There’s a sophisticated, well funded strategy underway to prolong coal and gas and eventually take Australia down the nuclear road.
Documents unearthed by The Fifth Estate lay bare how funding for the strategy, now in motion, is coordinated by a coal mining leader from Queensland, working with possibly Australia’s most influential conservative think tank, and also a key member of Australia’s unofficial nuclear club.
For this to work, the Liberal-National coalition needs to win back political power at the next federal election due by May next year.
- A key conservative think tank aims to keep coal until nuclear power arrives
- Its energy security argument is echoed by Peter Dutton as coalition policy
- A Queensland coal baron mustered donors to fund this influence machine
As things stand, nuclear power is currently prohibited in Australia, and the Labor government is committed to fast-tracking a renewables-led energy transition and says it has no plans to lift the ban.
Canberra retreat
The documents we’ve obtained and refer to in this article are the script and slides from a revealing energy security project update to a private strategy retreat held in Canberra last year on 12 May 2023 by the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).
Behind the current campaign to bring nuclear energy to Australia is a deliberate agenda to prolong coal generation and disrupt the renewables rollout.
The Fifth Estate contacted the speaker and two other key IPA-connected figures identified in this story for comment on Monday 27 May, inviting on-the-record interviews and providing questions. On Tuesday evening 28 May, the IPA chief executive officer Scott Hargreaves responded by email but declined to be interviewed. Full details of that response and related information are included at the end of this article.
The Melbourne based IPA is known as Australia’s leading conservative think tank, a key influencer of Coalition policies, and breeding ground for conservative politicians.
It habitually loads speaking point bullets for coalition politicians to fire. And it looked like Opposition Leader Peter Dutton did just that when he delivered his headland nuclear policy speech at an IPA public event, just two months after the Canberra retreat on 7 July last year.
In 2023, the IPA threw an arm around one of the favourite sons of the nuclear club, University of Queensland Adjunct Professor Stephen Wilson, making him a Visiting Fellow, as part of a big new donor-funded influence project, running over three years.
A key and recurring focus of this project and subsequent related policy talking points is energy security.
The internal IPA documents, authored by Wilson, lay out what many people suspect and have alleged: that behind the current campaign to bring nuclear energy to Australia is a deliberate agenda to prolong coal generation and disrupt the renewables rollout.
The final commentary and slide in Wilson’s presentation show an IPA-orchestrated master plan for Australia to defend and preserve coal and gas in the 2020s; then build “mini and small modular reactor (SMR)” nuclear plants in the 2030s under the mantle of reaping energy security, environmental and low-cost rewards in the 2040s.
It’s a parallel universe to the view a vast number of people have of Australia’s energy future. And it’s totally at odds with the clean energy transition agenda and the federal government’s targets of 43 per cent greenhouse gas emissions reductions below 2005 levels and 82 per cent renewables by 2030.
Threat to climate targets
It’s also likely to breach Australia’s staged progress, with five yearly sub targets (for example 43 per cent by 2030, with 2035 targets due to be announced early next year, with a range of 65-75 per cent being evaluated by the Climate Change Authority), towards its bipartisan commitment to 100 per cent net zero by 2050, which was made by the former Morrison coalition government ahead of the UN Climate Summit in Glasgow in the UK in 2021.
The IPA, however, is no fan of UN processes, and as Wilson made clear in his project update notes for the IPA insiders, the aim of its strategy was definitely not to prolong a Labor government.
I don’t need to persuade anyone in this room that if Australia stays on its current official policy path, we will fail to meet all three objectives: emissions; costs; security. But for us to succeed, we need to be able to describe an alternative future. That future must be practical. It must resonate with mainstream Australians. It must create a coalition of the winners. And enable a winning [Liberal National] coalition.
The coal connection
Wilson also identified in the presentation who was pulling together the funding for his IPA project, with a bit of ideological explanation to set the scene:
In the United States (and Canada) everyone gets that energy security is priority Nº1: on the left and right, in think tanks and industry bodies, state and federal governments, companies and utilities. It is clear that Australia has not yet understood energy security properly and isn’t taking energy security seriously. The IPA’s new Energy Security research program has the goal of changing that. I have taken on the challenge of working with Scott (Hargreaves) and the IPA staff, supported and encouraged by the far-sighted group of donors that Nick Jorss is bringing together.
Nick Jorss is a prominent and wealthy Queensland coal and critical minerals mining baron, currently leading the Bowen Coking Coal Company and Ballymore Resources Ltd.
He’s a former engineer turned financier, who famously bought a shuttered coal mine in 2015 for a notional $1. Betting fortuitously on the market cycles for metallurgical (coking) coal, he turned it into a multi-billion dollar coal group – Stanmore Resources Ltd, now owned by Indonesian interests – delivering his shareholders an heroic 1700 per cent return on investment.
He’s vocal on LinkedIn, where his connection with Stephen Wilson is very visible, as is his passion for coking coal, his disdain for renewables, his deep dislike of mining taxes, his scepticism around green hydrogen and green steel, and his open support for Australia going nuclear.
