Nationals’ nuclear climate policy puts Australia’s Paris deal in doubt
The Age, James Massola and Mike Foley, April 25, 2024
The Coalition cannot commit to Australia’s 2030 emissions reduction targets, with senior Nationals MPs conceding a plan to adopt nuclear power would mean a future Coalition government would not comply with the Paris Agreement.
Days after Opposition Leader Peter Dutton delayed his announcement of up to six sites for future nuclear power plants – the announcement is now expected after the budget – Nationals leader David Littleproud told this masthead the path to net zero emissions by 2050 would not be linear under a future Coalition government.
The Nationals’ stated aim of slowing down the rollout of large-scale renewable energy projects, combined with the 15-year timeline for building a nuclear plant, means the Coalition would struggle if returned to power to meet Labor’s current target of 43 per cent emissions reduction by 2030.
But a Coalition government would inherit Australia’s legally binding 2030 target under the Paris Agreement, which requires nations to contribute to an international effort to keep global warming under 2 degrees.
Walking away from the Paris Agreement would infuriate Liberal moderates and MPs in metropolitan seats, where climate action is more popular; embolden the teals and other independents; and risk reigniting the climate wars fought between Nationals and Liberals in the former Morrison government.
Littleproud said “there is not a linear pathway to net zero, and trying to achieve one will have a detrimental impact on the economy. We have to have a broad-based solution rather than an all renewables approach.”
He would not commit to Australia’s climate target, set by the Albanese government, to cut emissions by 43 per cent by 2030.
“We want to wait and see what the modelling we come up with for 2030 [in the party’s new nuclear policy] says, but we won’t rush into anything …”
Experts including former chief scientist Alan Finkel and former Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner Professor Andrew Dyer have said it would take a minimum of 15 years for a nuclear plant to be built in Australia
Grattan Institute deputy energy director Alison Reeve said it would be impossible for Australia to reach its 2030 Paris target if there were a slowdown in the renewables rollout – including a pause to accommodate nuclear plant…………………………………………………………..
The Grattan Institute’s Alison Reeve said Australia would not hit the 2030 target under the Coalition’s nuclear push because most of the decarbonisation needed hangs off the government’s renewable goals.
“If you don’t reach that, you just don’t meet the 2030 target,” she said.
The bulk of reductions are to come from reducing coal-fired power and achieving the target to boost renewables to 82 per cent of the grid by 2030.
Reeve said cutting emissions from the energy sector by replacing fossil fuel electricity with renewables was a fundamental underpinning of Australia’s climate policy and any slowdown in wind and solar farms would make it harder for other sectors to clean up their act………. https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/nationals-nuclear-climate-policy-puts-australia-s-paris-deal-in-doubt-20240424-p5fm8p.html
‘A little awkward’: Coalition faces internal tension over nuclear plans
Sky News host Chris Kenny says the Coalition is in an “awkward” situation with their behind the scenes negotiations around nuclear energy.
It is reported that a rift has formed with the Coalition regarding Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy plans.
“Inside the Coalition, there is argument about where the nuclear power stations might be sited in this country,” Mr Kenny said.
“Apparently some MPs saying they don’t want them in their backyard.
“Sounds like there is tension.”
Washington Syndrome: Australia’s sovereignty sell-out hidden in plain sight
“The process is almost complete. The Australian Defence Force’s integration into the US military to serve the needs of Washington has been announced, albeit without announcement, this week.”
Arguably the only thing left to do is to adopt American spelling and replace the letter ‘c’ with the letter ‘s’ in ‘Department of Defence’.
by Rex Patrick | Apr 21, 2024 https://michaelwest.com.au/washington-syndrome-marles-defence-plan-sovereignty-sell-out/
Defence Minister Richard Marles rolled out some glossy new brochures this week spelling out the composition of the Australian Defence Force in the decades ahead. As media quibbled about this equipment purchase or that one, former Senator and submariner Rex Patrick explains the sovereignty sell-out hidden in plain sight.
Washington Syndrome
It’s confirmed. All the evidence points to the Defence Minister suffering from Stockholm Syndrome (or more accurately Washington Syndrome), except that he hasn’t just formed a bond with his Defence Department, where he won’t challenge them. He’s swallowed the whole kit and caboodle; adopting Defence lingo and lines as his own.
Marles has expressed Defence’s wishes beautifully, without revealing explicitly what that wish is. But it’s sitting there in plain sight.
National Defence Strategy
The use of smokescreens is a longstanding battlefield tactic, and it’s often employed by bureaucrats too. To get a clear and truthful picture from the National Defence Strategy released this week, you have to peer through a dense cloud of verbiage to get a clear sense of what’s really going on.
Early in the document the strategic framework is laid out.
Our Alliance with the US remains fundamental to Australia’s national security. We will continue to deepen and expand our defence engagement with the US, including by pursuing greater scientific, technological and industrial cooperation, as well as enhancing our own cooperation under force posture initiatives.
So, we’re joined at the hip to the United States, and we intend to stay that way.
The document spells out why Defence thinks we need to do that. The optimism at the end of the Cold War has been replaced by uncertainty and tension of entrenched and strategic competition between the US and China.
It is accompanied by an unprecedented conventional and non-conventional build-up in our region, taking place without strategic reassurance or transparency.
…
This build up is also increasing the risk of military escalation or miscalculation that could lead to a major conflict in the region.
Indeed, it zooms in with on the specifics. The risk of a crisis in the Taiwan Strait is increasing, as well as other flashpoints, including disputes in the South and East China Seas and on the border with India.
The Government will continue to strengthen its defence engagement with the US to:
- ensure joint exercises and capability rotations with the US are focused on enhancing collective deterrence and force posture cooperation.
- Acquire the technology and capability required to enhance deterrence, including through increasing collaboration on defence innovation, science and technology.
- Leverage Australia’s strong partnership with Japan in its trilateral context, including opportunities for Japan to participate in Australia-US force posture cooperation activities, to enable interoperability and contribute to deterrence; and
- Progress enabling reforms to export controls, procurement policy and information sharing to deliver a more integrated industrial base.
- Meanwhile, the US is increasing its military footprint in Australia in terms of facilities in the north (mission briefing/intelligence centre and aircraft parking aprons) at RAAF Darwin, fuel storage at Darwin Port, infrastructure at RAAF Tindal near Katherine and logistics storage in both Victoria and Queensland).
- This is on top of the long established top secret signals intelligence base, the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap, and Australian support for US naval communications through the very low-frequency receiving and transmission facility at North West Cap. As far as American strategists are concerned, Australia has long been “a suitable piece of real estate”.
But now there’s a new dimension to the alliance with Australian taxpayers are sharing the alliance love by pouring billions into the US submarine industrial base.
US Seventh and a Half Fleet
Of course, it’s hard to fight a conflict in Taiwan Straights with an army. That’s reflected in the distribution of future expenditure outline in the Integrated Investment Program, released alongside the National Defence Strategy.
The Navy will receive almost 40% of all Defence expenditure. The Royal Australian Navy will become the seventh and a half fleet of the US Navy, supported by what are being referred to as the expeditionary air operations by the Royal Australian Air Force.
Again, hidden in plain sight.
Taiwan
Taiwan is a democracy of 22 million people. I might like to think we would come to their aid in the event their democracy was threatened.
But sending our sons and daughters to engage in a northern hemisphere conflict is a matter which should be decided upon by our Parliament at some future time.
We should seek to have a balanced and flexible Defence Force optimised first for Defence of Australia and second for near regional security (a deployment to Taiwan, if approved by our elected members, should draw from an order-of-battle optimised for Defence of Australia).
