If and when it comes to pass, Australia will join such nations as Canada, the United Kingdom, India, China, South Korea, France, Spain, Russia, Japan and the USA, most prominently, in the sensible nuclear energy club.
~Most of the G7, in other words. Thirty-two countries, all up. Going nuclear is not a revolutionary act. Merely a mainstream one.
~Oh ~ and Australia has around a 1/3 of the world’s uranium resource. Up until now, we have merely shipped it to other places so they can have reliable energy when we, increasingly, do not.
~Moreover, Dutton even named the proposed sites, showing both substance and further courage.
~In contrast, the PM announced, a mere month ago, plans to subsidise the Australian manufacture of solar panels and wind farms – $22b of corporate welfare. Mr Albanese wants to deliver a “reliable and renewable future”, as if the words “reliable” and “renewable” should ever be used in the same sentence.
~The usual suspects, like •The Guardian and the •CSIRO (the wildly misnamed and climate-obsessed Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation) now have a new game to play.
•Maligning nuclear, at all costs.
~Speaking of costs, the critics seem to be blissfully unaware of, or at least are conveniently parking, the likely final bill for renewables, estimated in 2010 at $370 b over (then projected) ten years.
~The current budget projects a Commonwealth Government spend of $47b over four years to “support” a transition to renewables.
~All this being spent on a system that won’t guarantee power and will only last twenty years before it all falls to bits.
~The Nationals’ leader, David Littleproud, has joined the fray: “ ‘Dripping with self-righteous sanctimony’ – Littleproud lashes Teal MPs in nuclear debate.”
~The Teals are largely rich, greenie women – we used to call them “doctors’ wives” – who won a few inner-city seats at the last election.
~Littleproud’s Party represents regional and rural interests. ~Knowing that a nuclear energy sector will revive economies inhabited by his own constituents and will preserve much needed farmland, he has gone on the attack.
~On the question of the costs of nuclear, Littleproud slammed the Albanese Gov’t over its energy plan which will cost “$1.5 trillion”.
~Battling the Coalition on the cost of nuclear looks to be a very dumb idea for the greenies.
~The term game-changer is a cliché whose use we should all abhor. Yet here it approaches appropriateness.
~Maybe it wasn’t needed, politically, as Airbus Albo is probably going to achieve electoral ignominy all on his own. Which makes Dutton’s move courageous as well as brilliant.
~Above all, the word that most comes to mind to describe his nuclear energy policy is “elegant”. As the above dot points make clear.
~With the imminent resignation of the LINO (Liberal in name only), greenie Matt Kean from NSW politics just announced, Dutton’s week was made.
~There goes the principal internal opposition to nuclear energy within the Coalition ranks.
~And just like that, Malcolm Turnbull’s mini-me is off to join the renewables industry scam.
No doubt, he will be well rewarded.
•WILDERNESS
The NSW Liberal Party, the Party of Kean, will likely be in the wilderness of Opposition for as long as the British Tories – who may or may not even exist after July 4 – and good riddance to both of them.
~Their own-goal decades in office sealed both their fates.
~Meanwhile, Peter Dutton is increasingly looking as though he will become Australia’s fourth great opposition leader (after Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser and Tony Abbott).
~Astonishingly, Albo hasn’t realised the full import of Dutton’s masterstroke.
•Or perhaps he has.
~He has been spouting even more mindless gibberish than he usually does since Dutton went for the nuclear option.