His pro-mining LinkedIn pronouncements have found fandom with the major companies, Hancock Prospecting and Roy Hill Mining, most associated with Australia’s, and one of the world’s richest women, Gina Rinehart.
Reinhart is an Honorary Life Member of the IPA and is widely referenced as being a key donor to its activities via her corporate interests.
She is about as staunchly conservative as mega-wealthy Australians get, and draws politicians into her orbit, such as Liberal-National Opposition Leader Peter Dutton, who went to great efforts to attend Reinhart’s March 2024 birthday bash in Perth.
Bring on Peter Dutton
The private IPA retreat in Canberra on 12 May last year was followed less than two months later by Dutton’s major speech to launch the coalition’s new energy security themed nuclear policy. This was delivered at a public IPA event in Sydney on 7 July.
Based on the available documents, there is no evidence one way or the other as to whether Dutton or other political figures attended the 12 May IPA retreat. But it was held in the national capital, on a Friday, at the end of a Tuesday to Thursday sitting week for both houses of parliament, at the end of Budget Week 2023 (Budget night was Tuesday 9 May and Dutton’s Opposition Leader’s Reply was on Thursday 11 May). So while it was well-timed for any politicians who may have wanted to attend, the IPA’s Hargreaves told The Fifth Estate this week (see below) that the Canberra location was “incidental” and that neither Dutton nor his energy and nuclear spokesperson Ted O’Brien had been invited. He didn’t address whether other politicians or staff may have attended.
Dutton’s speech mirrors the theme
Dutton’s headland nuclear speech substantially mirrored the energy security theme and language from the IPA retreat. And it also picked up on themes from earlier “nuclear club”events and activities, a number of them involving Stephen Wilson. If Australia’s nuclear club has anyone it would like to make its intellectual rock star, it’s Wilson.
Dutton’s IPA speech directly referenced Wilson, most significantly:
Professor Wilson says that we must stop procrastinating and prepare real options to deploy nuclear energy in case we need them. Countries are queuing up to put in their orders. Australia could have SMRs [small modular reactors] installed within a decade.
Wilson also confirmed his presentation to the IPA retreat in the video of another IPA event earlier this year, its 2024 Generation Liberty IPA Academy aimed at young conservatives, and relayed how Dutton had quoted him on a couple of occasions, expressing some surprise, saying, “I didn’t know he was going to do that.” (Dutton’s 7 July speech also quoted three other nuclear club regulars, as well as Wilson.)
Since then, SMRs have been a disappointment. Very inconveniently for Dutton and Wilson, the US showcase for new and thus far commercially-unproven SMR-design nuclear power stations, the NuScale project in Idaho, was cancelled in November last year due to cost overruns and lack of electricity buyer interest.
NuScale’s chief executive officer was reported as saying: “Once you’re on a dead horse, you dismount quickly. That’s where we are here.”
On message for energy security
However insecure the NuScale experience sounds, it’s worth remembering that the core theme of Wilson’s earlier 12 May IPA presentation, based on the notes and slides, was energy security. That was also a central theme of Dutton’s 7 July IPA speech:
Energy is one of the most important policy discussions in our country right now and not just because power prices are skyrocketing for Australians, but because the decisions government makes today will of course determine Australia’s energy future, a future where we’re either energy secure and self-reliant or energy insecure and dependent on others.
Indeed, energy security has never been more interconnected with national security. Resurgent authoritarian regimes and increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks are sober reminders of the connection between energy and national security.
Energy security is also the core focus for a program that Wilson leads for the IPA for a Centre for Energy Security, expected to be open this year.
The future of the nation and Western civilisation as we know it
On a geo-political note, national security was weighing heavily on Wilson’s mind on 12 May, as it did for Dutton on 7 July. According to Wilson’s speaking notes, at stake was nothing less than the future of the nation and Western civilisation as we know it:
Without secure, affordable and internationally competitive energy supplies, we will not be able to sustain the Australian Way of Life, people will lose the Dignity of Work, our Rights and Freedoms will be undefendable, and if the West more generally sacrifices its energy security, we will struggle to sustain Western Civilisation, let alone defend it from attack.
Wilson and the IPA, however, have a public policy campaign to save the day:
We need to be contesting in the public arena for sound policy on energy security. Practical arguments, explanations, and questions of principle will be required. Measures of success are focused (and) have three horizons. The work aims to make a difference on things that matter to the short-term crisis, the medium-term outlook, and the longer term wellbeing of Australia. Our founding donors have a three year vision to develop the research program into a Centre for Energy Security, with a series of publications, a program of events, engagement with like-minded organisations and international guest speakers.
Nuclear club bona fides
To be clear, this is the same Stephen Wilson who joined Queensland Liberal MP Ted O’Brien, Dutton’s Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy, and other nuclear club players, on a so-called “due diligence” study tour to the US and Canada in January-February 2023.