Sovereignty Stolen
But that’s not what’s happening.
It’s all too tempting to suggest that the sovereignty sell-out started at with AUKUS, announced by Scott Morrison on 16 September 2021 and adopted by Anthony Albanese at the Kabuki show in San Diego on 15 March 2023. But it didn’t.For those astute enough to have picked up and read a copy of Professor Clinton Fernandes’ book “Sub-Imperial Power: Australia in the International Arena”, they’ll know AUKUS is just natural and obvious. So too is the even greater embedding of the ADF into the US military to serve the needs of Washington that has been announced this week, albeit without announcement.
“The process is almost complete. The Australian Defence Force’s integration into the US military to serve the needs of Washington has been announced, albeit without announcement, this week.”
Arguably the only thing left to do is to adopt American spelling and replace the letter ‘c’ with the letter ‘s’ in ‘Department of Defence’.
History repeats
We have been down this road before.
n the 1920s and 1930s conservative Australian Governments saw Australian security as part of that of the British Empire as a whole. As a consequence, they implemented defence programs that were designed to produce forces, especially the Royal Australian Navy, that were hopelessly unbalanced and only made sense as a subset of British forces. Imperial Defence was prioritised ahead of national defence in a ‘strategy’, if you can call it that, that compromised Australia’s then very new national sovereignty and almost came to disaster in 1942.
Bureaucratic and political self-interest
Australia’s new “National Defence Strategy” really is nothing of the sort. It’s a sub-set of strategic planning made in Washington, not an Australian national perspective.
AUKUS has devoured whatever vestiges of independent strategic thought that might have been lingering in our Defence Department.
But don’t imagine that there’s any dissent about this in Defence Headquarters.
Those in Defence bureaucracy guiding our politicians are be happy, uproariously happy, because they’ll personally benefit from the arrangement.
AUKUS and this latest steerage will serve as a tremendous career and institutional opportunity for them. They’ve cemented their position in an alliance arrangement that involves important meetings and conferences, important decisions, trips overseas, and, for some, exchange postings. For them, they’ve got ringside seats and the opportunity to be occasional players in the big league.
Which brings me back to Defence Minister Marles, who can’t really be blamed for the sell-out.
Marles isn’t, and never was, the sort of political figure that could develop much of an understanding of what is going on around him, let alone be the one to lead with strategic vision and agenda forward. He’s too busy learning the lingo, enjoying the photo opportunities, and impressing upon his ‘sub-ordinates’ in Defence Headquarters that he’s not to be referred to as the Defence Minister, but rather as the Deputy Prime Minister. Surely he deserves that courtesy!
Push-polling goes nuclear
Dr Jim Green , 18th April 2024 https://theecologist.org/2024/apr/18/push-polling-goes-nuclear
Conservative political parties in Australia actually believe that nuclear power is popular – based on biased push-polling.
A Newspoll survey led to a page-one article in the Australian, the Murdoch national newspaper, under the following headline: “Powerful majority supports nuclear option for energy security”.
The Australian’s political editor Simon Benson wrote in February: “Labor is now at risk of ending up on the wrong side of history in its fanatical opposition to nuclear power.” The party “ignores this community sentiment potentially at its peril”, he added. The story was prominent across the Murdoch owned press and on Murdoch’s Sky News.
The Newspoll question was as follows: “There is a proposal to build several small modular nuclear reactors around Australia to produce zero-emissions energy on the sites of existing coal-fired power stations once they are retired. Do you approve or disapprove of this proposal?”
Push-polling
The results: 55 per cent approval, 31 per cent disapproval and 14 per cent ‘don’t know’. However the poll was a crude example of push-polling designed to generate pro-nuclear results and headlines. Its many faults were identified by polling experts Kevin Bonham and Murray Goot and by economist Professor John Quiggin.
To give just one example of the bias, replacing Australia’s 21,300 megawatts of coal-fired power generation capacity with small modular reactors (SMRs) would require a large number of reactors, not ‘several’ as Newspoll asserted. If, for example, NuScale Power’s 77-megawatt reactors were chosen, 277 reactors would be required.
In broad terms, the tricks used by pro-nuclear push-pollers involve swaying opinions with biased preliminary comments, biased questions, limited response options, and misreporting the findings. Specific tricks include the following:
* Presenting or implying a narrow or false choice – as with the implication in the Newspoll survey that Australians could choose between nuclear reactors or coal.
* Asking respondents if nuclear power should be “considered” or if they support an “informed and balanced conversation”, and then conflating support for those bland propositions with support for nuclear power itself.
* Linking nuclear power to climate change abatement without mention of the downsides or expense of nuclear power, or alternative and arguably better ways to address climate change.
* Asking respondents if they support ‘advanced’ nuclear power or ‘the latest nuclear energy technologies’ without noting that ‘advanced’ nuclear power reactors are few in number, they aren’t really ‘advanced’ in any meaningful sense, and in some cases they are used to power fossil fuel mining or pose increased weapons proliferation risks.
* Reporting on poll results without clearly stating what the actual survey questions were.
* Avoiding the word ‘nuclear’ by referring to small modular reactors, or avoiding the word reactors by using phrases such as ‘the latest nuclear energy technologies’.
* Using the word ‘small’, as in ‘small modular reactors’: expect to see more of this, it seems to work well despite the spectacular implosion of the most advanced SMR project in the US, the NuScale project in Idaho.
* Reporting self-selecting, online polls as if the results mean anything. For example Australian academic Oscar Archer is impressed by a meaningless ABC poll, a meaningless Murdoch tabloid poll, and a meaningless Channel 7 Sunrise poll.
Australia’s conservative parties fall for push-polling
Partly because of the Murdoch media’s promotion of nuclear power and its push-polling, the federal Liberal-National Coalition opposition has “pledged” to introduce nuclear power to Australia by the mid-2030s if it wins and forms a government at the election to be held no later than May next year.
The Coalition believes that most Australians support nuclear power, that younger Australians are particularly enthusiastic, and that local communities will welcome a nuclear power reactor. The problem is that those views are underpinned by nothing other than biased push-polling.
Unbiased polls find that support for nuclear power in Australia falls short of a majority; that Australians support renewables to a far greater extent than nuclear power and nuclear power is among the least popular energy sources; that a majority do not want nuclear reactors built near where they live; and that most Australians are concerned about nuclear accidents and nuclear waste.
Even the push-polling results should raise red flags for the Coalition. A 2019 Roy Morgan poll preceded the poll question with this highly dubious assertion: “If the worries about carbon dioxide are a real problem, many suggest that the cleanest energy source Australia can use is nuclear power.”
Even with that blatant attempt to sway respondents, only a bare 51 per cent majority expressed support for nuclear power.
Locals are ‘hostile’
The Coalition hasn’t even formally released its nuclear power policy yet ‒ that will happen in the coming weeks. But already the policy has been disastrous for the Coalition with near-zero support beyond the far-right of the Coalition and the far-right media, in particular the Murdoch-Sky echo chamber.
Opposition to locally-built nuclear power reactors has been clearly and consistently demonstrated in Australian opinion polls for 20 years or more. A 2019 Essential poll was typical of the others: 28 per cent of respondents “would be comfortable living close to a nuclear power plant” while 60 per cent would not.
The Coalition proposes replacing retiring coal power plants with nuclear reactors and expects an enthusiastic response from local communities. A ‘Coalition source’ told the Murdoch press that Coalition MPs “had convinced themselves that people would be queuing up” for nuclear reactors.
But recent focus group research carried out in the Hunter Valley in NSW and the Latrobe Valley in Victoria ‒ two of the coal regions that might be targeted ‒ found that voters are “hostile” to plans for reactors in their areas.
