The Australian Labor Party is No Friend of the Nuclear-Free Cause

I’m thinking that the nuclear lobby loves the ALP even more than it loves the Coalition.

Advance Australia, and the U.S-controlled Atlas Network are powerful and well-funded groups dedicated to molding public opinion on behalf of wealthy right-wing groups. They did a fine job in 2023 of destroying Australian support for the 2023 Australian referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

I was expecting them to pretty much run riot in support of the Liberal Coalition’s plan for a nuclear Australia. That does not seem to have happened. Why not?

Advance “kicked off with outright lies“, but has been rather quiet lately. And the Atlas Network is nowhere in sight, although its modus operandi is secretive anyway, spreading simplistic memes.

My conclusion is that Peter Dutton’s Coalition campaign is so inept, so incompetent, that it has turned out to be counter-productive to the party’s cause. There’s just so much evidence of this ineptitude – particularly when it comes to the estimated costs of setting up seven nuclear power plants around Australia. The latest of many examinations of these costs is; Coalition’s nuclear gambit will cost Australia trillions – and permanently gut its industry.” Half-baked plans to keep old coal-power plants running for many years until nuclear is “ready”, no mention of plans for waste disposal – the tax-payer to cop the whole cost. Even a suave sales magician like Ted O’Brien has not been able to con the Australian public. The party’s incompetence is on show in other ways, too, unconnected to the nuclear issue.

But what of Labor? They have been remarkably quiet on the nuclear issue – focussing on their own rather half-baked plans for housing. It’s all about cost-of-living issues – and I don’t deny that this is important. But nuclear rarely gets a mention – except when Labor finds it useful to mention the costs.

It doesn’t look as if Peter Dutton’s Liberal Coalition has a hope in hell of getting a majority win for its nuclear platform.

But does the nuclear lobby really care? I’m afraid not. You see, the Labor Party, supposedly opposed to the nuclear industry, has a long tradition of caving in on nuclear issues. From 1982 – a weak, supposed “no new uranium mines” policy became a “three mines uranium policy” 1984 then a pathetic “no new mines policy” in the 1990s. Backing for South Australia’s uranium mines further weakened Labor anti-nuclear policy.

Over decades, Labor luminary Gareth Evans has been acclaimed for his supposed stance against nuclear weapons. But he’s done a disservice to the nuclear-free movement, in his long-standing position in favour of “the contribution that can be made by nuclear energy capable of providing huge amounts of energy, and just as clean as renewables in its climate impact.” Evans has always been close to the International Atomic Energy Agency, in his complacency that nuclear power has nothing to do with nuclear weapons!

Labor has always been officially opposed to nuclear power, but at the Federal level, and some State levels, there have been significant Ministers like Bob Hawke, and Martin Ferguson, who pushed for the nuclear industry. To his credit, Anthony Albanese for a long time held out against the nuclear industry. Even up until 2024, he was still trying.

But the crunch had already come – Albanese on Thursday, 16th September 2021; “We accept that this technology [nuclear-powered submarines] is now the best option for Australia’s capability.”

Why did Albanese agree to this deal, arranged between the Morrison Liberal government, and the USA and UK? Apparently, he did so, after just a two-hour briefing, with no documents provided, on the previous day. Labor Caucus was was presented with it as a fait accompli. No vote was taken.

I can only conclude that Albanese’s decision was based on that time-honored fear of Labor looking “weak on security.”

In one fell swoop, Labor’s anti-nuclear policy was wrecked. The nuclear submarines will mean nuclear reactors on Australia’s coast. They will mean nuclear waste disposal in Australia, including foreign nuclear waste from the second-hand submarines. They will surely eventually mean nuclear weapons, as who can really tell if a nuclear-powered submarine has or has not got nuclear weapons? (The Chinese will be very wary about them.)

Since 2021, Australia’s nuclear submarine arrangement has been largely in the hands of Defence Minister Richard Marles, who worked with that dodgy company PWC to set it up, and who is a committed supporter of Australia’s solidarity with the USA.

March 2023 – Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak unveiled the path to acquiring nuclear-powered submarines.

In 2024, Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, made undisclosed ”political commitments” with AUKUS partners in an agreement for the transfer of naval nuclear technology to Australia, sparking concerns about the potential for high-level radioactive waste to be stored in the country.

The global nuclear lobby works across national boundaries to promote its industry. It does well with Russia – as government clamp-down on dissent makes it easier to expand the industry in all its forms, and to market nuclear power to Asian and African countries.

The nuclear industry is well aware of the problems in maintaining the belief that nuclear is clean, cheap, and climate friendly. But above all, it’s the nuclear-waste problem that is its most expensive and difficult obstacle. Here’s where Australia has always looked appealing. All this nonsense about getting small nuclear reactors is just a distraction. The industry knows that small nuclear reactors are fraught with difficulties – too expensive, requiring too much security, public opposition at the local level, still needing too much water… But to keep the global industry going, a nuclear-waste-welcoming country would be such a boost.

Well, it is early days, even for the prospect of those AUKUS nuclear submarines ever actually arriving. But in the meantime – the whole AUKUS thing has quietly introduced the Australian public to the idea that nuclear submarines are OK, and so are their wastes, and so are USA’s nuclear weapons based in Australia.

So, really, the Australian Labor Party has done a much better job of promoting the nuclear industry, than the fumbling Coalition could.

We are fortunate in Australia to have proportional representation in our election. If you care about keeping Australia nuclear-free, you don’t have to vote for either of the big parties.

 

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