In the next few weeks, Peter Dutton will finally unveil his plan for Australia to build and operate up to seven nuclear power plants. For a first-term opposition leader it’s a high-risk strategy. While it’s correct to argue that Dutton has been cautious across a range of policy areas, the adoption of this single policy means that, by definition, he is no longer a small-target opposition leader.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is staking his future on nuclear power. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen Anthony Albanese certainly agrees. Last Sunday he told readers of this masthead that Labor would campaign every day against the policy right through to polling day.
We’ve been here before: in 2007 the then-opposition infrastructure spokesman, aided by the then Labor national secretary, Tim Gartrell, helped lead the campaigns against nuclear ambitions. Albanese is now prime minister and Gartrell his chief of staff. And in a sign of how confident the pair are that a nuclear scare campaign will cut through, on Wednesday morning Albanese posted bucolic pictures of idyllic Australian rivers and beaches to his 401,000 Instagram followers.
The pictures of Newcastle, Anglesea, the Hunter Valley, Gippsland, Collie, Bribie Island, Gladstone, Barossa Valley, the Whitsundays and Jervis Bay came with an unsubtle message: “What do all these beautiful parts of Australia have in common? They’re at risk of a nuclear reactor in their backyard under Peter Dutton”. But far from retreat, Dutton retu.