Local hostility is just one of the problems facing the Coalition’s nuclear policy. Coalition MPs have said on countless occasions that the development of nuclear power in Australia would require bipartisan support. But nuclear power isn’t supported by the Labor Party and it faces strong resistance even from within the Coalition.
Indeed there is bipartisan opposition to nuclear power in most of the four states with operating coal plants that are likely to be targeted in a coal-to-nuclear program ‒ Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales, and Western Australia. Labor state governments in those four states are opposed to nuclear power in their states, and Liberal/Coalition opposition leaders are opposed to nuclear power or have failed to endorse it.
Colourful commentary
Tony Barry ‒ a former deputy state director and strategist for the Victorian Liberal Party, and now a director at the research consultancy RedBridge ‒ describes the Coalition’s decision to make nuclear power the centrepiece of its energy and climate policy as “the longest suicide note in Australian political history”.
On the strength of a detailed RedBridge analysis of Australians’ attitudes to nuclear power, Barry says that just 35 per cent of Australians support nuclear power and that only coal is less popular. If the Coalition is to have any chance of winning the next election it will not be with nuclear power, he says.
Colourful commentary has also been offered to Murdoch journalists by Coalition MPs under cover of anonymity. One Coalition MP says the nuclear policy is “madness on steroids”, another says the Liberal and National Party rooms are “in a panic” about the nuclear policy and “they don’t know what to do”, and another says the nuclear policy is “bonkers”,
Former Liberal prime minister Malcolm Turnbull also describes the nuclear policy as “bonkers”. He says nuclear power’s only utility is “as another culture war issue for the right-wing angertainment ecosystem, and a means of supporting fossil fuels by delaying and distracting the rollout of renewables”, and that nuclear power “is exactly what you don’t need to firm renewables.” Turnbull describes ultra-conservative Coalition leader Peter Dutton as a “thug” who says “stupid things” about nuclear power. With friends like that…
Matt Kean, the NSW Liberal MP and former deputy premier, states: “I not only regard advocacy for nuclear power as against the public interest on environmental, engineering and economic grounds, I also see it as an attempt to delay and defer responsible and decisive action on climate change in a way that seems to drive up power prices in NSW by delaying renewables.”
John Hewson, the former federal Liberal leader, says the Dutton opposition has become “ridiculous” with its pro-nuclear, anti-renewables stance which is economic “nonsense”, and that Dutton may be promoting nuclear “on behalf of large fossil-fuel donors knowing nuclear power will end up being too expensive and take too long to implement, thereby extending Australia’s reliance on coal and natural gas”.
Nuclear power a ‘dog whistle to climate denialists’
The cynicism reflects concerns about the Coalition’s opposition to the federal Labor government’s target of 82 per cent renewables by 2030 and the Coalition’s plans to expand gas and prolong the use of coal. The Nationals are calling for a moratorium on the rollout of large-scale renewables.
Professor John Quiggin, an economist, notes that, in practice, support for nuclear power in Australia is support for coal and he has described nuclear advocacy in Australia as a dog whistle to climate denialists.
Even in the Murdoch-Sky right-wing echo-chamber, splits are emerging. A Murdoch media editor says the Coalition’s nuclear policy is “stark raving mad” and “madness…total madness”.
Australia’s big private electricity generators ‒ AGL Energy, Alinta, EnergyAustralia and Origin Energy ‒ have dismissed nuclear energy as a viable source of power for their customers. One senior executive says that power bills would triple if the nuclear path was pursued. Industry isn’t interested, and trade unions are overwhelmingly opposed.
The Australian chief scientist opposes to the introduction of nuclear power to Australia, as do at least two former Australian chief scientists and the NSW chief scientist.
A recent survey by the Investor Group on Climate Change asked big institutional investors with $37 trillion under management which energy and climate solutions they believed had good long-term returns. Nuclear power was ranked last of the 14 options, renewable energy first.
History repeating itself
In the mid-2000s, John Howard as the Liberal prime minister promoted nuclear power and conservatives hoped the policy would create splits within the Labor Party and the environment movement.
Labor wasn’t split, nor was the environment movement, but at least 22 Coalition candidates publicly distanced themselves from the Howard government’s nuclear policy during the 2007 election campaign. Howard lost his seat, the Coalition lost the election, and the nuclear policy was ditched immediately.
We could be seeing history repeating itself with Peter Dutton’s ill-advised promotion of nuclear power.
Labor MPs can’t believe their luck. Speaking in parliament, prime minister Anthony Albanese compared Peter Dutton to a nuclear reactor: “One is risky, expensive, divisive and toxic; the other is a nuclear reactor. The bad news for the Liberal Party is that you can put both on a corflute, and we certainly intend to do so.”
This Author
Dr Jim Green is the national nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia and a member of the Nuclear Consulting Group.
Faulty Assurances: The Judicial Torture of Assange Continues
April 17, 2024, Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.com/faulty-assurances-the-judicial-torture-of-assange-continues/
Only this month, the near comatose US President, Joe Biden, made a casual, castaway remark that his administration was “considering” the request by Australia that the case against Julian Assange be concluded. The WikiLeaks founder has already spent five gruelling years in London’s Belmarsh prison, where he continues a remarkable, if draining campaign against the US extradition request on 18 charges, 17 incongruously and outrageously based on the US Espionage Act of 1917.
Like readings of coffee grinds, his defenders took the remark as a sign of progress. Jennifer Robinson, a longtime member of Assange’s legal team, told Sky News Australia that Biden’s “response, this is what we have been asking for over five years. Since 2010 we’ve been saying this is a dangerous precedent that’s being set. So, we certainly hope it was a serious remark and the US will act on it.” WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson found the mumbled comment from the president “extraordinary”, hoping “to see in the coming days” whether “clarification of what this means” would be offered by the powerful.
On April 14, the Wall Street Journal reported that Canberra had asked their US counterparts whether a felony plea deal could be reached, enabling the publisher to return to Australia. “Prosecutors and a lawyer for Assange have discussed a range of potential deals, including those that include pleading guilty to a felony under the espionage law under which he was indicted, and those of conspiring to mishandle classified information, which would be a misdemeanor, people familiar with the matter have said.”
Last month, the UK High Court gave what can only be regarded as an absurd prescription to the prosecution should they wish to succeed. Extradition would be unlikely to be refused if Assange was availed of protections offered by the First Amendment (though rejecting claims that he was a legitimate journalist), was guaranteed not to be prejudiced, both during the trial and in sentence on account of his nationality, and not be subject to the death penalty. That such directions were even countenanced shows the somewhat delusionary nature of British justices towards their US counterparts.
On April 16, Assange’s supporters received confirmation that the extradition battle, far from ending, would continue in its tormenting grind. Not wishing to see the prospect of a full hearing of Assange’s already hobbled arguments, the US State Department, almost to the hour, filed the assurances in a diplomatic note to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). “Assange,” the US Embassy in London claimed with aping fidelity to the formula proposed by the High Court, “will not be prejudiced by reason of nationality with respect to which defenses he may seek to raise at trial and at sentencing.”
Were he to be extradited, “Assange will have the ability to raise and seek to rely upon at trial (which includes any sentencing hearing) the rights and protections given under the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.” An obvious caveat, and one that should be observed with wary consideration by the High Court judges, followed. “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the US Courts.”
The US embassy also promised that, “A sentence of death will neither be sought nor imposed on Assange. The United States is able to provide such assurance as Assange is not charged with a death-penalty eligible offense, and the United States assures that he will not be tried for a death-eligible offense.” This undertaking does not dispel the threat of Assange being charged with additional offences such as traditional espionage, let alone aiding or abetting treason, which would carry the death penalty.
In 2020, Gordon Kromberg, the chief Department of Justice prosecutor behind the case, told the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales that the US “could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment, at least as it concerns national defense information.” There was also the likelihood that Assange, in allegedly revealing the names of US intelligence sources thereby putting them at risk of harm, would also preclude the possibility of him relying on such protections.
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That the zealous Kromberg will be fronting matters should Assange reach US shores is more than troubling. Lawyers and civil rights activists have accused him of using the Eastern District Court of Virginia for selective and malicious prosecutions. As Murtaza Hussain of The Intercept observed with bleak accuracy in July 2021, “[r]ather than being pushed into obscurity by these efforts, today he is serving as a key figure in one of the most important civil liberties cases in the world.”
The High Court also acknowledged Kromberg’s views at trial regarding the possibility that the First Amendment did not cover foreign nationals. “It can fairly be assumed that [Kromberg] would not have said that the prosecution ‘could argue that foreign nationals are not entitled to protections under the First Amendment’ unless that was a tenable argument that the prosecution was entitled to deploy with real prospect of success.” These latest assurances do nothing to change that fact.
A post from Assange’s wife, Stella, provided a neat and damning summary of the embassy note. “The United States has issued a non-assurance in relation to the First Amendment, and a standard assurance in relation to the death penalty. It makes no undertaking to withdraw the prosecution’s previous assertion that Julian has no First Amendment rights because he is not a US citizen. Instead, the US has limited itself to blatant weasel words claiming that Julian can ‘seek to raise’ the First Amendment if extradited.”
Biden Administration Defies Australia’s Call To End Assange Case, Submits ‘Assurances’ To UK Court
Streamed live on 17 Apr 2024, Join Kevin Gosztola, author of “Guilty of Journalism: The Political Case Against Julian Assange,” as he covers the U.S. government’s “assurances” that were submitted to a British appeals court. They represent a clear indication that President Joe Biden’s administration is not going to end the case. If Biden was “considering” a plea deal for Assange, as was reported, he has made the decision to keep pursuing extradition and a U.S. trial on Espionage Act charges.
“An Awkward Problem”: Julian Assange and the Australian dog that didn’t bark
a clear Australian Government policy to limit direct engagement on the Assange case until after he has been extradited to the United States, put to trial, convicted, sentenced and exhausted all appeal rights.
by Philip Dorling and Rex Patrick | Apr 13, 2024, https://michaelwest.com.au/julian-assange-an-awkward-problem-for-albanese/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2024-04-18&utm_campaign=Michael+West+Media+Weekly+Update
Joe Biden says he’s “considering” an end to the prosecution of Julian Assange. Anthony Albanese says, “enough is enough,” but not much else. Rex Patrick and Philip Dorling discuss the latest developments in the Assange case.
That’s the position behind the Government’s careful words about bringing the matter to a close.
At no point has the Australian Government called publicly for the espionage charges to be dropped and the extradition process to be ended.
A plea deal?
Last month, the Wall Street Journal reported the US Justice Department has been considering a proposed plea deal with Assange, dropping the espionage charges and allowing him to admit to a misdemeanour concerning the mishandling of classified documents.
According to the Journal the Justice Department was exploring ways to end the long London court battle as Assange continues to fight against extradition. It isn’t clear whether the move for a plea deal has come from Justice or Assange’s legal team. In any case, Assange’s lawyers said they’d been “given no indication” of any change in the US position.
President Biden may have been referring to the question of a plea deal as much as any representations from the Australian Parliament.
A plea deal might well be under consideration, but it’s clearly not a done deal yet, and a radical reduction in the charges, with Assange walking free in London and his time in His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh taken into account, sounds like a big ask.
That dog ain’t barking…
One thing’s clear, however, Albanese hasn’t followed up on the parliamentary resolution with any personal diplomatic push on the Assange case.
One might have thought that Albanese would have directly engaged President Biden or else directed new representations across the top levels of the US Administration.
If that were the case, one would expect Albanese’s own Department to be closely engaged, working with DFAT and the Australian Embassy in Washington. Albanese is a careful, process-driven prime minister, so one would expect there to be PM&C briefing papers and correspondence. If absolutely nothing else one would expect there to be a Parliamentary Question Time Brief.
With such expectations, on March 7, 2024, Rex Patrick submitted a new FOI application for access to “PM&C submissions, talking points or other documents provided to Prime Minister Albanese between 1 February 2024 and 29 February 2024 that refer or relate to Julian Assange”.
Yesterday, the same day as Albanese’s latest comments that his government was using “all of our diplomatic efforts at every level”, PM&C provided their FOI response.
Dave Titheridge, head of the Department’s Global Interests Branch, advised: “I am refusing your request for access … as the documents you have requested do not exist”.
PM&C conducted an extensive search, including through its email system, Parliamentary Document Management System and electronic records repository and turned up nothing.
Nothing happening here – either before or after the parliamentary resolution.
Zero, zip, zilch, nada.
What’s next?
So, where does this leave Assange? His appeal options in London are nearly at an end. Perhaps his lawyers will finally get lucky. Perhaps President Biden is “considering” his case. Perhaps there will be a plea deal.
But Assange may well be extradited and spend decades rotting in a US maximum security prison. He might die there. He could also eventually come home, but as a prisoner in shackles, not as a free man.
Whatever happens, however, it won’t be down to a big effort – or barking – from the Albanese Government.
Supporters of Julian Assange were encouraged on Thursday by US President Joe Biden’s off-the-cuff- remark that his administration was “considering” an Australian request to end the espionage prosecution of the WikiLeaks founder.
Assange’s spouse, Stella Assange, called on Biden to “do the right thing” and “drop the charges”. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Australia was using “diplomatic efforts at every level to communicate that it is time that this was brought to a close, enough is enough.”
However, getting to the bottom of what governments do in the secretive world of diplomacy can often be akin to investigating a murder mystery. The clues are elusive and fragmentary. In the case of imprisoned Australian journalist Julian Assange, it’s a case of a dog that didn’t bark.
Parliamentary action
Media reports attributed the apparent shift in the US position to Albanese’s support for a parliamentary motion moved by independent MP Andrew Wilkie on February 14 that declared the Assange extradition proceedings have “gone on for too long” and “underline[d] the importance of the UK and USA bringing the matter to a close so that Mr Assange can return home to his family in Australia”.
Albanese said his government had supported the motion “because it is the right thing to do.” He added that he had raised the Assange case “at the highest levels” with the US and UK with “a calibrated and deliberate approach” that included discussions with Assange’s lawyers. In that context, the parliamentary resolution was “important… it’s important to send that message.”
Quiet diplomacy
It’s one thing to express support for “bringing the matter to a close”; but what does that mean in practice? For Assange supporters, it means the US dropping the prosecution and Assange returning to Australia as a free man.
However, the Albanese Government’s understanding and expectations are likely rather different.
FOI inquiries by Rex Patrick over the past eighteen months have shown that the Albanese Government’s track record on the Assange case has been patchy at best. The government’s “quiet diplomacy” has been minimalist. FOI applications directed toward the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, including Australia’s Embassy in Washington, have revealed little evidence of concerted diplomatic activity,
This isn’t to say that Albanese hasn’t raised the Assange case at the “highest levels.” He undoubtedly has, but it’s likely involved mentioning it as a politically awkward problem rather than a push to secure Assange’s freedom.
In response Secretary of State Antony Blinken made it publicly clear the US Government was most reluctant to intervene in the Justice Department’s prosecutorial process – an issue of obvious political sensitivity given the criminal charges brought against former president Donald Trump.
FOI inquiries also unearthed briefings for Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus that revealed a clear Australian Government policy to limit direct engagement on the Assange case until after he has been extradited to the United States, put to trial, convicted, sentenced and exhausted all appeal rights. Only then could Assange apply under the International Transfer of Prisoners scheme to serve a sentence of imprisonment in Australia. Only then would the Attorney-General formally consider that possibility,
Assange Extradition Case Moves Forward While The CIA Covers Its Tracks
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, APR 17, 2024 https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/assange-extradition-case-moves-forward?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=143660864&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
So they’re really doing it. The Biden administration is really ignoring Australia’s request to end the case against Julian Assange, and they’re proceeding with their campaign to extradite a journalist for telling the truth about US war crimes.
In order to move the extradition case forward, per a British high court ruling US prosecutors needed to provide “assurances” that the US would not seek the death penalty and would not deprive Assange of his human right to free speech because of his nationality. The US provided the assurance against the death penalty (which they’d previously opposed doing), and for the free speech assurance they said only that Assange will be able to “raise and seek to rely upon” US First Amendment rights, adding, “A decision as to the applicability of the First Amendment is exclusively within the purview of the U.S. Courts.”
Which is basically just saying “I mean, you’re welcome to TRY to have free speech protections?”
At the same time, CIA Director William Burns has filed a State Secrets Privilege demand to withhold information in a lawsuit against the agency by four American journalists and attorneys who were spied on during their visits to Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. State secrets privilege is a US evidentiary rule designed to prevent courts from revealing state secrets during civil litigation; the CIA began invoking it with the Assange lawsuit earlier this year.
Burns argues:
“I am asserting the state secrets and statutory privileges in this case as I have determined that either admitting or denying that CIA has information implicated by the remaining allegations in the Amended Complaint reasonably could be expected to cause serious — and in some cases, exceptionally grave — damage to the national security of the United States. After deliberation and personal consideration, I have determined that the complete factual bases for my privilege assertions cannot be set forth on the public record without confirming or denying whether CIA has information relating to this matter and therefore risking the very harm to U.S. national security that I seek to protect.”
Which is obviously a load of horse shit. As Assange himself tweeted in 2017, “The overwhelming majority of information is classified to protect political security, not national security.” Burns isn’t worried about damaging “the national security of the United States,” he’s worried about the potential political fallout from information about the CIA spying on American lawyers and journalists while visiting a journalist who was being actively targeted by the legal arm of the US government.
Political security is also why the US is working to punish Julian Assange for publishing inconvenient facts about US war crimes. The Pentagon already acknowledged years ago that the Chelsea Manning leaks for which Assange is being prosecuted didn’t get anyone killed and had no strategic impact on US war efforts, so plainly this isn’t about national security. It’s just politically damaging for the criminality of the US government to be made public for all to see.
They’re just squeezing and squeezing this man as hard as they can for as long as they can get away with to keep him silent and make an example of him to show what happens when journalists reveal unauthorized information about the empire. Just like Gaza, the persecution of Julian Assange makes a lie of everything the US and its western allies claim to stand for, and reveals the cruel face of tyranny beneath the mask of liberal democracy.
Modular Reactors. Peter Dutton hasn’t done his nuclear homework
by Rex Patrick | Apr 16, 2024 , https://michaelwest.com.au/nuclear-reactors-peter-dutton-has-not-done-his-homework/—
Has Peter Dutton’s proposed ‘rollout’ of modular nuclear reactors real policy or just politics? What research has he done to develop the policy? Not much, it seems. Rex Patrick reports.
In September 2020, the Morrison Government released a Low Emissions Technology Statement that placed Small Modular Reactors (SMR) on a list of watching brief technologies. SMR developments were to be monitored to see if they might play a part in Australia’s energy future.
Consistent with that listing, the Government directed the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) to join an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Coordinated Research Project focused on the Economic Appraisal of SMRs to provide information to assist in evaluating the technology’s economic viability.ANSTO assembled a team to prepare, among other things, a case study on Australia’s potential to adopt SMR technologies in the future and analyse financing options for the technology. As part of that project, ANSTO even supported a University of Queensland PhD thesis on SMRs.
Flip flop politics
Peter Dutton, a minister in the Government that commissioned the ANSTO work, came out mid-way through 2023 with a proclamation of the Coalition’s plans for Australian to adopt SMRs as a preferred tool in our movement towards net zero carbon emissions.
In doing so Dutton opened himself up to a political battering because of the nascent state of SMR development around the world and huge questions around costs.
Undeterred, in early March Dutton doubled down on nuclear power, switching his thinking to large nuclear power plants scattered about the country. As public controversy raged about the new plans, Dutton has started reinjecting SMRs into the total mix.
There are now to be a mix of economic and taxation incentives for the local communities targeted by the Coalition to host a nuclear reactor.
Missing homework
In response to their hip flip to a larger nuclear power plant and his small flop back to SMRs, I thought MWM set out to see if Dutton has visited ANSTO or taken a brief from them in relation to his plans.
After all, there’s no shortage of precedent for parliamentary oppositions to seek factual briefings from government agencies, especially on complex and specialised subjects.In a recent nuclear estimates brief prepared for the CEO of ANSTO, the first two paragraphs stated:
“ANSTO has significant insight into what other countries and jurisdictions are doing around the world in terms of nuclear power.”
As mentioned above, ANSTO was specifically engaged by the former Coalition Government to take a look at SMRs.So, I was left gobsmacked when a Freedom of Information request I made to ANSTO to find out what Dutton’s interactions with ANSTO had been over the past five years returned nil information.
ANSTO FOI response (on original)
Dutton has not visited Australia’s only nuclear reactor and has not received a brief from our country’s expert agency on the policy area he was developing.
In some measure, it explains the flip-flopping and limited detail in many of his announcements.
For completeness, I also asked the Government’s nuclear safety regulator, ARPANSA, if Dutton had visited them or sought advice from them. FOI came up with the same answer from them. (on original) Nothing at all..
Politics, not policy
You can’t develop policy just by chin-wagging at party room meetings and with briefs from vested business interests. That’s not how it works. You have to get independent and expert advice, and in the case of nuclear matters, a vital place to get that advice in Australia is ANSTO and ARPANSA.
So, just what policy work has Dutton done? In large part, he appears completely dependent on the Google skills of his little-known Climate Change and Energy spokesperson, Ted O’Brien.
With a background in marketing, O’Brien has no ministerial experience, so the practicalities of major project implementation may be quite novel for him. He did once chair a parliamentary committee inquiry into nuclear energy, but as so often is the case, the research there was largely done by the committee secretariat, with O’Brien just adding a thin layer of pro-nuclear evangelism on the top.
It’s pretty safe to say that, in the absence of comprehensive briefs from and engagement with Australia’s leading experts, Dutton is not engaging in serious policy development. Rather it’s a manoeuvre to achieve political differentiation and keep the anti-renewals, climate-change-denying core of his Coalition happy. Dutton’s approach to policy development, in this instance, says just as much about him as it does about his nuclear plans.
“It’s all politics”
Why South Australia will be a nuclear power battleground at the 2025 federal election
Adelaide Now, 15 Apr 24
Crunch time for affordable, reliable electricity is coming fast and SA will be key to deciding nuclear power’s fate, writes Paul Starick.
Crunch time is rapidly approaching in the race to deliver affordable, reliable electricity while transitioning Australia to a net-zero economy.
The next federal election, expected early next year, will be yet another battle in the climate war that has deadlocked politicians and delivered little for voters – other than dramatically higher power prices.
The fundamental choice at this election will be between pumping billions of dollars into building wind and solar farms – or nuclear power plants.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese argues renewable energy will bring cheaper power prices and boost sovereign capability by reviving manufacturing.
A Net Zero Australia report released last July finds $1.5 trillion will have to be spent by the end of this decade, particularly on rolling out transmission networks to support new wind and solar, if Australia is going to meet its emissions reductions targets by 2050.
The group, which included experts form Melbourne, Queensland and Princeton universities, said: “Nuclear power should not be in our plans, because it’s too expensive and slow”.
His rival, Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, argues the Coalition could deliver cheaper power prices by installing the first small-modular nuclear power reactors into the grid by the mid-2030s, at a cost of $3.5bn to $5bn each.
They would be built by Rolls-Royce, also the supplier of nuclear reactors for AUKUS submarines to be built in Adelaide as part of $368bn project.
The reported cost and timeline, at the very least, raises strong questions over Labor’s blanket rejection of nuclear as uneconomic, given the amount that is being ploughed into renewables.
I find it amazing that the Advertiser just accepts Peter Dutton’s claims on the timing and costs of the as yet non-existent small nuclear reactors
South Australia will be at the epicentre of this epic battle over electricity generation and prices.
The state has world-leading penetration of renewable energy and the world’s largest uranium resource at Olympic Dam.
The Coalition wants a nuclear power plant at Port Augusta.
The consequences are huge, as straight-talking Alinta Energy chief Jeff Dimery said on Wednesday, when he argued Australians must face the “hard truth” of having to pay more for electricity to reach net zero by 2050”.
State and federal Labor governments want to rapidly accelerate the renewable push.
Premier Peter Malinauskas in late February said the 100 per cent renewables net electricity generation target would be brought forward three years from 2030 to 2027.
The catalyst, he vowed, would be a clean energy boom underpinned by the state-owned, $593m hydrogen power plant operating in Whyalla from 2026.
This project, a core 2022 election promise, almost certainly will attract federal funding in the May federal budget, as part of massive government investment in the energy transition promised by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a landmark speech on Thursday.
Mr Albanese is citing green iron production at Whyalla steelworks, fuelled by green hydrogen from the state-operated plant, as a key example of his Future Made in Australia plan.
But the federal Coalition and state Liberals sense an opportunity to wedge Mr Malinauskas on nuclear energy.
He seems a supporter, frustrated only by a disciplined commitment to implement his hydrogen power plant election promise, plus remain in lock-step with Labor colleagues by insisting it is uneconomic……………….
Whatever the machinations, voters will soon, appropriately, decide nuclear power’s future.
No decisions on site for nuclear waste dump as spin doctor sought
By Karen Barlow – Canberra Times, April 15 2024 – https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8591149/the-nuclear-waste-dump-quest-is-waiting-for-its-spin-doctor/
The Albanese government has confirmed it is searching for, and is yet to settle on, sites for both low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste as it seeks a highly skilled PR team to manage likely “high” outrage over possible sites.
In a series of answers to questions from potential suppliers on the federal tender site, the Department of Industry, Science and Resources also advised that there may be a need to reference the future AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine program through the contract, but only in educational materials.
It comes after a major government approach to market was uncovered by The Canberra Times, revealing that a nuclear-specific crisis management team is being sought – six months after the government abandoned plans for a low-level waste dump near Kimba in remote South Australia – to bid for a two-year contract to help manage public discussion of nuclear waste in Australia.
The move has been criticised by the Greens and the Coalition as spin and “steamrolling regional communities,” but the new approach to market appears to address other criticism that nuclear waste dumps are announced and later argued as needed.
Asked by an unnamed potential supplier if the department has a list of sites or communities looking to be engaged over the two-year contract period, the answer is “no.”
“This information is unknown,” the answer reads. “The Australian Radioactive Waste Agency has started work on alternative proposals for the storage and disposal of the commonwealth’s civilian low-level and intermediate-level radioactive waste.”
So that is not just the low-level option that was being sought, but abandoned, at Napandee at the top of the Eyre Peninsula.
The answers to the questions of potential suppliers, which have to bid for the contract, offer greater insight to the process for delivering a secure storage facility, but are limited to current timelines.
“No site has been been shortlisted or selected and no benefits package has been determined, this will be a matter for government,” the department stated.
The department also advises that there are not currently “specific deliverables” that the department is looking to complete. It is also advised there may be some stakeholder engagement activities that involve a role in decision making.
The original approach to market, posted March 26, asked for assistance with “nuclear-specific” public relations and professional communications services during the early stages of a new radioactive waste management approach being identified. This is described as the first three to five years of a 100-year project.
It would involve engagement with “impacted communities”, “stringent preparation for technical and challenging questions” from the public, and support for the public’s “comprehensive understanding of the nation’s radioactive waste inventory, origins and need for safe management.”
“This is a highly specialised high-outrage area and there are times of uplift where urgent assistance is required and additional industry-relevant specialist support is needed, including upskilling staff to undertake these activities in a high outrage environment,” the document reads.
It comes as Australia, as well as AUKUS partners the United States and the United Kingdom, continues to be without a long-term solution for radioactive waste disposal.
Asked by a potential supplier if there is consideration for SSN-AUKUS (nuclear powered submarines under the AUKUS trilateral pact) or visiting nuclear-powered naval capabilities, the department said maybe, but not much.
“While information about Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine program may form a small part of ARWA educational materials, the supplier will not be required to undertake engagement work focused on AUKUS or nuclear-powered submarines,” it responded.
There appears to be no willingness to waive the requirement for baseline security clearance, even for a world-leading technical subject matter expert.
Asked if a waiver was possible for the duties which include assisting in preparing “factually correct nuclear technology and radioactive waste engagement materials”, the department responded, “Any specified personnel must be able to obtain and hold a Baseline Security Clearance.”
Asked further if people with equivalent security clearances from other five eyes nations (the US, UK, New Zealand and Canada) are able to work on the project, the response was the same: “Any specified personnel must be able to obtain and hold a Baseline Security Clearance.”
Secret Agreements: The Australian-Israel Defence Memorandum of Understanding
Elbit Systems, Israel’s notorious drone manufacturer and creator of the Hermes 450 aerial device responsible for this month’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers including the Australian national, Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom, was rewarded with a A$917 million contract. Business, even over bodies, exerts a corrupting force.
Binoy Kampmark, 14 Apr 24, https://theaimn.com/secret-agreements-the-australian-israel-defence-memorandum-of-understanding/
While the Australian government continues to pirouette with shallow constancy on the issue of Israel’s war in Gaza, making vacuous utterances on Palestinian statehood even as it denies supplying the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) with weapons (spare parts, it would seem, are a different, footnoted matter), efforts made to unearth details of the defence relationship between the countries have so far come to naught.
The brief on Australian-Israel relations published by the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs is deplorably skimpy, noting that both countries have, since 2017, “expanded cooperation on national security, defence and cyber security.” Since 2018, we are told that annual talks have been conducted between defence officials, while Australia appointed, in early 2018, a resident Defence Attaché to the embassy in Tel Aviv. What is conspicuously absent are details of the Memorandum of Understanding on defence cooperation both countries signed in 2017.
A little bit of scrapping around reveals that 2017 was something of a critical year, a true bumper return. The Australia-Israel Defence Industry Cooperation Joint Working Group was created that October. A following Australian Defence media release notes the group’s intention: “to strengthen ties between Australia and Israel, explore defence industry and innovation opportunities, identify export opportunities, and support our industries to cooperate in the development of innovative technologies for shared capability challenges.”
