Antinuclear

Peter Dutton’s nuclear implosion after Dunkley byelection loss

The Saturday Paper, 9 Mar 24 Paul Bongiorno

Anthony Albanese had a good week, thank you very much. His opponent, Peter Dutton, not so much. In fact, you could say the Dunkley byelection blew the opposition leader’s credibility out of the water and left him stranded for a reset.

Not that anyone who bothered to watch the byelection night on the news channels would get the impression from the Liberals they had fallen miserably short of stalling Albanese’s new year momentum. Nor did their performance demonstrate that their strategy was on target to recapture the outer suburban seats they need to offset the loss of 19 seats at the 2022 election………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

a lesson for Advance and Dutton is that winning an election is a very different challenge to disrupting a referendum……………………………………………………………………………………………….

 We now have the framework for the Coalition’s “energy plan” – although whether this policy to build large-scale and yet to be commercially viable nuclear small modular reactors (SMRs) is a winner is questionable to say the least.

Albanese took time out from hosting the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Melbourne to say he looked forward to Dutton announcing the locations for nuclear reactors and where the financing would come from.

Dutton is in the same denial mode his colleagues showed in their reactions to the byelection loss. When he finally put up his head on Tuesday, the opposition leader ducked questions on who would pay for his nuclear “fantasy”, as Albanese calls it, and kept talking about a cheaper, firmer option. His spiel could only be viewed as unbelievable.

The GenCost report from the CSIRO and the Australian Energy Market Operator estimates by 2030 the cost of power from an SMR would be between $200 and $350 per megawatt hour, compared with between $60 and $100 per megawatt hour for wind and solar.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said Dutton “is always on the hunt for cheap politics, not cheap electricity”.

It’s hard to see this as the winning reset the Liberals crave. https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2024/03/09/peter-duttons-nuclear-implosion#mtr

March 10, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics