Labor Going Nuclear Over Coalition’s Nuclear Plans

I’m not here to sway your vote on the nuclear power issue, but we should be allowed to have an open debate about it without juvenile attacks, which is exactly what we’re seeing from Labor’s ranks. These meme wars on the Opposition’s plans to build seven nuclear reactors are, bluntly speaking, just lame. Debates should be conducted around facts and logic, not stupid cartoon memes trying to scare people. Actually, it’s quite insulting to Australians to think that we can be so easily swayed.

In response to the memes, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told ABC News Breakfast host Michael Rowland to “lighten up” no less than five times. When quizzed about his colleagues sending out childish memes, he said, “Lighten up, Michael… You can ask whatever question you like, and it’s up to me to give the answer. Lighten up! Lighten up, Michael!”

Queensland Labor Premier Steven Miles said, “We will do everything we can to block Mr Dutton’s plan to build expensive nuclear reactors in Queensland. I’m concerned about the future generations of Queenslanders who will need to manage this dangerous radioactive waste forever!”

Of course, Greens leader Adam Bandt tweeted, “Dutton’s nuclear ‘plan’ is a fantasy.” At least he didn’t tweet a cartoon fish.

Former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating released a statement calling Opposition Leader Peter Dutton a “peddler of danger”, and, “a charlatan”, stating, “A denialist now seeking to camouflage his long held denialism in an industrial fantasy – resort to the most dangerous and expensive energy source on the face of the earth – nuclear power”.

All these attacks on Peter Dutton sound vaguely familiar. Remember the Indigenous Voice referendum campaign. Everyone was attacking Dutton for daring to speak out against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament, essentially labelling him a villain, and saying that he “lacks the smarts”, and we all know how that turned out. Australians overwhelmingly voted No. Peter Dutton backed the right horse.

Similarly, these stupid attacks on Dutton’s nuclear ambitions may just end up backfiring for Labor. I’d suspect most people will just look at these memes and cringe, or at least, see straight through them. These Labor MPs and others launching childish social media posts and then taking to the airwaves to defend their reductive approach – it’s just silly.

Believe it or not, I studied nuclear physics at university. Now that doesn’t make me an expert, nor does it mean you have to study at university to know anything about nuclear energy. Far from it. All the information is now pretty much all available online. If you want to know the ins and outs of a nuclear fission reactor, we can all find out about it online if we want to. But what we know about modern nuclear reactor designs, danger isn’t the issue. If you want to argue about cost, okay, if you want to argue about how long they take to make, okay, but arguing about danger and the risks of koalas growing a third eye, is just absurd. I’d hope that the Australian public can see through these ridiculous arguments, if you can even call them arguments.

In response to this meme by Andrew Leigh, Mr Dutton said, “He’s part of a Government that’s signed up to putting our submariners onto the submarines with a nuclear reactor. He’s putting out photos of three-eyed fish and all of this sort of juvenile conduct, which, frankly, should be condemned. From the Labor Party, we get them posting cartoon figures and the rest of the nonsense, so hopefully we can have an adult conversation.”

Obviously, Australia already has a nuclear reactor in Lucas Heights that produces radioisotopes for medical and industrial applications. Are Labor politicians honestly fearful of it leaking radioactive material into the surrounding environment? I doubt it.

Nuclear power plants are operated in 32 countries and generate about 10% of the world’s electricity. There are currently 401 reactors in use, with a further 57 new ones being built. China are currently in the process of building 21 new reactors. If they were truly worried about three-eyed fish and mutated family dogs, would they really be building these reactors?

Trust the ABC to bring identity politics into the nuclear debate: “Meme wars around the nuclear debate are masking a real problem: the gender dynamics of elections are shifting.” Basically, they show a chart showing that more men support nuclear energy than do women, 51% to 19%. I’m not sure what they’re getting at. Should we divide Australia in half with men on the nuclear half and women on the other half? I don’t know. I guess I’m just being facetious.

As I said, I’m not here to tout the benefits of nuclear power, or to sway your opinion in any way, but what Labor are doing by tweeting out these images of mutated animals and so on, is just plain stupid, and I don’t think it will win them any supporters. It just makes their argument look daft.

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Allégro by Emmit Fenn