As Wilson’s slide deck for the IPA Canberra Retreat showed, the study tour group visited major nuclear industry companies, government representatives, lobbyists and campaign organisations. (Ted and friends’ excellent nuclear adventure in North America will feature in other upcoming articles in The Nuclear Files.)
By his own account, judging by a number of publicly available videos, Wilson imbibed deeply in the North American nuclear sector Kool-Aid, riffing off a theme he picked up on the US study tour, to proclaim that: energy security IS national security.
That became the inspiration for a key paper he published with the IPA on 1 November 2023, titled Energy security is national security. Its 1 November 2023 launch, in London on the perimeters of a global gathering of about 1500 ultra-conservatives, is another story coming soon from The Nuclear Files.
The Fifth Estate’s questions to key players in this story
The Fifth Estate provided these questions to IPA CEO Scott Hargreaves early on Monday afternoon:
- Whether or not Peter Dutton, Ted O’Brien or other Opposition representatives – politicians or staff – attended the retreat? (Noting that the retreat was timed on a Friday at the end of a sitting week for both houses of parliament*.)
- Who are the donors recruited by Nick Jorss to fund the three-year Energy Security project/program?
- How do you feel the IPA Energy Security project/program is progressing since Stephen Wilson’s 12 May 2023 update, including the 1 December 2023 launch of Wilson’s IPA paper, and developments in 2024?
- Have you held or are you holding another Canberra retreat in 2024?
*It was the end of Budget Week 2023, with Budget Night on Tuesday 9 May, Dutton’s Opposition Leader’s Reply on Thursday 11 May, and the Retreat the next day to round out a big week.
Hargreaves confirmed receipt of the questions by asking for a deadline, which was provided. Similar questions also were provided separately to Stephen Wilson and Nick Jorss, and all were advised that the others had also been contacted. Wilson initially agreed by text to an interview call, but this subsequently didn’t happen despite repeated follow-up invitations. Jorss, who was contacted via LinkedIn, visited Murray Hogarth’s profile soon after.
Hargreaves subsequently declined to be interviewed, but sent the below response to The Fifth Estate by email on Tuesday evening 28 May.
Following is Scott Hargreaves response:
I’ll decline the interview request, but by way of background, the IPA Retreat in 2023 was an invitation-only event to address a range of public policy issues, of which energy was one. The Canberra location was incidental to that purpose and neither Mr Dutton nor Mr O’Brien were invited. We were delighted that Mr Dutton chose to announce his policy on nuclear energy at an IPA members event in Sydney in July 2023.
You can quote me per below:
For too long Australia’s energy network has been used as an experiment by ideologues who want to impose their renewable energy dreams, without taking into account how we actually keep the lights on.
The IPA has been at the forefront of the debate, often alone, that energy security should be elevated as the key consideration of Australia’s energy policy.
We are very pleased with progress and success in our energy security research program. The recommendations of our May 2023 research paper to extend the life of Eraring were vindicated by the New South Wales government’s recent announcement. The IPA was the first institution to call for this and it’s a credit to Premier Chris Minns that he has acted in the national interest.
In addition to Stephen Wilson’s paper, Energy Security is National Security, we have also published research on the Western Australian government’s deeply flawed energy plan, and also a Working Paper on why the levelised cost of energy as a metric to plan our energy system cannot be relied upon (the CSIRO’s GenCost report’s fundamental flaw). More research is in the pipeline.
“The IPA has more than 9,000 members across Australia. As Executive Director, I have spoken with more than a few who are deeply concerned about record energy prices and a so-called energy transition that is simply out of control. Many of these members have been willing to make additional donations to further our energy security research program.
The IPA is entirely funded by members and supporters and receives no money from government. Endorsements of our research program are welcome and appreciated, but are not a central component of our fundraising efforts.
The nuclear story, then and now, in brief
Nuclear power has been considered for Australia numerous times over the past nearly 70 years, from the 1950s, but has never happened, mainly for economic reasons. Historically because of the low cost and wide availability of coal, and now it is the low cost of renewables. This month the 2024 CSIRO GenCost report found that traditionally designed large scale nuclear power stations would cost at least 50 per cent more than solar and wind backed by batteries, and take at least 15+ years to develop, and more technically-advanced Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) could be four to six times more expensive than renewables.
On ABC Radio Sydney on Wednesday morning, 29 May, Opposition nuclear frontman Ted O’Brien was pressed on the timing for release of the coalition’s highly anticipated nuclear policy, and insisted it would be revealed “in due course”. He confirmed that the coalition wanted to replace coal-fired power stations, as they exit the electricity grid, with nuclear ones, and that gas generation would fill any gap (which could be one to two decades) between coal shutting down and nuclear starting up.
Murray you have made a great contribution publishing the above article. You have untangled the Nuclear advocate web. I’d like to see where the Murdoch empire sits in it.
Many thanks.
Simon
PS I’d like to republish your article on my “forum”.