The intentions of the group were well borne out. Defence contracts followed with sweet indulgence: the February 2018 contract between Israel-based Rafael Advanced Defence Systems with Australia’s Bisalloy Steels worth A$900,000; an August 2018 joint venture between the Australian defence engineering company Varley Group and Rafael, behind such “leading weapons systems” as “the Spike LR2 anti-tank guided missile”; and the Electro Optic Systems-Elbit Systems agreement from 2019 responsible for developing “a modular medium-calibre turret that can be configured for a range of platforms, including lightweight reconnaissance and heavy fighting vehicles.”
In February this year, Elbit Systems, Israel’s notorious drone manufacturer and creator of the Hermes 450 aerial device responsible for this month’s killing of seven World Central Kitchen aid workers including the Australian national, Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom, was rewarded with a A$917 million contract. Business, even over bodies, exerts a corrupting force.
In a heartbeat after the outbreak of the latest Gaza War last October, the Australian Greens filed a Freedom of Information (FOI) request seeking a copy of the barely mentioned MOU. After a period of three months, the Australian Defence Department reached the boring conclusion that the application should be rejected. It fell, the argument went, within the category of exemptions so treasured by secretive bureaucrats keen to make sure the “freedom” in FOI is kept spare and bare.
What follows is repulsive to intellect and denigrating to morality. “The document within the scope of this request,” went the letter from the Defence Department, “contains information which, if released, could reasonably be expected to damage the international relations of the Commonwealth.” The MOU “contains information communicated to Australia by a foreign government and its officials under the expectation that it would not be disclosed.” Releasing “such information could harm Australia’s international standing and reputation.”
A telling, and troubling role was played by Israel in the process. With characteristic, jellied spinelessness, Australian defence officials notified Israel of the FOI request in December 2023. In February, the Netanyahu government responded with its views, of which we can only speculate. The Greens were duly informed by the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) that the relevant decision maker in Defence “will consider the foreign government’s consultation response to make an informed and robust decision.” With such words, a negative response was nigh predictable.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge, in responding to the decision, was adamant that, “There is no place for secret arms treaties and secret arms deals between countries.” Furthermore, there was “no place for giving other countries veto power over what the Australian government tells the public about our government defence and arms deals.” The case is even more pressing given allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide taking place in the Gaza strip.
This regrettable episode retains a certain familiar repulsiveness. Unfortunately for devotees of open government, a fraught term if ever there was one, Australia’s FOI regime remains stringently archaic and pathologically secretive.
Decision makers are given directions to frustrate, not aid applications to reveal information, notably on sensitive topics such as security, defence and international relations. Spurious notions about damage to international relations are advanced to ensure secrecy and the muzzling of debate. The OAIC has also shown itself to be lamentably weak, tardy and inefficient in reviewing applications. In March 2023, it was revealed that almost 600 unresolved FOI cases had bottled up over the course of three years.
The latest refusal from the Defence Department to disclose the Israel-Australian MOU to members of Parliament, a decision reached after discussions with a foreign power (that fact is staggering and disheartening in of itself), betrays much doubletalk regarding defence ties between Canberra, the IDF, and the Israeli government. More than that, it confirms that those in Canberra are being steered by other interests, longing for the approval of foreign eyes and foreign interests.
Coalition nuclear plan flips back to SMRs after latest meeting with lobbyists
Giles Parkinson, Apr 12, 2024, https://reneweconomy.com.au/coalition-nuclear-plan-flips-back-to-smrs-after-latest-meeting-with-lobbyists/
And then, in a single bound, it was back to small modular reactors. The federal Coalition’s confused nuclear power policy has lurched from SMRs to large scale nuclear and back again to SMRs. It’s as if the policy is decided by the nuclear lobbyist most recently consulted.
Coalition leader Peter Dutton’s latest thought bubble on nuclear, dutifully reported in The Australian newspaper last weekend, is that Australia should sign up to SMRs, and should be able to build the first of them by the middle of the 2030s – faster than even most of the technology’s boosters admit is possible.
And then, in a single bound, it was back to small modular reactors. The federal Coalition’s confused nuclear power policy has lurched from SMRs to large scale nuclear and back again to SMRs. It’s as if the policy is decided by the nuclear lobbyist most recently consulted.
Coalition leader Peter Dutton’s latest thought bubble on nuclear, dutifully reported in The Australian newspaper last weekend, is that Australia should sign up to SMRs, and should be able to build the first of them by the middle of the 2030s – faster than even most of the technology’s boosters admit is possible.
Dutton says the new plan will be fully sketched out before the federal Labor government’s budget in early May – and according to The Australian this latest plan follows meetings last week with executives of Rolls Royce SMR and its Australian partner Penske.
Renew Economy decided to check all this out with Rolls Royce SMR itself, and got some surprising answers.
“It wasn’t a representative of ours (who met with Peter Dutton),” a company spokeswoman said by email. “I believe it was a potential partner of ours that met with Peter Dutton who spoke about RR SMR on our behalf.”
Dutton and other Coalition boosters like to talk about SMRs in the present tense, and most mainstream media dutifully follow suit, as if they are already operating.
This is deception. A group of my friends chatting over coffee this week was stunned to hear that SMRs are not actually a thing, despite what they read in the press. A few smaller nuclear reactors exist, such as in China and Russia, but they are in no way modular, which is the supposed key selling point of this new technology.
“One of the biggest problems for SMRs is that they don’t exist,” Allison Macfarlane, director of the school of public policy and global affairs at the University of British Columbia and a former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told the Financial Times this week.
“We’re still at the paper stage, the computer model stage. To get to demonstration models and then a full-scale model when you are ready to commercialise will take billions of dollars,” she added.
Rolls Royce SMR is still at least two years away from obtaining a licence, and the spokesperson told Renew Economy this week that the company is hopeful that the first SMR can be completed “in the early 2030s.”
However, Simon Bowen, the chair of Great British Nuclear, the government agency that is trying to lead the technology’s revival and find ways to replace its existing ageing fleet, told the FT this week the first SMR won’t likely be seen until the mid 2030s.
That time line is important, because it goes to the fantasy nature of the Coalition’s nuclear policy. Is Dutton seriously suggesting that Australia, with no civil nuclear power industry, can match the UK on timing on their proprietary nuclear technology.
And first-of-their-kind technologies are always considerably more expensive than those that follow. But more on the timing later, because that goes to the heart of what the Coalition is trying to do – not so much build nuclear, but to stop renewables in their tracks.
But it is impossible to think that Australia would commit to an SMR before it is built in its host country, with all the embedded infrastructure and know-how. And no country is going to commit to more SMRs until the first one is built, and can prove itself. Which straightaway pushes the Coalition timeline back into the 2040s.
On costs, Dutton is trying to convince everyone that nuclear – contrary to all available evidence – is low cost, which The Australian, unsurprisingly, reported as a matter of fact.
The Coalition’s energy spokesman Ted O’Brien engages in some impressive verbal calisthenics by claiming that they might be expensive for investors, but are low cost for consumers.
But if new-build nuclear is to be low cost to consumers it will be the result, as it is in France, of massive government subsidies. And given the Coalition’s horrified reaction to Labor’s “Made in Australia” green manufacturing plan, they are definitely not in favour of government subsidies.
The Australian reported that the Rolls Royce SMR is priced at around $5 billion for a 470 MW facility, which appears an heroic assumption given it is less than one third of the price of the only SMR to actually obtain a licence to date, the NuScale project in the US that was cancelled last year because it was too expensive for consumers.
