Antinuclear

Angus Taylor’s word salad blurs the truth about power bills under the Coalition’s $331b nuclear plan.

“It will bring down electricity bills by 44 per cent, there’s no doubt about that,” Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor declared on Wednesday.

Frontier Economics didn’t model what nuclear would mean for household prices because the Coalition didn’t ask it to.

By Brett Worthington,19Dec 24

It started by playing it fast and loose with the details.

Cherry picking data points that told a story the Coalition wanted to tell, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and his merry band of frontbenchers sought to conflate nuclear energy modelling and household bills — but were at least deliberately vague initially.

Last Friday, they claimed taxpayers would be 44 per cent better off under the Coalition’s $331 billion nuclear plan.

That alone was a heavily contested claim that struggled to stand up to rigorous review. But it was a claim that would only be supercharged as the days rolled on.

“It will bring down electricity bills by 44 per cent, there’s no doubt about that,” Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor declared on Wednesday.

It was almost as if he suddenly realised what he’d said, bringing on a word salad of caveats.

“I mean, that’s over time, that’s, you know, to the extent that over time, what you see basic economics, as long as you have good competition policy in place, and we absolutely intend to do that, that prices paid reflect costs — underlying costs,” he continued.

“That’s, that’s what you expect to see and that’s economics 101.”

It’s one thing to try and blur the lines and insist that what the federal government spends in taxpayer money directly flows through to household bills.

And look, no-one in the Coalition will be complaining if voters miss the grey area and interpret the opposition’s comments as a rolled gold promise to bring down household energy bills by 44 per cent.

It’s not like Taylor or Dutton will be in the federal parliament when the rubber hits the road on the savings by 2050, which is when Taylor says Australians will have to wait to see the full 44 per cent delivered.

But it can’t go without being said that the 44 per cent household claim simply isn’t backed up in the modelling the Coalition relied upon to cost its plan.

Frontier Economics didn’t model what nuclear would mean for household prices because the Coalition didn’t ask it to.

Forget economics 101. Not asking for something that could give you an answer you might not like is politics 101.

To quote the shadow treasurer himself: Well done, Angus.

Mid-year budget hardly a pre-election sweetener

The Coalition gets away with making erroneous claims because Labor struggles to communicate when it’s shaping the agenda, let alone when it’s responding to it.

Like him or loathe him, Dutton is a skilled communicator. He has a laser focus on his message and delivers it with precision, even if the substance is heavily contested…………………………………

The government’s inability to neutralise Dutton is what fuels the nervousness that is ever-increasing in the ranks of Labor supporters. There’s outright despair in some quarters, fuelled largely by the prospect of Dutton shifting into the Lodge in the new year…………………………….. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-19/nuclear-costings-household-bills/104746708

December 27, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized