It took less than 24 hours for the childish fear campaign surrounding Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy policy to flood social media.
I’m not talking about posts from the average user. Federal and state Labor leaders and the trade union movement quickly began publishing improbable and frankly ridiculous ways of trying to undermine nuclear power.
Deformed pets, references to The Simpsons, toxic spills causing three-eyed fish and images suggesting the sites could be located near iconic natural wonders such as Victoria’s Twelve Apostles were just some of the immature games MPs were playing.
Yesterday I said that the mother of all scare campaigns would soon begin, but I didn’t think it would be so pathetic.
The Australian Union movement suggested the family dog would become deformed as a result of Peter Dutton’s nuclear power proposal.
Victorian Prime Minister Jacinta Allan’s team produced this Simpsons-inspired meme, in which Allan criticizes nuclear energy as “toxic”
It’s not that there aren’t serious problems with Dutton’s announcement; I’ll address those issues shortly.
Victoria’s new premier, Jacinta Allan, no less, posted mock images of three-eyed fish jumping out of the water in Gippsland, writing: “The Liberal Party wants an expensive and toxic nuclear reactor in Gippsland.”
Anthony Albanese’s contribution was not much better: “Instead of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, this is Peter Dutton and the Seven Nuclear Reactors.”
I wonder how long it took the Prime Minister’s tax-funded team of 11 media advisers to reach that conclusion. Or did Albo think about it with pride on his account?
Tapping into The Simpsons theme, Victorian federal MP Josh Burns tweeted images of nuclear reactors with the Liberal Party logo, writing “under Peter Dutton, Australians will glow green.”
Smart things.
At 62, Labor MP for the Victorian seat of Corangamite, Libby Cocker, was not too mature to make a similar inquiry, days before Dutton’s announcement.
The Victorian federal MP referred to the old-fashioned “where the hell are you?” tourism campaign, spearheaded by Lara Bingle.
Cocker, who was a schoolteacher before entering politics, tweeted a mock-up of a bikini-clad Bingle standing in front of the 12 Apostles on the Victorian coast with three nuclear reactors billowing smoke behind her.
There really must be something in Victoria’s water, before the nuclear waste arrives, as claimed.
References to The Simpsons were increasingly frequent.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union shared an image of a Chernobyl-style dystopia
The official X page of the Australian Union movement posted an image of something deformed or another, it was hard to tell, above the headline “this will be your family dog”.
Scare campaigns are rarely about accuracy, and that’s a bipartisan issue. But they are rarely so childish in nature.
It will be interesting to see whether these inexperienced MPs and vested interests continue to act in this way or intensify their attacks in the coming weeks and months.
History tells us that fear campaigns work, especially against big, bold political ideas put forward by the opposition. But do they work when they are so discreet?
Before Dutton revealed where the reactors would be located, Labor MP Libby Coker shared this meme, inspired by Lara Bingle’s famous Tourism Australia advert.
As mentioned above, if anyone wants to seriously criticize Dutton’s politics, there is plenty to delve into without resorting to juvenile antics.
For example, Dutton says he plans to use existing coal-fired power plants and that the government will pay for and own the operations. But most private owners of these sites have already ruled out handing them over to a coalition government, and were not consulted before the policy was announced.
Most of the sites Dutton has announced are in states that have legislatively banned nuclear power, and several of these premiers have already ruled out changing that.
The cost of the policy has not been calculated, much less modeled to determine what taxpayers could receive if or when construction began.
We don’t even know who the Coalition hired to produce this policy. Is it rooted in any academic research beyond a superficial announcement in a thought bubble?
We also don’t yet know what types of nuclear reactors the opposition is proposing to build: the new, smaller modules or the larger, more established varieties used elsewhere in the world? It’s a pretty basic choice not to include yourself in a major political ad.
So yes, there are serious questions that serious people need to ask and that require serious answers before Team Dutton can expect Australians to get behind their proposal.
Unfortunately, the Labor government and its union colleagues seem largely unable to rise to the top and adequately challenge the policy announcement.
Instead, they choose to play in the social media sandbox.
It is no wonder that the public has such a negative view of the political class.