Howard's Nuclear Nightmare

As the Howard government moves closer to the election date, becoming increasingly nervous with poll results, the weekend announcement of the push for nuclear power was classic Howard and his attempt to wedge the Labor opposition. This time though it maybe Howard who has miscalculated both the depth of anti-nuclear power feeling within Labor itself and the electorate at large.

On the weekend Labor in a largely stage-managed conference laid to rest the bizarre idea of opposing uranium mining but supporting the currently existing three mines which actually expanded under Labors own time in government. Kevin Rudd got his way and Labor now supports uranium mining.

However and this seems to be where Howard has miscalculated, to a person there was no support at all for the establishment of a Nuclear power industry. This would seem to also be true of the general public. While there has been a rise in support for nuclear power amongst the general public where the real crunch comes is when people are confronted with the idea of one in their own backyard. The silence of Government MP’s calling for the establishment of a nuclear Power plant in their own electorates has been deafening. In the lead up to an election this is hardly surprising.

Howard may well have been hoping that Rudd would have been rolled on the weekend at the national conference and then put into a situation where his party was anti-uranium but still supporting current mines. This would have made Rudd’s position untenable. His push for Nuclear power though seems to fly in the face of his stated support for the coal industry and it will be interesting to see what the coal industry thinks of the massive amount of government funding that will need to be poured into the nuclear power industry to make it viable.

Howard will be forced at some stage as he goes down this road to also name actual locations for these power stations and one can be fairly sure that it will not be Bennelong or a blue ribbon liberal electorate that will be confronted with the specter of Nuclear power stacks on their horizons.

It seems to be a desperate move by a government becoming increasingly desperate to wedge the opposition into a corner but one wonders where the motivation for such a move has come from. It could be that some of the Liberal power brokers who have formed a consortium to establish a nuclear power plant have had some influence of convincing Howard that this is an issue that would wedge Labor but the lack of any push from within Labor circles to establish a Nuclear power industry seems to fly in the face of that perception.