Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has hit back at critics of the Coalition’s nuclear power plan, defending the decision not to release the policy’s cost which is expected to have a multi-billion price tag.
Speaking on Thursday morning, Mr Dutton said the Coalition had deliberately not released the full details while committing to present the costings “fairly shortly”.
“We’ve got a staged approach here. If we just dumped all of this information out at once, people wouldn’t be able to consume it,” Mr Dutton told 2GB.
“So we’ve deliberately taken it step by step.”
On Wednesday, the Coalition unveiled plans to build seven nuclear power plants by 2050 with the first reactor slated to be operational in just over a decade in a move designed to deliver cheaper, zero-emissions and reliable power supply.
Contrasting with Labor’s approach which will be largely reliant on renewable energy, Mr Dutton called for Australians to have an “adult conversation” on the merits of nuclear energy.
“I honestly believe it’s in our country’s best interest and we have the ability to set ourselves up economically for generations to come,” Mr Dutton said.
“What we’re proposing now shows a very stark contrast to the intermittent power and the continued increases in costs and blackouts and brownouts that will feature in the coming years under Labor policy.”
A recent report from Australia’s peak scientific body CSIRO estimated that building a large-scale nuclear power plant in Australia would cost approximately $8.5bn and take at least 15 years to deliver, longer than the Coalition’s 10-year timeline.
Responding to the Coalition’s intervention, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese labelled the proposal a “fantasy” which “didn’t make sense”.
“There’s no costings, there’s no serious time frame, there’s no proportion of how much nuclear will be as part of their energy system, there’s no details on what type of reactor,” he said.
The Prime Minister also took aim at the Coalition’s lack of community consultation, arguing it was unclear whether they would ignore the regional communities affected if they pushed back against hosting a nuclear power plant.
“Are these seven sites going to get nuclear reactors imposed on them, must be said, sometime two decades away?” he said.
“Is the consultation process just going through the motions? They can’t say whether they haven’t provided a real one or not.”