Having promised a nuclear power policy for several years, the Australian Liberal-National Party finally announced one: no reactors before 2040 and approving new gas and coal projects instead. At the same time, it is abandoning the emissions reduction target for 2030 (a 43 per cent cut compared with 2005 levels) and refusing to commit to details about nuclear projects until after the May 2025 election.
This is a Nuclear Hail Mary Policy: reduce emissions aspirations and hope a final play two decades from now will work out.
Most commentary has focused on what this nuclear Hail Mary implies for Australia’s commitment to the Paris Agreement. Some suggest the LNP plans to “rip up” the agreement. Others that the LNP plans to “breach the text and spirit” of the agreement.
Closest to the mark, I suggest, is that LNP is internally fractured and confused about both what its nuclear and emissions policy should be and how it should conduct itself regarding international agreements.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s climate backtracking on Saturday, 8 May 2024, pushed from the news cycle a clear marker of the LNP’s policy vacuum on nuclear power, climate emissions and international. On 7 June, the LNP engaged in disinformation about regional cooperation on decarbonization.
The occasion for the LNP’s disinformation campaign was the signing by the Albanese Labor government of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) Clean Economy Agreement. The IPEF was signed by Australia and 13 other nations on 6 June 2024.
Ted O’Brien MP (Shadow Minister for Climate Change and Energy in the LNP) claimed the ALP signing of the IPEF “exposes rank hypocrisy”, demonstrates a “lack of integrity”, and amounts to “treating Australians like mugs”.
None of the claims by O’Brien and the LNP are true. It is the LNP nuclear disinformation campaign that displays hypocrisy and duplicity and treats Australians like mugs.
The IPEF Clean Economy Agreement
The IPEF agreement aims to build regional economic cooperation across four pillars: trade, supply chains, clean energy, and tax. Australia joined IPEF on 23 May 2022, after the 21 May 2022 election in which Labor swept the LNP from power. Since then, eight rounds of negotiations between the member nations have taken place.
O’Brien and the LNP claim that while Labor has been warning Australians that nuclear power is risky, it did so “while simultaneously signing up to the introduction of the clean energy technology across our region”.
Yet O’Brien and the LNP have misrepresented the IPEF agreement, thereby also misrepresenting how Labor’s (domestic) discrediting of the LNP nuclear plans relates to that (international) IPEF agreement. You do not have to rely upon my word. You are free to read the thirty-two-page IPEF agreement yourself (dfat.gov.au).
Sorry, no, it is the Coalition that are hypocrites
For the LNP accusation of hypocrisy to work, Labor must have, in fact, signed up to the introduction of nuclear power in the region. Yet IPEF does not commit any nation to any specific low-carbon technology.
IPEF only commits signatories to clean energy in general:
“clean energy means any energy source that generates energy resulting in low- or zero- greenhouse-gas emissions, including from low- or zero-emission technologies that significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or any solution that saves energy through efficiency and conservation, consistent with achieving net-zero emissions and the Parties’ shared climate goals”
While clean energy appears more than 100 times in the negotiated text of the IPEF agreement, nuclear appears six times and only in a delimiting context. IPEF stipulates that “parties that support the use of nuclear energy” recognise the role it plays in energy security and generation and should collaborate on regulatory frameworks (Article 4, Point 7).
The Labor Party does not support the use of nuclear energy, rejecting the Coalition’s nuclear boosterism as a “nuclear fantasy, dreamed up to delay real action on climate change”. No contradiction arises because the ALP is not in the category of “parties that support the use of nuclear energy”, and the IPEF agreement more broadly supports multiple clean energy pathways. Or the layperson’s version: to each their own.
If there is any hypocrisy on display here, it is Coalition hypocrisy. The IPEF agreement is technology agnostic: many low-carbon electricity generation options are supported.
Cast your mind back to the Coalition Technology Investment Roadmap of 2020, which they advertised as not being “ideological” because it was “technology agnostic”. Yet in 2024, when the ALP signs an international agreement that is technology agnostic, the LNP is up in arms?
Maybe you think the ALP is not sufficiently technologically agnostic due to its opposition to nuclear power?
Yet the point of the IPEF agreement is to cooperate despite differences. The ALP signing an international agreement that includes a non-favoured technological pathway is the kind of mature geopolitical agnosticism done a disservice by the Coalition’s IPEF disinformation campaign.
All the world’s a stage
Shakespeare continued that line (As You Like It) by suggesting we are all merely players of many parts. The IPEF is sensitive to this play of many parts, so it is ironic to witness the Coalition level an accusation of lack of integrity at Labor for engaging in international cooperation.
Detail-free thought bubbles
Integrity is first a quality (honesty). The Coalition’s detail-free thought bubbles on nuclear power have been criticised as bedevilled by lies: about representing regional interests, about industry consultation, about community consultation regarding site selection of reactors, and about obscuring the influence of coal interests on Coalition nuclear policy.
