It’s not quite up there with smearing blood on Parliament House doors but the current outbreak of in-fighting within the Nationals is, by major party standards, another low point in the records of political conduct in Australia.
Barnaby Joyce declares that he is entitled to the deputy prime ministership of the country because the Lady of the Electoral Lake had handed him the sword (or perhaps more accurately a beer stubby). In response, the actual occupant of the position, Michael McCormack — a man who is, shall we say, not known for his cutting witticisms or soaring rhetoric — invokes the failure of Joyce’s marriage, in a particularly pointed rebuke.
Joyce’s return to the leadership of the Nationals — whether before or after the coming election — would be the final insult by the Coalition toward Australian women. He remains the subject of unresolved allegations of sexual harassment, with his party insisting it is unable to do anything about the claims made by the accuser . The unresolved nature of this complaint should rule Joyce out of public life, let alone high office.
But of more immediate vexation for the government, Joyce is prepared to use climate and energy policy to tear down his opponent. He insists that coal must be king, the federal government should be engaging in the unprecedented exercise of spending billions on new coal-fired power stations, and that any Nationals leader not working for that should be dumped.
There are plenty of Liberals snorting in derision and anger about this latest outbreak of Nationals idiocy, but since it’s barely six months since the Liberals were engaged in using climate and energy policy to tear down their leader, their resentment is a tad hypocritical. And quite a few Liberals who don’t think the federal government should be investing in new coal-fired power plants also think the government should be supporting nuclear power — probably the only form of power generation even more expensive, and requiring even longer to build, than so-called “clean coal” power plants.
But the Liberals at least have since learnt that being ostentatiously on the side of the greatest contributor to climate change is electorally poisonous. First in the poll slump that followed the ouster of Malcolm Turnbull, then in the loss of Wentworth. The voters of Wentworth were — and still are, in the pages of The Australian — dismissed as affluent residents of “leafy” metropolitan electorates, but polling has consistently shown more than 40% of Coalition voters think we should do more on climate change, compared to around 15% who think we’re doing too much.
That’s why Scott Morrison is no longer carrying lumps of coal into Question Time, why Angus “the Invisible Man” Taylor hasn’t said boo about the government’s plan to fund dispatchable power beyond pumped hydro, when the entire point of that plan when it was devised last year was to fund coal-fired power. That’s why Tony Abbott, panicked about losing his seat, has resumed his eternal gyrations on climate policy and said wait, hang on, no we don’t need to abandon the Paris agreement after all.
And most of all that’s why Morrison stopped lying about meeting our lowball Paris targets “in a canter” and declared he would be wasting a further $2 billion on the government’s emissions reduction fund — using a scheme designed by Tony Abbott in 2010 to mask his denialism to do exactly the same thing in 2019.
Except Joyce and the Nationals — unencumbered by having to appeal to the majority of voters — have snatched that mask off, insisting that the government be loud and proud about its love for coal. In a way, they’re doing the electorate a service by insisting on what many in both the Liberal and National parties really believe, that climate change is rubbish and Australia should keep on burning and exporting as much coal as it can.
Or, in the case of Barnaby Joyce, that the issue should be exploited to get rid of your internal enemy.
Barnaby who? Oh that dude, the former deputy PM and member of the National Philanders in Remission Party.
Pardon my schadenfreude, I’d be curious if there’ll be anything left for Barnaby to lead after the next Federal Poll.
The Nats lost any value as a “coalition” partner when they could no longer deliver their half of the bargain : namely a working majority for a minority Liberal Govt.
The Libs should consider ditching the Philanders in Remission and the BA Sanatmaria Appreciation Society / Faction if they ever want to regain relevancy post their near extinction event in May.
Or not. As much as I’d like see an end to the toxic, belligerent, ignorant and arrogant conservative Govt. I’m not exactly relishing a new world order under Billy Shortpants.
Maybe we’ll get a Euro style minority Govt a la the Gillard years?
Deep into the quinquennial reading of A Dance to the Music of Time it was a dead heat between Mr Shouty & the Tuber as to who of the current lot takes the Widmerpool prize. Then bugger me if the cold dead claw of Barnyard rears up out of the slime clutching the prize as his own.
barnyards no good for the libs, no good for the nats, and most and more important, now no longer any good for his old bo and 2 families to keep, and he cant go back to being an accountant because his time in politics showed he cant count, maybe buy share in a cotton farm, at least he knows where to get water from at the right price, unless our Glad loses too, then he`ll really be stuffed, no job, no money and no bloody water either.
But what will his super buy him when he goes back to New Zealand?
The large nuclear plant probably would cost more and take longer to legislate, plan and build than a large coal plant. However we have to start sometime, and with the world moving steadily towards mass produced nuclear plants, we might as well start the process now.
