Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has defended his decision not to provide costing alongside the Coalition’s nuclear plan, after announcing yesterday its energy modelling will be released ahead of the federal election.
Dutton has hit back at critics who say there is no detail in the nuclear policy, telling ABC News Breakfast the Coalition had “taken a deliberate step not to be held hostage by the Labor Party”.
“We want the information out there in bite-sized bits, if you like, so that people can consume exactly what it is that we’re proposing and understand what it’s not proposing,” he said.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.Credit: Rhett Wyman
Dutton said the nuclear plan only involved coal-fired power stations that were at the end of life.
“That’s because there’s an existing transmission network, so the poles and wires [are] already there, so we don’t need Labor’s new 28,000 kilometres of poles and wires through national parks and pristine farming land, etc. and it provides the opportunity to talk about that aspect of our proposal and we’ll release the next stage in due course,” he said.
“There’s been months and months and months of work put into this policy. I believe it’s in our country’s best interests.”
Dutton said Australia was an outlier in the world’s biggest economies in its rejection of nuclear power.
“I understand the sectional interests and people who are invested into green technologies and the rest of it, but my job is not to make rich people richer. My job is to provide an environment where electricity is cheaper, it’s consistent, it’s cleaner,” he said.
“We can do that through nuclear power, as 19 of the world’s top 20 economies have done. Australia’s the only outlier in that regard.”