Rolls Royce SMR’s own web page describes a study produced last year that claimed its technology could reduce wholesale prices in the UK by between three per cent and 13 per cent, depending on how many SMRs were rolled out.
Curiously, the study – according to the detailed Rolls Royce summary of it – arrives at these numbers by comparing SMRs to the cost of peaking gas plants, the most expensive generation on the grid, and which – in reality – is rarely used. They are only switched on around 1 to 2 per cent of the time.
These peaking gas plants are not seen as the usual competitor to nuclear or SMRs, because nuclear is designed to be baseload, not the fast response and flexible capacity needed to fill in the gaps of a grid dominated by wind and solar.
And, it should be noted, nuclear itself is highly dependent on fast-response capacity – peaking gas and pumped hydro – to make up for its own lack of flexibility.
The Rolls Royce spokesperson told Renew Economy that this analysis was conducted in the winter of 2022/23, when the energy crisis was at its worst, gas prices had soared, and energy consumers were being hit by huge bills.
It begs a question, which Rolls Royce didn’t answer: If SMRs are only able to undercut peaking gas power plant prices by a small amount, what does that imply when those costs are spread across the whole day?
The spokesperson confirmed that Rolls Royce SMRs will indeed be focused on “baseload” power, and its SMRs are designed not to displace renewables, but replace “the loss in low-carbon electricity … caused by our ageing existing reactor fleet going offline in the years ahead.”
The spokesperson said SMRs do have a degree of flexibility to load follow and respond “when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine,” and can use its thermal output to produce hydrogen or process heat, which might be attractive in the northern hemisphere.
But they have little ability to ramp up to fill in gaps of wind and solar because, as the spokesperson told Renew Economy in their email: “SMRs work most cost-effectively when ‘always on’.”
And this is important because it goes to the heart of why the Coalition nuclear plan makes absolutely no sense and is more about destruction of one industry, rather than construction of another.
Australia is heading towards 82 per cent renewables by 2030, and even if it doesn’t meet that deadline, it will be above 90 per cent by the mid 2030s, and likely close to 100 per cent.
A fleet of “always on” nuclear power plants will struggle to find a role in that scenario, particularly as daytime demand will be almost entirely met by the anticipated ongoing boom in small-scale solar on the roofs of household and business consumers.
But the Coalition policy, and it makes no secret of this, is not about compatibility. O’Brien’s own energy advisor admits that nuclear and renewables are effectively an “either-or” because the system is either going to be baseload or renewables and storage.
And the Coalition’s fundamental stand is that it refuses to believe that wind and solar can power a modern economy. “The lights will go out,” says Dutton, or “your fridge goes off at home” he added this week.
Which is why they are calling for a moratorium on the roll out of wind, solar, battery storage and transmission, and why they want coal-fired power stations to stay open until nuclear can arrive.
And it’s why their proxies in the mainstream and social media – and so-called think tanks and ginger groups backed by billionaires such as Gina Rinehart and Trevor St Baker – spend so much time demonising the technologies that are currently available, and which can do the job, such as solar, wind, battery storage and electric vehicles.
Dutton’s rhetoric is also liberally splattered with outright falsehoods. A check of his media transcripts this week reveals a number of common false statements.
The first is the claim that Australia is the only OECD country not to have or want nuclear. Not true. Germany closed down the last of its nuclear generators a year ago, and Italy voted against the technology in a referendum a decade ago after shutting down the last of its reactors. A number of other EU countries are following suit.
Dutton also claims that the federal government is planning “28,000 kms of new transmission lines by 2030.” Again, not true. The Australian Energy Market Operator’s Integrated System Plan models 10,000km by 2030 in its core step change plan. That’s still a lot, but little more than one third of what Dutton claims.
The 28,000km number is a 2050 target, not 2030, and only in the scenario where Australia becomes a renewable energy superpower by exporting green hydrogen and other green products, most likely from vast wind and solar projects in the middle of the country that will need to link into the grids or production facilities.
Dutton says he wants to have a “mature” discussion about the energy mix. But that can’t happen if his rhetoric is based around obvious lies.
Cook by-election candidate Simon Kennedy says locals are ‘comfortable’ living near nuclear reactors
ABC News, By Ethan Rix 13 Apr 24
The by-election for former prime minister Scott Morrison’s southern Sydney seat has not garnered national fanfare the way other by-elections have in the past.
And as voters head to the polls today, you can count the apathy being felt in the electorate of Cook — with early voting down by about 11 per cent compared to the 2022 federal election and nearly 13 per cent lower than the Voice referendum late last year, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.
Even the Liberals’ candidate, Simon Kennedy, won’t be able to personally boost voter turnout as his team confirmed he didn’t move into the electorate in time to meet the registration deadline — denying him an opportunity to pose for the cameras as he votes for himself.
Perhaps the lack of enthusiasm is because the Liberals look set to comfortably hold a seat they have held for half a century, or maybe it’s because the Labor Party has opted not to put a horse in the race, diminishing any usual analysis the result could be a “test” of Anthony Albanese’s leadership.
But for people who are eligible to cast a ballot today, what are they really voting for?
A nuclear reactor in Cook’s backyard
Former McKinsey consultant Simon Kennedy has openly backed his party’s push to introduce nuclear power to the national energy grid, with the opposition preparing to announce up to six possible sites for nuclear plants.
When asked whether he would oppose a nuclear power reactor being built in the electorate of Cook, Mr Kennedy said locals were “comfortable” with the concept because there was already one positioned on its “doorstep” in Lucas Heights.
“People are comfortable with where Lucas Heights is, they’ve been comfortable with that concept,” he said.
“I haven’t heard any fear or worries about that at all.”
Lucas Heights, which is located on the outskirts of the Sutherland Shire, is home to Australia’s only nuclear reactor, which is not used to produce electricity.
It instead produces medical and industrial isotopes and stores low-level waste and a small amount of intermediate-level waste on-site.
“They’re [voters] not looking for people pushing clean or coal or one over the other, they’re looking for cheap, reliable and clean power,” Mr Kennedy said.
Looking at getting more female candidates
The number of female MPs in the Coalition has also been a key question in the lead-up to this by-election.
Mr Kennedy comfortably defeated the only female candidate to put her hand up for Liberal pre-selection, Veteran Family Advocate Commissioner Gwen Cherne, who received 35 votes to his 158.
The result was said to have upset those within the party pushing for more females to be preselected to safe Liberal seats……………….
Who else is running?
…………… The Australian Greens have put up Martin Moore, who has a Fine Arts Degree with a Masters in Social Ecology and ran for the local seat of Miranda at the 2023 NSW election.
Mr Moore disagreed with Mr Kennedy that locals would be comfortable living next to a nuclear reactor.
“I feel that people are really concerned that we’re being dragged into a nuclear wasteland with the AUKUS deal … and the opposition’s ideas of reactors,” he said……………………………… https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-13/cook-byelection-simon-kennedy-nuclear-reactors/103696760—
1 This month
Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes – A good documentary on Chernobyl on SBS available On Demand for the next 3 weeks– https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-program/chernobyl-the-lost-tapes/235274195556
20 May – Webinar – The dangerous world of AUKUS, US, military occupation and suppression of dissent
National Webinar, 20th May, 2026, 6.30pm AEST. Confronting laws restricting/suppressing protest speech and action
Speakers: Former Sen. Rex Patrick, Lawyer Nick Hanna ,Arthur Rorris ,Jorgen Doyle, Sen David Shoebbridge,
Facilitator Kelley Tranter.
of the week – Australians for War Powers Reform (AWPR)
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity
Antinuclear 