It isn’t just backbench Liberals who are hoping that someone will say, “let’s go nuclear”. Anyone who studies the arithmetic of providing 100% non-carbon power to the Australian economy is also quietly saying “we must go nuclear”. And out of sheer decency, there must be plenty of Crikey readers who would concede that “we must include nuclear in the mix”.
There’s a perfectly functioning thermonuclear reactor already, safely positioned 150-ish million km from here. We should make more use of it.
You could fill a book with the list of cancelled nuclear reactor projects around the world, and bankrupted nuclear power station manufacturers. I don’t believe that is going to be any part of the ultimate structure of Australian power generation.
Let’s do some maths.
Many existing coal plants are scheduled to close in the next 10 years.
It would probably take 15 years to go through the whole process of constructing a nuclear plant and getting it operational.
So what do we do in those 5 years’ difference?
Numbers? The fossil-fired power stations of Australia have a range of use-by dates. Maintenance of the most dilapidated of them cost increasingly more with time, but the date of closure depends on the growth of demand and the growth of replacements. The slowest and most painful will be the closure of all gas-fired generators. Total decarbonisation is going to be a long job, but it always has been going to be a long job.
Only nuclear can supply non-carbon power on demand. The eventual government decisions to completely replace fossil fuels will inevitably imply progressively importing nuclear plants of proven design. Nth-of-a-kind giant reactors typically take six years to build (although the first may well have taken fifteen), whereas the “small modular reactors” (see) currently in the pipeline are designed to be installed in two years. However this is a timeline starting from the date of “first concrete”, whereas Australia needs several more years preceding for public discussion and support to grow. A carbon tax is also necessary ($30 per tonne of CO2 was estimated by the UMPNER report) but it too, is taking years to persuade and initiate.
That sound of public persuasion must rise louder and wider than our debates in the Crikey comments columns. It requires political leadership, young leaders seeking to arouse a younger electorate and secure their place in history.
“Only nuclear can supply non-carbon power on demand.”
Just wrong Roger. Just wrong.
For a long time I’ve been arguing against nuclear power for all the well-known reasons. No more. I surrender. I’m now perfectly happy for any group of investors who have done their arithmetic and satisfied themselves that they can build and run a nuclear power station safely and cheaply to go ahead and do that. I make just one provision: the project must be fully commercial without any taxpayer subsidies or tax concessions and it must find its own commercial, non-Government insurance which, being perfectly safe, it will no doubt find very easily.
Just one other provision that proceeds from the above conditions: Pigs might fly!
Too late Rais! You have just admitted that nuclear would be a goer if only it were made cheap enough. And that idea might just fly!
No reply button under Roger’s rejoinder but this is the reply to his reply. Yes Roger I did “admit” that with about 99.9% certainty it could never happen. There’s no commercially viable fully privately financed and insured nuclear power project in the world as far as I can find out and none proposed but if there were most of my arguments against nuclear would be answered. I still wouldn’t choose to live near one but for commercial investors to take it up the proposal would have to answer the issues connected with safety and with decommissioning the plant at the end of its life. If those were satisfactorily answered most of my arguments against nuclear would be answered. That’s easy, isn’t It?
Those “small modular reactors” are still being built and are projected to start operations in 2023 or 2024, having started 3 or 4 years ago.
The cost of these will be much more than the equivalent wind and solar plus storage capacity.
Plus greater on-going costs.
“Having started…” Not quite. SMR designs are still being cyber-tested by the NRC, the US regulator. Sometime next year the go-ahead is expected for the factory work, followed by first-concrete start of the NuScale prototype in 2023. Being a first-of-a-kind (FOAK), production from the first module is targeted for 2026, longer than the designed two years for the first module of each plant. Subsequent modules will start up before then and closer to each other while ironing out the production line process. Target for all 12 modules of the FOAK is 2027. Although NuScale is taking orders already, US delivery of NOAKs from the first production runs is not expected until the late twenties.
Capital cost is 4.2 $/kW, decreasing with mass production. In contrast, RE storage for 100% of Australia’s needs is not possible at any feasible cost. We should not be planning for anything less than 100% decarbonisation. Only nuclear can do that. Other SMR designs are being scrutinised by the regulators of several countries, including Canada and UK.
Well, that’s just wrong Roger. No-one except you and nuclear lobbyists are saying that. Pumped hydro is quicker, easier, cheaper and do-able. Marry that with snowy 2.0, wind and a burgeoning hydrogen industry.
Nuclear is a pipedream.
How do you maintain the rage for this 1950s technology? The World is moving on, with or without you. Do some research married with realpolitik and come join the rest of us.
“But it was ‘clean’ when we started building it. titter titter”
And I love that excuse – “to make power more affordable to battlers….”?
……”So they won’t need higher wages – so our business/employer donors won’t have to share their profits with their workers, so they can keep those wages supressed and profits up : they can share those profits with us policy-makers instead.”?
What a great “altruistic/social excuse” – to keep their coal donors rolling in it and their donations rolling in, to The Twats?