Opposition leader making a good fist of energy:
Dutton is right that Australia is an outlier among the top twenty economies regarding nuclear power, even though Germany and Italy do not have reactors. Indonesia and Saudi Arabia don’t, but they plan to, and Germany used to.
What is more important is his point about gas.
It doesn’t matter that much what kind of baseload power is built out into the 2030s. Whether it is power storage or nuclear, it will impact costs, with the former likely cheaper, but the crucial calculation is what happens before then and the use of gas as the transitional fuel.
Unless or until somebody reserves gas for Australian use or applies export levies to crash the local price and collect appropriate tax, the energy transition will miss all Paris targets.
Dutton is not discussing the reservation of gas or export levies, so his solution of digging up more of it will not lower the local energy price, and the transition will stall economically and politically.
