Nuclear energy - Australian Family Party

In 1969, former SA Federal MP Bert Kelly was sacked as Minister for the Navy after the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne collided with America’s USS Frank E Evans in the South China Sea. Ministerial responsibility was interpreted differently in those days.

In 2025, Australia is once again on a collision course with the US, this time over our commitment to defence spending – with China again eerily in the picture.

Putting it bluntly, Australia is not pulling its weight and the Americans, who we rely on to defend us, are not happy.

In fact, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, together with his Foreign Minister Penny Wong, Defence Minister Richard Marles and Ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd, seem to be going out of their way to annoy our most important ally.

All have made no secret of the fact that they do not like Donald Trump – or even America for that matter – but do they have to take the opposite side on everything?

It brings to mind those two great books – ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People’ and ‘How to Lose Friends and Irritate People’.

Albanese and Co. have clearly been reading the wrong book!

What they are doing is downright dangerous.

They are jeopardising the Australia-UK-US (AUKUS) agreement which, at present, is our only forward defence plan.

Meanwhile, Chinese warships traverse our waters with impunity.

It is a given that the first duty of any government is the defence of the nation.

However, from the defence of the nation to the Middle East conflict to Russia and Ukraine to Australia’s energy policy and censorship laws, the Albanese government is letting the Trump administration know that we are not on the same page.

In Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Richard Plantagenet (later Richard III) says, ‘How sweet it is to wear the crown.’

Richard covets the crown and expresses his ambition and desire for the throne. He yearns for power and the perceived joys of kingship as he plots against the reigning King Henry.

However, when the question, ‘Where is thy crown?’ is posed to Henry himself, Henry responds that his crown is in his heart, not on his head, symbolizing that true kingship lies not in outward symbols of power but in what the crown represents.

Shakespeare’s insights into human nature and the yearning for power are timeless.

Like Richard Plantagenet, our Prime Minister might be good at getting to the top – be it to the top of a student union or the top of a political party – but once there he has proven himself to be totally unsuited to the role of competent governing.

It’s been said that voters want leadership, they want to be led – “But don’t boss me around,” they quickly add.

The job of a leader isn’t easy, but that’s the whole point.

Anthony Albanese was once asked, ‘Mr Albanese, if you were dictator, what’s the first thing you would do?’

‘Ban social media’, he replied.

How revealing.

That the Prime Minister would ban social media – our most popular means of communication – is brutally authoritarian.

It reminded me of a scene in the movie Oppenheimer in which nuclear scientist Robert Oppenheimer meets with President Harry Truman shortly after the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War 2.

Following his successful testing of the bomb, Oppenheimer was known to have uttered the words, ‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds’, a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, a holy scripture from Hinduism.

After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Oppenheimer told Truman he felt he had ‘blood on his hands’.

Truman angrily responded with the words, ‘The blood is on my hands, not yours. It was me who dropped the bomb, not you’.

With that, the meeting was over, and Truman said he ‘never wanted to see that man again’.

There’s more than a little Oppenheimer in Albanese’s view of himself and the world around him.

There’s an old Greek proverb, ‘The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows only one thing’.

Albanese knows only one thing – politics. It’s all he’s ever done. He’s a hedgehog.

But as we know, the world isn’t made up of just one thing, it is made up of a whole range of competing factors and trade-offs that differ for different people of different ages who live in different places and have different priorities.

Like the ‘crystallised intelligence’ vs ‘fluid intelligence’ paradigm. Crystallised intelligence employs experience and wisdom and knows how the world works. Fluid intelligence knows how to study, learn facts and pass exams. Foxes vs hedgehogs. We’ve all met them.

Harry Truman – a Democrat (America’s version of the Australian Labor Party) was a good President. A Bob Hawke type of President.

Before entering politics, Truman was a soldier and then a shopkeeper. A better understanding of how the world works you wouldn’t get than by owning a shop!

Harry was quite the fox.

The story is told of when Truman was elected President, his former army buddy and shopkeeper partner, Eddie Jacobson, said to him, ‘O Harry, now that you’re President, everyone’s going to start telling you what a great man you are, when you and I both know you ain’t’.

