The ALP don’t know if they are coming or going on the nuclear energy debate. While Albanese was trying to sound vaguely clean and green on the weekend, uranium industry supporter Martin Ferguson in parliament this week contemplated the role of Australia in the global nuclear energy industry.

I therefore believe that every Australian should surely conclude that the best sources of uranium for nuclear power plants are those countries that take nuclear nonproliferation requirements seriously and have strict chain of custody procedures for uranium sales and bilateral agreements that deal with safe, peaceful and proper use of uranium and the disposal of its waste products.

Questions remain on the nuclear option though: are we going to take the waste back? Seems none of our ALP state governments is keen on the idea. And is China, as our new trading buddy, one of those countries we should sign a bilateral agreement with? Or are they a proliferation risk? Trillions of dollars of subsidies thrown globally at the nuclear industry over the past 50 years, unquestioning government support and an international body charged to promote nuclear energy, and it’s still fraught with problems.

Meanwhile, in The Daily Telegraph on Thursday there was an unholy alliance developing between the CFMEU and the Minerals Council of NSW, a joint story by Tony Maher of the CFMEU and Nikki Williams from the Minerals Council Coal saying they must be part of our power solution. Both them, and the ALP, seem keen to espouse the virtues of untested and potentially very expensive “clean coal” technologies that won’t come online for maybe 15 years, so as to justify continuing to dig the black stuff out of the ground. Seems the ALP is still hankering after its core constituency.