Dutton set to roll the dice on huge gamble

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Peter Dutton is set to announce his long-awaited nuclear energy policy including several proposed sites and has called an unscheduled meeting of the shadow cabinet to finalise the plan.

News.com.au has confirmed that the Liberal leader plans to announce two to three sites where he wants to see nuclear energy plants if he is elected.

Mr Dutton will hold a press conference to make the announcement on Wednesday with Nationals leader David Littleproud and deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley.

Liberal MPs will be briefed on the plans at a phone hook up 8.30am on Wednesday.

The Liberal Party’s energy backbench committee is also holding talks on Tuesday at 6.30pm.

A senior Liberal source has confirmed to news.com.au that the nuclear policy will be outlined after those talks are concluded.

In recent weeks Mr Dutton told TheWeekend Australian that he would oppose the legislated 2030 emissions target, a 43 per cent cut compared with 2005 levels, at the next election but remain committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

He conceded that the coalition’s commitment to introduce nuclear power in Australia would not lead to plants being built before 2040.

Nationals leader David Littleproud confirmed those nuclear power plants would be in Nationals electorates.

“We will be very upfront and honest. They will be in National Party seats,” he said before attacking Labor’s renewables approach to green energy.

“We’ve been very clear that they will be limited to where existing coal power stations are, so we don’t need the extra 28,000 of transmission lines to plug the renewables in which tears up the food security and pushes up the food prices.”

Critics claimed that Mr Dutton’s new position could break Australia’s 2015 commitment to the Paris agreement, under which nearly 200 countries said they would aim to limit global heating to well below 2C and attempt to limit it to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

Anthony Albanese then called Mr Dutton’s stance “absurd” and suggested he would be “walking away from the Paris agreement”.

Mr Dutton said this was not the case and he would not be walking away from the Paris agreement.

The Liberal leader later told 2GB radio: “It’s very hard in opposition – without all the modelling and the advice from government – to put an exact figure on the table.”

Mr Dutton also said Labor’s targets, which he previously supported, would “trash” the economy.

“I think it’s very clear that we have absolute commitment to Paris and our commitment for net zero by 2050,” he said.

“It’s important, it doesn’t need to be linear, as we’ve pointed out, and we’re not going to send the economy into freefall and families bankrupt through an ideologically based approach, which is what Anthony Albanese is doing at the moment.”

Potential sites include the Latrobe Valley and Anglesea in Victoria, the Hunter Valley in NSW, Collie in WA, Port Augusta in South Australia, and potentially a plant in the southwest Queensland electorate of Maranoa, held by Nationals leader David Littleproud.

Mr Dutton has previously pledged he would reveal the opposition’s energy plan within “weeks” in March but the policy was then delayed until June.

“What we’ve said, the sites that we’re looking at are only those sites where there’s an end-of-life coal-fired power stations,” he told Sky in June.

“One of the main reasons is that people in those communities know that they’re going when coal goes and we have the ability to sustain heavy industry, we have the ability to keep the lights on.”

The peak scientific body the CSIRO has suggested that building a large-scale nuclear power plant in Australia would cost at least $8.5bn and take at least 15 years to deliver.

When pressed on the locations of the sites, Mr Dutton responded: “We’ve said that we’re looking at between six and seven sites, and we’ll make an announcement at the time of our choosing, not of Labor’s choosing.”

“We’ll make an announcement in due course, but I just make the point that wind and solar don’t work without government subsidy,” he said.