The current pro-nuke lobby that is now spreading its influence in Australia had its start a year ago in a freebie-funded trip by Australian opposition politicians to the UK. Their destination was an inaugural mass gathering of the world’s ultra-conservatives and their fellow travellers on the libertarian fringe. Unsurprisingly, nuclear power was part of the picture!
It was confusing at first. Why would Australia’s leading conservative think tank choose to launch a major new policy paper on energy security, promoting its nuclear over renewables agenda, in far-off London? With a UK winter coming on fast? What was the brains trust at the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), which exists primarily to influence conservative politics in Australia, thinking?
The reasons soon fell into place. London, 1 November 2023, was a mecca for ultra-conservatives from around the world. They were jetting in by the hundreds to join their British contemporaries at a mega circus of the right called the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). Founded earlier in 2023 the event, drawing 1500 delegates from 71 countries, included 150 Australians.
Since then ARC has ventured Down Under, with a regional event in Sydney this month and a second global ARC gathering is scheduled in London again, in February where this emerging movement is promising to continue its self-proclaimed mission to “re-lay the foundations of our civilization”.
No doubt, given their political allegiances, they are hoping to be celebrating the return of Donald Trump as America’s leader, with the 5 November US presidential elections just a week away now; and with hotly contested Australian elections due by May 2025, it will be interesting to see how many Australian politicians make the pilgrimage for ARC II.
As for freebies from Australia for ARC 1, compulsory parliamentary disclosures reveal no less than 16 Liberal-National coalition politicians put aside their cost of living faux concern to make the trip, including big-hitters: Barnaby Joyce, Scott Morrison before his retirement early in 2024, Angus Taylor who ‘fessed up to three nights at the five star London InterContinental, Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, Ted O’Brien, Dan Tehan, James Patterson, and Andrew Hastie, who also was a member of the ARC Organising Committee Advisory Board.
Lesser coalition figures on the ideological junket were MPs Henry Pike, Dr Anne Webster, Garth Hamilton and Julian Leeser, and senators David Fawcett, Alex Antic, Matt Canavan and Claire Chandler. Some of them even had to make do with economy seats, indicating an ARC class system, while their more prominent coalition colleagues flew business class.
Doing nuclear politicking on the side
O’Brien, the coalition’s nuclear frontman, stretched out his subsidised stay in nuclear powered and nuclear armed Great Britain to nine days, allowing plenty of time on the ground to check out the local reactor landscape.
As he told Sky News’ Chris Kenny days later, this included meetings with industry, the then Conservative UK government and a visit to the headquarters of Rolls Royce, which is developing next generation of small modular (nuclear) reactors, of which O’Brien is a fan. AUKUS was on his mind too, with O’Brien telling Kenny, “it was fascinating talking to them about the synergies between the civil industry in the UK for nuclear and their nuclear propelled submarines”.
Given that O’Brien unabashedly leveraged his ARC-funded travel to pursue the opposition’s nuclear energy policy interests in the UK, it is worthwhile quoting his parliamentary disclosures verbatim: “Travel – attendance at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship including flights, accommodation, transfers, conference registration and events provided by the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship held in the United Kingdom: expenses spread between 27 Oct – 5 Nov 2023.”
O’Brien, the shadow minister for climate change and energy, has been racking up frequent flyer miles with sponsored travel, with pro-nuclear political lobby group the Coalition for Conservation paying part of his costs for his nuclear study tour to North America in January-February 2023, and then his full travel costs to the UN COP28 Climate Summit in Dubai in November-December 2023, soon after his London trip for ARC 1.
Not for the faint hearted woke
The ARC events, meanwhile, are a guaranteed horror show for anyone with progressive leanings, but no worries, because they’re hardly the target audience.
Devoted to renewing Western culture, ARC’s co-founders include former Australian Deputy Prime Minister and National Party Leader John Anderson. He also founded and chairs the National Party aligned Page Research Centre in Australia, which was one of the sponsors – alongside the powerful mining industry lobby group, the Minerals Council of Australia – for a two-day propaganda event at Parliament House in November 2022, a year before ARC 1, which helped to shape coalition nuclear energy policy.
As the hardline conservative publication Spectator Australia describes it, ARC was comfortable territory for Australia’s nuclear disciples:“ARC is pro nuclear energy, pro capitalism, pro family, pro child, pro Christianity, pro freedom of speech and religion, and pro traditional education.”
It’s also pro, and embracing, of some of the world’s most controversial influencers. Another co-founder is Jordan B Peterson, right-wing academic, conspiracy theorist and ideas influencer. A key drawcard for the ARC event, there’s no surprise that Peterson is pro-nuclear and anti-climate. Other speakers included the Danish climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg.
Conservatives under the bed
You get the picture. All of this is further proof, as though it were needed, that you never go far around Australia’s unofficial nuclear club without finding elite conservatives in the mix and influencing the agenda.
That’s not necessarily the face they want us to see, given they need to “sell” nuclear power as a viable energy solution to the public, capturing the “sensible centre”. Furthermore, it’s a political liability for the coalition’s pro-nuclear campaign because they need to convince everyday voters, battling cost of living pressures, that going nuclear, which the CSIRO says would take 15 years plus, somehow provides relief from high energy prices now.
Ultra conservative groups, right wing think tanks, atomic fission true believers and business vested interests permeate every aspect of the coalition’s emerging but still sketchy nuclear policy. As does the energy security theme, which featured prominently in opposition leader Peter Dutton’s nuclear policy launch speech at an IPA members event in Sydney, on 7 July 2023, cloaking pro-nuclear arguments in a national security dimension.
The IPA goes policy-spruiking in London
For the IPA, launching in London in no way restricted their audience for the launch of the “Energy security is national security paper”. This strategically timed paper was written by energy economist, University of Queensland adjunct professor, and IPA Visiting Fellow Stephen Wilson, who is designated to lead the IPA’s planned Centre for Energy Security, which was expected to launch this year, but hasn’t materialised yet.
Is it too much at this point to unveil the guest of honour who officially launched the policy paper?
Of course, it was IPA distinguished fellow and former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, the political nemesis of all things climate change, renewables and woke. The venue was The Church House in Westminster, on the outskirts of the ARC mega-event, with the launch squeezed in before an official energy and environment dinner themed Fuelling the Future and Powering Progress.
Abbott was joined by Dr Tim Stone CBE from the UK’s Nuclear Industries Association, and chairman of the industry advisory group for the UK Government’s Great British Nuclear initiative. Stone also appeared by video at the November 2022 pro-nuclear energy lobbying event in the Australian parliament and is a regular advocate for bringing nuclear energy to Australia.
Given the swathe of Australian conservatives who made their way to London, including the 16 sitting politicians on paid junkets, funded by the ARC itself, it’s inevitable that a number of them attended the IPA launch, and the report author Wilson confirmed this himself on LinkedIn, posting: “Along with British and Australian friends who came along, thanks also to a number of members of the parliaments of both countries who attended the launch and provided words of encouragement.”
Wilson made it abundantly clear, in the same post, that his was by no means a green agenda, nor even an economic one in isolation: “Robust energy policy is not only about climate, emissions and environmental sustainability. It is not only about affordability and economic competitiveness. It requires first and foremost a deep understanding of energy security.”
Earlier in 2023, at a private IPA strategy retreat, from which the script of his presentation has been unearthed, Wilson revealed his own rhetorical attachment to ARC-style “future of civilization at stake” ideology, saying: “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 civilization, let alone defend it from attack.”
Conservative media rallied to the occasion
IPA executive director Scott Hargreaves was in London too, reporting live on Sky News. Being 20,000 kilometres from home didn’t mean the IPA missed out on media attention for its energy security policy paper launch. Rather, it helped it to cherry pick the media attention it wanted, including the Murdoch press’ flagship, The Australian, which was right (pun intended) on message:
Former prime minister Tony Abbott has slammed the government’s plan for net zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 as “not just utterly irrational but actually impossible”, in his most critical comments on climate policy since declaring climate change science was “absolute crap” in 2009. Speaking at the launch of an Institute of Public Affairs report on Australian energy security, Mr Abbott predicted Australia would not meet any of the Albanese government’s legislative targets for renewable energy supply recently enshrined in legislation for both scientific and political reasons. “The climate cult will eventually be discredited; I just hope we don’t have to endure energy catastrophe before that happens,” he told an audience in Westminster, London, on the sidelines of the inaugural Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference.
The Australian added:
The former Liberal party leader and prime minister until 2015 also decried how Australia exported large quantities of coal, gas and uranium but was reluctant to use them for its own domestic energy needs. “My country should be an energy superpower, not a green energy superpower, but an energy superpower,” he told the supportive audience.
Clearly, it was a huge occasion in London for the junketing politicians, Hargreaves and the IPA, and policy paper author Wilson, who, as well as his own launch and ARC I, was able to catch the libertarian Battle of Ideas Festival, also held at the Church House in Westminster. All in all, it was a fantastic nuclear and conservative love in that British late autumn, and it makes you wonder what’s coming up next among the save-Western-values fraternity when they regather again at ARC II?
