From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Christinamiot. It's Wednesday, November twenty just weeks after the government canceled a space program worth seven billion dollars, it's been revealed Elon Musk's SpaceX launched a satellite for the Australian Defense Force. The secret communications device is part of a four hundred and five million dollar contract between the ADF and Optus. Construction sites in Victoria could be subject to snap twenty
four hour shutdowns in the coming days. Building unions say they're concerned their offices could be targeted by bikis as the fallout from the CFMEU scandal continues. Those stories alive right now at the Australian dot com dot au. The government has sidestepped urging by our orcus allies to give civilians faster access to nuclear technology, and it's exposed a deep irony in the Labour Party's position on nuclear in today's episode, where the Government draws the line and how
it could be a golden opportunity for the opposition. On Monday Night, at the United Nations Annual Climate Change Assembly, the United Kingdom's Energy Secretary ed Milliband and the United States Deputy Secretary of Energy David Turk signed an agreement to pour billions of dollars into the research and development
of nuclear technology. It's part of a bigger plan to cut carbon emissions and provide security for the energy industry as it transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy solutions. Thirty one nations have already signed on to help triple nuclear capacity before the end of the decade and make new nuclear technology available by twenty fifty, and our ORCUST allies made it abundantly clear they expect Australia to get
on board. But on Tuesday Australia's Climate Change minister said that's a hard no.
It was not unexpected that Australia would not support this nuclear proposal. There was one at the last cop meeting and we didn't support that. We are an observer.
Dennis Shenahan is The Australian's national editor.
But the real problem for the government in this case was that Ed Milliband, the UK Energy Secretary, said we were expected to sign it, and he referred to our allies, in other words, our ORCUS partners with whom we have a nuclear powered Submarine Agreement wanted US to join the
new Enhanced Development Probe for civilian nuclear energy. Now okay, the government decided not to do that in keeping with its policy, but it was an ill prepared decision and what it has done has highlighted the contradictory nature of actually having a nuclear powered submarine program. And once again there was a lack of preparedness in something that Chris
Bowen knew was coming. It happened at the last COP, it was going to happen at this COP, and yet we were caught flat footed and embarrassed.
Chris Bowen is in Azerbaijan for COP twenty nine and a statement released by his office said more or less that Australia doesn't need nuclear power because we have better weather. It's being read by a voice actor.
Our international partners understand that Australia's abundance of renewable energy resources makes no nuclear power an unviable option for inclusion in our energy mix.
For decarbonization efforts, Labour is backing renewables like solar as the path forward.
Put simply, London has only one thousand, six hundred and thirty three hours of sunshine hours in an average year. By comparison, Australia's least sunny capital city is Melbourne with two thousand, three hundred and sixty two, while our sunniest capital city is Perth has three thy two hundred and twenty nine.
The statement dropped in the midst of a ferocious attack by Labour on the Liberal Party's nuclear policy. Here's the Acting Prime Minister, Richard Miles in Parliament on Tuesday.
For Australia, pursuing a path of nuclear energy would represent pursuing the single most expensive electricity option on the planet.
Environment Minister Tenure Plit said nuclear energy takes too long to develop, meaning millions of tons of carbon will continue to be pumped into the atmosphere in the meantime.
It makes the government look too ideologically driven and it doesn't look at the making a serious decision about the appeal from the US and the UK, oh and about thirty other nations leading nations gluting Canada and France, and it just makes it look like we are isolating ourselves and we're not talking about some of the clearly very serious issues, and not just the firming of energy, which is what ed Milliband was talking about, but also the
cutting of carbon emissions. So the UK and the US, a labor government and a democratic government, we're asking Australian labor government to join them in securing energy security and cutting carbon emissions as part of the decarbonization of industry.
So it seems pretty obvious that at least we should talk about it, and so I think the way the government has gone about it, declaring its outlawed and using an argument that oh a Perth and Melbourne, even Melbourne is sunnier than London, and makes it look a bit puole.
Coming up the British government's nuclear sized gift to Peter Dutton. Back in June, Opposition leader Peter Dutton announced his party's plan to establish nuclear reactors at seven locations around Australia if the coalition gets up at the next election.
We know that the government has a renewables only policy which is just not fit for purpose.
The announcement was the centerpiece of a radical newsstance on energy policy that could see the government's legislated twenty thirty emissions reductions target scrapped.
No other country in the world can keep the lights on twenty four to seven with the renewables only policy. We need to make sure that hospitals can stay on twenty four to seven. We need to make sure that cold rooms can stay on twenty four seven. We need to make sure that our economy can function twenty four to seven. And we can only do that with a strong base low power.
So when the US and the UK urged Australia to join that global movement towards nuclear it gave Peter Dunden a gift.
What they've done is put out a perfectly logical, perfectly reasonable approach to expanding civilian nuclear energy around the world, working to get with a whole range of other nations, including China, to actually reduce carbon emissions and provide more secure and cheaper energy to industry. Now this seemed perfectly reasonable, and yet Australia is now being seen to reject it utterly, and Peter Dutton immediately picked up on it and said Australia is now isolating itself and he used the term
we're embarrassing ourselves on the world stage. Now here's Peter Dutton, leader of the Coalition, saying that the Labor Party is embarrassing itself on the world stage over what climate change.
But the Coalition has been vague on the details, refusing to release detailed costings of the nuclear scheme, which would see a mix of smaller modular nuclear reactors and full size facilities built on the site of existing power stations.
So he is fudging on his own costings, the details of his own policy, and yet today has given him another excuse to attack Labor over climate change and nuclear energy. It turned around in twenty four hours. This is not good politics. It helps Dutton and it helps him slip out from under once again on not having to provide the detail of his own policy, which he should be providing and which people are saying he should provide, but Labour gives him another excuse to avoid it.
And with the cost of living front of mind for most voters in the run up to next year's federal election, the major parties are keen to pitch their solutions.
What Labor is trying to do is reduce the nuclear argument to one of cost, and what they are saying is that Peter Dutton's nuclear policy will cost more than their renewables policy. One of the other reasons, of course, is they can't use the old argument about nuclear being dangerous because they're actually buying eight nuclear reactors from the
UK for the submarines. The problem for them in why they're doing this is that Dutton has pursued the cost of living and the cost of energy and at the last election Antony Albinasi promised on more than ninety occasions that people's power bills would drop by two hundred and seventy five dollars and come January one, that's an officially broken promise. So yes, the cost of living will be the main element, but energy will be at the heart of that, not just on the cost, but on what
plans you have to address it. Dutton's argument is if you don't have nuclear in the mix, you can't have reliable and you will have more expensive renewable energy because of transmission costs.
So it is a.
Fight over the cost of living, it's a fight over the cost of energy, and nuclear is the vehicle with which the two sides are trying to have it out.
Dennis Shanahan is The Australian's National editor. You can read his analysis, as well as all the nation's best news, sport and politics right now at The Australian dot com dot au