CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
As the world edges the closest it’s been to World War Three since the Cold War, it seems that Australia’s Federal Opposition remains firm on their intent to spend half a trillion dollars building 7 nuclear power plants on the rural outskirts of our nation’s major cities.
The Liberal Party’s rushed ‘Nuclear Power Plan’ echoes the rushed AUKUS agreement, which saw Prime Minister Scott Morrison sign off on spending $368 billion to build 7 submarines without even consulting anyone in his cabinet.
However, it seems that Dutton is ready to go even bigger with an extremely vague nuclear transition that will cost the tax payer twice as much.
And what better time! When the world is experiencing clear signs of entering into a pre-war era, where major world powers not far from Australia will be looking to flex their strength with military strikes on easy targets.
With a Federal Election just around the corner, many had assumed that Dutton’s nuclear power plan was just a way to extends our reliance on the same fossil fuel billionaires that donate to his party – by another 50 years.
But with the planet teeteering on the edge of a world war, it seems only wise to speed things up, and dive head first into an extremely high-risk technology that Australia has no proven track record in developing.
But the Liberals say this won’t be the same as the time their government managed to fuck up the online transition of our national census, or the time they had to use paper mail-out letters to gauge the nation’s opinion on gay marriage. Or the time they stripped back our national broadband scheme and turned it into a copper wire network that struggles to deliver FIFA world cup matches for those who rely on streaming services.
This time, there is going to be no hiccups. Because, as we learnt from Chernobyl, you can’t have any hiccups when dealing with nuclear power.
One thing that is clear is that the ‘privately-funded, small, modular’ model of nuclear power that Dutton was talking about a year ago, has since become a monstrous Soviet-scale infrastructural project that will be funded entirely by the Commonwealth, and then likely sold at less than cost price to Gina Rhinehart. Leaving our most fertile farmlands and major ports within a stones throw of one of the seven nuclear power plants – most of which would be within range of even the most basic surface to air missiles.
