down. Setting sail on a policy that falls short, intentionally, is only possible by withdrawing from Paris.

Dutton has not made clear where he stands on these questions, which are at the heart of the Coalition’s current deliberations. There is no internal consensus, either among Liberals or with the Nationals.

These are not waters that Dutton or Littleproud want to drift in for too long. For moderate Liberals – including those hoping to regain the seats they lost in 2022’s climate election – it should be ringing alarm bells.

Initially, Dutton’s go-big, go-nuclear policy venture was slated to be unveiled ahead of the budget, triggering internal consternation among those who felt they had not been directly consulted, particularly across the National Party which has not yet signed onto the idea of large-scale nuclear power generation.

And if they do, the Nationals will want Dutton to deliver the same mega-buck regional roads, dam and rail spending splurge that Barnaby Joyce secured in exchange for backing Scott Morrison over net zero by 2050 in the lead-up to the 2021 Glasgow Climate Conference.

Until now, Littleproud has kept the embers glowing by supporting small-scale nuclear reactors, so-called SMRs, which conjure benign images of unobtrusive remotely located generators no larger than a truck.

Both leaders mirrored the Coalition’s standing position, including under Morrison, of seeking to undo John Howard’s 25-year-old ban on nuclear. They stuck to a simple approach – one that most voters would have no issue with – of asking why the nation can’t have an adult “conversation” about the pros and cons of nuclear power?

This stance had the political benefit of sounding eminently sensible while being bereft of detail or real-world consequence. Such as where these things might be built. And at what cost.

Dutton blew this strategy to pieces when he indicated earlier this year that he would soon unveil a far more ambitious project.

One that would dramatically escalate the political debate by embracing large-scale baseload nuclear in places like the Hunter and La Trobe valleys, Anglesea in Victoria, South Australia’s Port Augusta, Collie in WA and Tarong in Littleproud’s Queensland electorate.

Old coal stations repurposed, in other words.

Yet after weeks of internal wrangling, the timeline for that announcement has blown out to some time after the May 14 budget. It may yet be buried entirely, say some observers, which would be hugely embarrassing for Dutton given how far he has already ventured.

The delay is also instructive of ongoing division over climate policy within the Coalition that has not been resolved since Morrison’s defeat two years ago by Labor and the teal independents who plundered the Liberal party’s inner-city crown jewels.

Significantly, many inside the Coalition fear the opposition leader’s nuclear push will become a self-inflicted political wedge.

Like John Hewson’s ill-fated 1993 “Fightback!” GST promise, or Bill Shorten’s bold policy platform in 2019, Dutton is seen to be at risk of “painting a big target on our backs”.

“He was winning, now he’s losing”, said one strategist of Dutton’s switch from a vague pro-nuclear policy to one that promises specifics.

Many inside Labor can’t believe their luck, already salivating at how to weaponise Dutton’s nuclear policy into a potent political fear campaign at the next election.

Queensland Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli’s repeated rejection of Dutton’s planned “nuclear renaissance” indicates he thinks it’s political suicide.

Every regional and marginal battleground seat can expect to be flooded with warnings about the dangers of nuclear energy, the risks of transporting uranium, and fights over where to store spent fuel.

Younger voters like Millennials are sensibly less allergic to the idea of nuclear energy than Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers, especially those who popped their political cherries during the nuclear disarmament movements of the Cold War.

But once the question becomes about where to locate these things – when you ask the locals – support tends to slide.

And then there are the attendant details. How will a nuclear power program that will not become a reality for at least 15 to 20 years help coal power workers being displaced by plant closures meanwhile?

Nuclear baseload energy offers the prospect of many good things, including a manufacturing renaissance. But making things in the 2030s will be nothing like making things in the 1950s. Current trends suggest robots will do most of the work, not humans.

Dutton’s determination to press ahead on nuclear – there are no signs at this point of a backdown, but keep your eyes open – could turn out to be a massive stroke of political genius, or fatal hubris.

The opposition leader had every right to feel confident after last year’s Voice to parliament referendum outcome. Polls such as this week’s Resolve Political Monitor show voters are drifting back to the Liberals.

But that shift is happening before Dutton and the Liberal party have really defined themselves, or offered details of what a future Coalition government will look like.

The nuclear policy – and its consequences for the Coalition’s climate and energy stance – will fill that void as quickly as an atomic chain reaction.

Instead of a 2025 election strategy that rests on telling voters how bad Labor is while dispensing pork barrel promises to swing electorates, the Coalition will be in the business of having to explain a hugely expensive, risky and complicated policy.

That’s one hell of a punt.