True leaders value the Eddie Jacobsons in their lives.

Anthony Albanese is no Harry Truman – or even a Bob Hawke for that matter.

And Australia is all the poorer for it.

Having said all that, I am consoled by the words of a small child who prayed, ‘Dear God, please look after mummy, and please look after daddy, and please look after my brother and sister and most of all please look after yourself because if anything ever happens to you we’re all going to be in a real mess.’

Thank you for your support.

It is exactly 50 years since Western Mining first discovered the massive gold, silver, copper and uranium ore body at the aptly-named Olympic Dam in South Australia. A golden anniversary indeed!

But discovering the ore was just the beginning.

The fight to allow uranium mining at Olympic Dam was brutal.

The ruling Labor Party, under then South Australian Premier Don Dunstan, was vehemently opposed to uranium mining and particularly opposed to uranium mining at Olympic Dam.

One of the key opponents of Olympic Dam, calling it a ‘a mirage in the desert’, was one Mike Rann, an anti-uranium campaigner from New Zealand who had come to South Australia to work for Dunstan. Rann eventually became Premier of South Australia in 2002.

The Liberal Party, led by David Tonkin and his deputy Roger Goldsworthy, won the next election and in 1980 set about implementing their proposed ‘Olympic Dam Indenture Agreement’, building both the mine and nearby township of Roxby Downs.

Its final passage, through the SA parliament’s Upper House in 1982, came down to a single vote – Labor’s Norm Foster. A former wharf worker, Foster had sat on the select committee into Olympic Dam and did not agree with Labor’s position that uranium mining was an environmental or ethical scourge.

On the day before the final vote on the project, Foster resigned from the Labor Party and, the following day, crossed the floor of parliament to give his vote to the Tonkin government thereby clearing the way for the new mine.

For years following his actions, Foster was vilified by the ALP. However, his role in establishing one of South Australia’s most successful projects (and biggest earners!) was later acknowledged by the Labor Party and his membership restored.

Fast forward to 2024, and Australia is experiencing a similar political challenge closely related to uranium mining – nuclear energy.

The case for nuclear power has been well argued, but there are more than just economic and energy reliability reasons for embracing nuclear power. There could also be significant strategic benefits.

First, if there’s one thing we learned from the pandemic, it’s the importance of self-reliance.

Australia has for too long been dependent on overseas supply chains – fuel and energy being no exception.

Australia’s future energy needs are currently being assessed against three criteria – reliability, affordability, and emissions intensity.

Unfortunately, the laws of physics and economics do not allow all three. Two out of three yes, three out of three no.

As emissions intensity has pretty much been mandated, this leaves only reliability and affordability to choose from. Clearly, reliability has to win.

No form of renewable energy generation yet invented or discovered is reliable enough to meet Australia’s base-load demand.

Nuclear power is both reliable and emissions-free.

It is, however, expensive to build. Again, two out of three.

In addition, there is a fourth aspect worthy of consideration – regional security.

South Korea, Japan, India and Pakistan all have nuclear power. Indonesia, Thailand, Bangladesh and the Philippines are looking to develop it.

All have, or will have, spent nuclear fuel.

As Australia engages more with Asia, we bring a unique perspective and relationship devoid of the centuries-old enmities and history that exists between some of these countries.

We could be the Switzerland of the South.

Australia could establish an Asia–Pacific office for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). We could host conferences and bring the world’s best nuclear minds here.

We could bring together expertise on the ways in which other nations are storing their spent nuclear fuel. We could, as the 2015 SA Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission heard, store that fuel in South Australia, and not have it stored within the borders of nations with fractious relations and/or unstable geology.

The countries whose spent fuel was stored here would have an interest in our security.

And as well as the multi-billion-dollar economic benefits – abolishing stamp duty, payroll tax, occupational licencing charges and many other taxes, charges and levies – with the latest technology we may even be able to extract more recycled power from the spent fuel in the future.

The more we engage with the nuclear question, the more positive the opportunities arise.

But first we must remove the regulatory obstacles and legislated bans blocking Australia’s economic and energy independence.

Thank you for your support.