The opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has ramped up calls for nuclear power in Australia, casting the move as a way to avoid dependence on wind and solar technology from China and a natural next step from the Aukus pact.
Dutton will make the comments on Friday at an event organised by the Institute of Public Affairs, a Liberal-aligned thinktank that has publicly opposed curbs on coal-fired power and has lobbied against the net zero by 2050 policy.
He will use the speech in Sydney to call for a debate about removing the legislative ban on nuclear power in Australia, a step that was not taken during the nine years of Coalition government, in which he was a senior member.
Dutton’s pitch comes just days before the Liberal National party in Queensland holds its state conference, where delegates are expected to propose several pro-nuclear resolutions.
He is likely to find a receptive audience for the message at the IPA, given that the thinktank’s executive director, Scott Hargreaves, has publicly called for the scrapping of all subsidies for renewable energy and also urged political leaders to “hit the pause button on our headlong rush towards reliance on greater renewable energy”.
In the speech, Dutton will argue that most of the leading solar panel manufacturers and wind turbine companies are based in China.
“So in the Albanese government’s massive rollout of renewables, it is inevitable we will become heavily reliant on the Chinese market,” he will say.
Dutton will say “there is no better example of the risk of over reliance on one market than what we saw with many European countries’ dependence on Russian gas”. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he says, “things turned sour overnight”.
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By contrast, Dutton will say that Australia could source Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) or Micro Modular Reactors (MMRs) from the US, UK, France “and other trusted partners”.
Dutton will point to the bipartisan commitment to building nuclear-powered submarines in Australia under the Aukus deal.
“The submarines are essentially floating SMRs,” he will say.
“The sheer amount of money being invested in research and development in the next generation nuclear-powered submarines will surely see military advancements complement the development of civil nuclear power industries around the world.”
Dutton will say he sees nuclear “not as a competitor to renewables, but as a companion” and he wants “an Australia where we can decarbonise and, at the same time, deliver cheaper, more reliable and lower emission electricity”.
“At the very least, I think the government should consider
working swiftly to alter the legislative prohibitions to SMRs and MMRs so we do not position Australia as a nuclear energy pariah,” he will say.
Dutton will accuse the climate and energy minister, Chris Bowen, of burrowing “so deeply down the renewable rabbit hole that he refuses to consider these new nuclear technologies”.
“The new nuclear technology train is pulling out of the station. It’s a train Australia needs to jump aboard.”
A report by the Australian Conservation Foundation in October said the next generation of nuclear reactors being advocated by the Coalition would raise electricity prices, slow the uptake of renewables and introduce new risks from nuclear waste.
Last year Bowen ruled out consideration of nuclear power because he said “it is by far the most expensive form of energy”.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has also mocked the push, saying that after “22 failed plans” the Coalition now wants “to go towards nuclear energy”. He has said in question time that Liberals must nominate “where the plants are going to be”.
But the idea appears popular within parts of the Coalition’s base. Three pro-nuclear resolutions are set to be debated at the Queensland LNP conference this weekend, including one urging a Dutton-led government to provide “baseload energy, such as nuclear as an adjunct to coal”.
Another proposed resolution wants the next LNP state government to “review the education curriculum to ensure that energy supply, including nuclear energy, and impacts of renewable energy are taught factually”.
