Peter Dutton has vowed a Coalition government would override the states’ legislated ban on nuclear power, telling party officials on Saturday that state premiers “won’t stop us”.
The opposition leader made the comments in an address to the federal Liberal party council in Sydney, where he escalated his attacks on Anthony Albanese. He called the prime minister a “fraud” and a “child in a man’s body” that is “still captured in his university years”.
On Wednesday, the Coalition unveiled its controversial nuclear energy plan in the event it wins government, including seven proposed sites for nuclear reactors across five states. The nuclear pledge drew unanimous blowback from state premiers.
In question time this week, the New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, said he wanted to “make it clear” that his government would not be repealing the ban on nuclear energy in the state. The premiers of Victoria and Queensland said the same.
In responding to the criticism, Dutton said he would work “respectfully and collaboratively” with state premiers, “but I don’t answer to them”.
“The decisions I make will be in our national interest to the benefit of the Australian people,” he said on Saturday.
“Commonwealth laws override state laws even to the level of the inconsistency. So support or opposition at a state level won’t stop us rolling out our new energy system,” he said to a round of applause erupting from the room.
Some state opposition leaders have also opposed the Coalition’s nuclear pledge, with Victoria’s opposition leader, John Pesutto, saying his party had “no plans for nuclear” and Queensland’s opposition leader, David Crisafulli, also saying it was not part of the party’s plan and would remain that way.
In his address, Dutton said Crisafulli had taken “a perfectly understandable position on nuclear power” and was “getting a hard time from the worst premier in Australia, Steven Miles”.
Dutton said Australians would decide their energy future, saying the “the next election will not only define the next political term, it will define the future and fate of this nation”.
During his speech, Dutton slammed Albanese as being out of “his depth”, later adding “visionary Labor leaders – like the late, great Bob Hawke – knew that zero emissions nuclear energy was a good thing”.
“But Labor’s current crop of leaders have been reduced to posting juvenile social media memes of three-eyed fish and koalas.
“Frankly, their behaviour is an affront to the intelligence of the voters whom they seek to represent,” he said.
He then diverged from his scripted remarks to say “our prime minister is a man with his mind still captured in his university years, he’s as a child in a man’s body”.
“[Albanese’s] more interested in appeasing the international climate lobby than sticking up for the interests of everyday Australians,” he said.
Dutton said people between the ages of 18 and 34 were “looking at a Liberal party for the first time [that] is offering environmental policy which is superior to that which the Labor and the Greens party will offer at the next election”.
“They’re comfortable with [nuclear energy] because they’re well read, because they understand modern technology and they have a passion for reducing emissions,” Dutton said.
Prof Anne Twomey, a constitutional law expert at the University of Sydney, said the commonwealth can override state laws, but there were a number of hurdles the government would face.
The first would be enacting legislation that overrides any inconsistent state laws and passing that through the Senate, while ensuring government decision-making processes around the laws were done fairly.
“If you get through both of those, then … so long as the commonwealth enacts laws that are valid, that are supported by the Constitution, then those laws will override state laws that are inconsistent.”
Victoria’s premier, Jacinta Allan, said in a statement after Dutton’s remarks: “There is no plan that sits behind Peter Dutton and his Liberal National colleagues’ announcement to bring a nuclear power plant to Victoria – and no
detail about how much it would cost, how long it would take, where the waste would go, the impact on water supply and the water security for the Gippsland community.
“When you look at all that uncertainty, it makes no sense when you have an alternative. We’ll continue to stand with the Gippsland community and stand against this toxic, risky, uncertain pathway that Peter Dutton wants to go down.”
