Why Peter Dutton is Just Crazy About Nuclear!

Peter Dutton and His Majesty’s most loyal Opposition. Yes, it’s an old joke, but it works damnit!

It’s election season here in Australia with voters shortly to choose between the currently incumbent Labor Party under Anthony Albanese and the Liberal-National Coalition under Peter Dutton (there are plenty of other parties but the odds of any of them winning enough seats to form government are so tiny as to be laughable). Good old Pete has been campaigning for quite some time on dealing with climate change by building nuclear power stations, which is something so out of left field for Australian politics that it has a lot of people wondering what’s in the water in the Liberal party room. Well, read on and all shall be revealed!

(Note for Americans and other aliens: The Australian Liberal Party is Australia’s major conservative party, with the Nationals their hillbilly cousins. This causes all kinds of problems, most notably when the sarcastic hashtag #imvotingliberalbecause escaped Aussie Twitter some years back and utterly baffled the poor Americans)

Reason 1: The Liberals have spent the better part of the last 30 years arguing that climate change is a hoax, and renewable energy is a scam. The majority of Australians now know that neither of these things are true and are demanding action on climate, but years of denial have painted the Libs into a corner where they can’t embrace renewables without handing the Left a massive propaganda coup. So they’ve grabbed on to nuclear as an alternate ‘clean’ energy source that won’t make them look like they’re caving to the progressives.

Reason 2: Renewable energy – rooftop solar in particular – has massive potential to take energy generation out of the hands of big corporations and put it into the hands of individuals. This is a nightmare for said big corporations, who will see their profits plunge as people switch to making and using their own power. Nuclear keeps power generation in the hands of big business, which is where the Liberals’ corporate donors/masters want it!

Reason 3: Every non-partisan expert says that it will take at least 30 years to get nuclear power up and running in this country. Dutton denies this with vague hand-waving about ‘breakthroughs’, but from the Liberal viewpoint a big delay is a feature, not a bug. The longer it takes for nuclear to come online the longer the Liberal Party’s big business mates can keep on turning a profit from coal, oil and gas. Dutton’s dream reactor is the one that starts operating in the infinite tomorrow – the tomorrow that ticks over a day every day at midnight.

So there you have it, the three reasons Peter Dutton and the Liberal-National Coalition are suddenly crazy for a nuclear future. What a shower of dicks.

Prognostication

If the leadership spill goes ahead and Kevin Rudd becomes PM, Tony Abbott will spend the next week banging on about how the Labor party are an unorganised mess, can’t make up their minds, have a revolving door leadership and cannot be trusted with the future of the nation.

If the leadership spill doesn’t go ahead, or it does go ahead and Julia Gillard remains as PM, Tony Abbott will spend the next week banging on about how the Labor party are an unorganised mess, can’t make up their minds, have a dud for a leader and cannot be trusted with the future of the nation.

Whichever happens, the papers will agree with Tony Abbott, talkback radio will agree with the papers, and the vast unthinking mass of the voting public will agree with the talkback radio. This is what we – for some reason – label ‘the political process’.

The End of the Begining

I’ve avoided any political blogging for a bit because it’s all been up in the air since the election. To recap – we’ve ended up with a hung parliament with a bunch of Independents (and one Green) set to decide who’s going to form government. The Green and some of the Independents have already made their choices, leaving just three holdouts to decide the fate of the nation.

Well, today these three are set to reveal their choice. What’s interesting is that one of them – the, shall we say ‘somewhat eccentric’ Bob Katter – has broken ranks and announced that he’s supporting Tony Abbot and the Liberal/National Coalition a full hour before the scheduled press conference. This puts the Coalition and Labor neck and neck on 74 seats.

So, does this mean that the other two Independents are supporting Julia Gillard and Labor, and Katter’s decided he doesn’t want to be associated with them? Or that all three are supporting the Coalition and Bob Katter is just being Bob Katter and jumping the gun for his own Bob Katterish reasons?

Stay tuned…

Later: Katter has now said if the other two go for Labor, he might change his mind…

Later: Tony Windsor has come out for Labor (he likes Broadband and Renewable Energy). Labor leads 75 to 74. The Coalition cannot form government!

Later: Windsor is still talking. He’s never going to have an audience this big again and he’s milking it for all he can get…

Still Later: A work colleague is going to register “tonywindsorpleaseshutup.com”

Again Later: Finally. Now for Rob Oakshot.

Later Later Later: It’s “there can be only one”, get your pop-cultural references right!

Later Still: Oakshot’s as bad as Tony!

Later: We don’t care about your children! Tell us who’s PM!!

Laaaaaateeeeeer: C’mon!

LATER: This is worse than Who Wants to be a Millionaire

later later later later: You can equivocate later! Just give us a damn answer you fool!

Later: We want to go home tonight too!!

Later: i can has gubermint plz?

Later: Finally! Labor has 76 seats! Labor and Julia Gillard it is! Hooray! (Mind you at this point I’d be happy with a new election just to stop Oakfield talking…)

WE HAVE A GOVERNMENT!!!

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