Dutton’s policy exposes the Liberals as slow learners
Dec 27, 2024
Prudent public policy seeks to protect us against black swan events. Black Swan Theory (BST) is a metaphor that describes a rare, unexpected event that has a huge impact and is difficult to predict. These events are considered outliers because there is no past data to indicate when they could occur.
Governments already invest in protecting us against black swan events. Right around the pacific are Tsunami warning devices that will give us early warning that there is a Tsunami threat. We scan the skies to forewarn us about a potential asteroid impact. The WHO monitors potential pandemics.
Some of these precautions can be inconvenient for policy makers. Covid was foreseen well before it occurred (search The Lancet for discussions about zoonosis) however, governments had failed to follow the precautionary advice and thus were caught unprepared.
Public policy in this regard is not much different to the preventive maintenance homeowners either take or fail to take. Those who are lax about such maintenance tend to find that their plumbing fails on weekends or during the holiday season.
When we look at the decision by the Liberals to commit to nuclear power we can see that they have learnt nothing from their most recent stint in government – shockingly underprepared to meet both the Covid, Bushfire and Flood challenges they have decided to divert funds for the development of Nuclear Power.
At $5 trillion per annum the energy industry is the world’s largest industry. It is an industry characterised by wishful thinking; it is an industry that has no shortage of players who are long on promises and short on delivery.
Politicians are only too aware that inexpensive, reliable energy is what the public wants – it can be a vote winner, it can make the difference between winning and losing government. The public wants to be reassured that we can have the toys we want without harming the environment. We also want to have security – we do not want a foreign power to be able to switch off our access to reliable and affordable power.
In spruiking their technologies the industry relies on the naïve belief that we can fully understand a world that is far more complex and random than we realise. It seems that the Liberal Party has fallen for the promises that the nuclear industry trots out yet nuclear power is in every sense a black swan.
Taken at face value nuclear energy seemed to be a no-brainer. In the post-war period there has been no shortage of optimistic predictions that nuclear energy would provide inexpensive, clean, energy that would meet all of our needs. Seventy years later we can confidently say that they have not lived up to the initial hype. Time and time the reality has fallen short of our predictions. Nuclear power stations are characterised by cost over runs, are rarely delivered on time and no matter how sophisticated the safety features have a history of dramatic failures.
There is a reason why coal and nuclear struggle to attract private investment.
Coal is becoming a redundant source of energy and nuclear power is a black swan. Awareness of the impact CO2 has on the climate there is little appetite for coal. That would seem to leave nuclear as a candidate for clean energy.
Politicians seem to be tone deaf to the idea that old metaphor that you cannot step in the same river twice. When it comes to energy the world today is very different to that of the sixties and seventies when nuclear power seemed to be a cost-effective solution to our energy needs. We conveniently ignored the fact that there were downstream factors that needed to be considered. It is not merely the disposal of nuclear waste (for which we still do not have a solution.) but it is also the need that power plants need eventually to be decommissioned. But even had we solutions to these problems we cannot ignore that the world has changed.
We have developed technologies that make wind and solar, when used in conjunction with different storage options, a reliable source of energy. There are households that are no longer dependent on a centralised grid for their power needs. Homeowners have invested in insulation, they purchase appliances which are not so power hungry and they are very much aware of the importance of reducing their carbon footprint.
In this environment the Liberal nuclear power policy ignores significant changes in the public attitude. Public attitudes can be manipulated and can be encouraged to shift but it seems that here current Labor policies seem to be laying the foundation for a changing future. The logic of their policies is to invest in the present – identify areas of personal expenditure such as education, child care, energy costs and housing and seek to help where it can.
It has fostered a mindset where it sees the role of the government to find ways of enabling people to meet their needs. Of course more needs to be done. It could follow up on the E.U. initiative to explore a Universal Basic Income. Their research has found that a Universal Basic Income (UBI) can be financed sustainably and equitably without reducing existing tax revenues. A UBI, financed through a reform of the personal income tax and the introduction of wealth and greenhouse gas emissions taxes, ensures the material existence of all Australians and fosters a more egalitarian nation through its redistributive effects.
It would seem Labor is looking to invest in Australians capacity to meet the challenges of the 21st century whereas the Liberals are looking to invest in kicking the can of the challenges we face further down the road.