Integrity is also a state (undivided). The IPEF agreement aims to unify where there are otherwise divisions.
Member nations are encouraged to pursue the technologies they deem appropriate for their context. The IPEF acknowledges “each party’s diverse social and cultural contexts and geography” (Article 3, Point 1), the importance of their “respective economies” when considering the role of “clean technologies required to decarbonise industries” (Article 8, Point 1), and the fact of their diverse “range of pathways” (Article 9, Point 8).
The LNP appears to be positioning itself as critiquing the ALP for refusing to enforce on other sovereign nations the ALP’s particular domestic energy policy. The IPEF represents unity about clean energy but permits diversity in technological choice, so the Coalition rhetoric of dishonesty implies a kind of nuclear authoritarianism about political choice.
Australian nuclear misinformation goes walkabout
Thus far, Coalition claims about nuclear prospects have been domestic doomsday claims about Australia’s fate if it does not “go nuclear”.
Yet the Coalition’s claims routinely hinge on misinformation: inflating estimations of transmission projects, over-playing the risk of load shedding, over-estimating G20 reliance on nuclear, exaggerating renewables-related land use, and inventing risks from windfarms (on and offshore).
While the international nuclear renaissance has been a farcical (short) history of massive cost and construction blowouts, the Coalition has sidelined those facts at home, leading to claims that Coalition nuclear plans are a delay tactic to perpetuate coal and gas.
The Coalition claims that Labor and the IPEF continue this habit of misinformation, evident in several nuclear-related clauses in the IPEF agreement.
The IPEF stipulates that the Parties should:
“promote transparent licensing, siting, and permitting for clean energy and related generation, transmission, distribution, and storage projects in the electricity sector” (Sect 4, Point 2b)
Furthermore, for those parties supportive of nuclear, they should:
“ensure that sound policy and regulatory frameworks in nuclear safety and waste management are in place when considering the adoption of nuclear energy technologies” (Sect. 4, Point 7a).
The LNP has spent years spruiking nuclear power, yet the Australian public remains in the dark about those two important clauses in the IPEF agreement.
The LNP cannot be ‘transparent’ if it has provided no detail to the Australian public about licensing, siting and permitting. The LNP claims to be considering nuclear, yet where are any serious policy proposals regarding the regulatory frameworks for nuclear safety and nuclear waste?
Instead, the LNP treats citizens as incapable of spotting fabrications and omissions. For instance, the O’Brien’s/LNP press release tells citizens they will find the IPEF “supporting small modular reactors (SMRs) in the Indo Pacific”. This is a fabrication: the negotiated text of the agreement never mentions SMRs. Similarly, the Coalition omits that the IPEF agreement strongly supports windfarms and energy efficiency, two key elements of the ALP’s Rewiring the Nation plan.
If the LNP’s hypocrisy accusation appears to be falling in on itself under the weight of misinformation, the sheer absurdity of the claim can be illustrated by one fact: the LNP is vulnerable to its very own logic.
Treating citizens like mugs
The LNP claims the ALP are hypocrites by opposing nuclear at home but supporting it in the IPEF agreement. Yes, the claim is not true.
The IPEF champions clean energy in general, not just nuclear power. Focus on the logic of the hypocrisy accusation: X is hypocritical if X opposes Y at home but supports Y abroad. Add the assumption that the LNP must favour the IPEF agreement because they construct it as pro-nuclear and the LNP are pro-nuclear.
Is it hypocrisy that the Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, opposes (domestic) offshore windfarms, yet the IPEF “recognises the important role of … offshore wind” (Article 13, Point 3)? Is it hypocrisy that key Coalition Ministers and backbenchers have got behind the “reckless renewables” rhetoric (domestically), yet the whole point of the IPEF agreement is to support clean energy projects?
Is it hypocrisy that Dutton concedes nuclear power plants would not be built in Australia pre-2040, but the IPEF agreement explicitly frames the clean energy issue in terms of rapidity and urgency?
For instance: “rapidly increasing” clean tech R&D (Article 4, Point 2); “the urgent need for immediate, deep, rapid” reductions in emissions including “rapidly scaling up” deployment of clean energy (Article 5, Point 5); “rapidly transform energy systems” (Article 5, point 5c); and “rapidly decarbonising” the road transport sector (Article 9, Point 8).
To be a mug is to be easily deceived. The LNP must assume citizens are mugs if it thinks Australian voters cannot spot the LNP’s misrepresentation of the IPEF agreement. No, Labor is not in contradiction for opposing domestic nuclear and signing the IPEF, because the IPEF favours clean energy in general and advocates for member nations to pursue their own pathway (which may or may not include nuclear power).
Yet even if tempted by the Coalition logic, just remember, the Coalition opposes most of what is supported in the IPEF agreement. The Coalition is not talking straight about either energy policy or international agreements, and voters should keep this in mind as the Coalition obfuscates important international agreements like the Paris Agreement.
