Here’s the thing about the Coalition’s latest nuclear policy. It tries to use one of the most contentious issues in rural areas, which is the rollout of renewables and the electricity transmission lines to carry energy around the country, to push an even more controversial energy transition.
Because nuclear power stations would also be built in the regions. And if you’re worried about renewables, hands up who wants a nuclear reactor next door?
My generation grew up with the US-Russian cold war and the Doomsday Clock.
While the conversation and the technology of nuclear energy has moved on, the cost, complexity and construction time has not, as the CSIRO found in a report released last month.
Polling shows support has been steadily rising for the general concept of nuclear power. But I wouldn’t be putting money there being less opposition to nuclear facilities than renewable facilities in regional places.
If there is one thing that I have learned from calling a country town home, it is that people are very attached to their place and how it is identified.
Not everyone opposes renewables but there is a significant portion of people who don’t want them in their own back yard. Others are quietly making their fortunes, having struck the formula for drought-proofing their businesses for decades to come. If the Big Dry strikes, you will probably find them on a beach somewhere.
That is because annual payments to host turbines start from $40,000 each though I know of agreements that are much higher, especially when communities collectively bargain. The New South Wales government pays landowners $200,000 to host transmission lines in annual instalments over 20 years, with Victoria paying the same over 25 years.
Those payments have crept up because of ongoing regional protests. That action has been amplified by poor community consultation from some energy companies highlighted in the Australian Energy Infrastructure Commissioner Andrew Dyer’s report. He found the rollout had created “material distrust” of developers in some communities.
Discontent is also being amplified for political purposes, including by David Littleproud, Barnaby Joyce and Matt Canavan, who spoke at a rally against renewables at parliament house.
The politics is clear. For starters, the long lead time kicks the nuclear energy can down the road to 2040. The Liberals cannot walk naked into the next election without at least a fig leaf for a net zero policy. The Nationals, on the other hand, don’t give a toss about net zero. They just want to extract the funding from the Liberals in compensation for hosting any technology that delivers on the net zero promise. Nuclear can be that fig leaf.
It is also true the Nats and the country Liberals will have to wear any pushback on where nuclear facilities are placed. They won’t be able to campaign against their own policy like some do on renewables.
Peter Dutton has not, as yet, specifically named any potential sites for a nuclear power station but he has pointed to current coal production facilities that are due to close. His announcement is imminent, perhaps even after the party room meeting on Tuesday.
Possible sites include the Hunter Valley in NSW; Anglesea and Latrobe Valley in Victoria; Port Augusta in South Australia; Collie in Western Australia; and perhaps Tarong in central Queensland – within Littleproud’s Maranoa electorate.
Since then the game has begun to get Coalition MPs to commit to host or rule out a reactor in their own back yard.
This is a bit silly really, because apart from the ACT, which renewable-supporting metropolitan MPs could commit to hosting a wind turbine or a solar farm in their city seats?
Littleproud and Joyce have both indicated their approval to host a reactor. But a dozen others would not commit when asked by Nine newspapers.
Keith Pitt told Nine he supported lifting the moratorium on nuclear power but, alas, there were technical restrictions, including earthquakes in his electorate. But if Pitt is worried about his area, other MPs might be scurrying to the Geoscience Australia map of faultlines for their own get-out-of-jail-free card.
Pitt’s seat of Hinkler looks like a shoo-in compared to the faultlines under Darren Chester’s Gippsland electorate, which covers the Latrobe Valley in Victoria, or the Liberal MP Rick Wilson’s seat of O’Connor, which covers Collie in WA.
A Geoscience Australia geologist, Dr Tamarah King, said the earthquake hazard in Australia was generally low but damaging earthquakes were possible across the country and have occurred in the past.
“While most earthquakes in Australia are small in magnitude and don’t cause significant damage, they tend to be shallow (less than 10km depth) and shaking is felt over very large distances,” King said.
“Seismic hazards can be avoided and/or engineered for in both coal and nuclear power plant facilities.”
Down in Wannon, an electorate that stretches from Anglesea to the South Australian border, the Liberal MP Dan Tehan said Anglesea wouldn’t be hosting nuclear, thanks very much.
He said the “Eden project” was designed to rehabilitate the mine site there, which according to its website will “celebrate the local ecology and tell you the story of sustainability”.
That development also tells you everything you need to know about how the demographic is changing in Tehan’s electorate, flush with sea-changers escaping the cities. Those newcomers will continue to change voting patterns in a marginal seat, chipped away over three elections by the independent candidate and the former Triple J host Alex Dyson.
And really, that is the point. The existing coal-fired power stations are close to populations and transmission lines but those communities are changing rapidly. And that’s changing the voter base.
We used to lament our kids leaving country towns. Now they are coming back and bringing their friends. Millennials, under 40, are leading the charge on the hunt for affordable places with better lifestyles.
Regional demographic change is no longer a pandemic blip. The latest analysis from the Regional Movers Index, shows regional migration hit a 12-month high, as 24% more people moved from city to bush rather than the other way around.
“This movement in population can no longer be seen as a quirky flow-on effect from the lockdown years,” said the Regional Australia Institute chief executive, Liz Ritchie. “A societal shift is under way,”
Once you combine the feelings of the existing populations with younger populations, does that add up to support for nuclear over renewables in these changing back yards? I wouldn’t bet on it.
