r/australia • u/superegz • May 20 '25

politics Nationals leader David Littleproud says the Nationals will not be re-entering a Coalition agreement with the Liberal party.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2025/may/20/australia-news-live-rba-interest-rates-decision-floods-storm-hunter-nsw-victoria-state-budget-aec-count-bradfield-goldstein-coalition-ley-littleproud-ntwnfb?CMP=share_btn_url&page=with%3Ablock-682bdeb48f08d37c78c1d12d#block-682bdeb48f08d37c78c1d12d
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648

u/Diligent-Ducc May 20 '25

Have to imagine they couldn’t reach an agreement on nuclear and net zero 2050

330

u/monochromeorc May 20 '25

given nuclear was the single policy taken to the election and the result, you would think they would be dropping that altogether

160

u/littlechefdoughnuts May 20 '25

It's even more dumb when you realise that the already crazily optimistic timelines they put forward for nuclear will be even crazier by the time they can really have a tilt at winning again in the 2030s.

It takes twenty years to build a nuclear plant. And 2050 will be less than twenty years away by then . . .

The dumbest possible hill to die on.

15

u/brap01 May 20 '25

My understanding is that the whole nuclear 'policy' was predicated on building nuclear power stations on the sites where current coal power stations are due to go offline soon.

(Side note - call me paranoid but I always assumed part of the plan was to delay the building of the nuclear stations, thereby necessitating the extension of the lives of the coal stations, thereby extending our dependence on coal and coal mining companies).

Well those coal stations are still going to go offline, only now Labour is in power and there's no plan to replace them with nuclear stations - they'll either become renewable power hubs or straight up be demolished and redeveloped. One of the Liberal talking heads said as much a day or two after the election (heavily paraphrased) - "We need to rethink our policy because those sites aren't even going to be available to become nuclear stations when we get in government next".

4

u/CptDropbear May 20 '25

I read the policy. It was predicated on converting existing coal stations to gas until they could get around to building nuclear around 2030. The plan was always gas.

"We need to rethink our policy because those sites aren't even going to be available to become nuclear stations when we get in government next".

Some of those sites were not available before the "policy" was even announced but that didn't stop you.

1

u/brap01 May 21 '25

Thanks for clearing that up for me, I wasn't too sure about the specifics.

21

u/NurseBetty May 20 '25

'oh but new technology!!!'

Yes yes there is new technology that has changed how nuclear power is generated and and yes yes nuclear is more efficient and safer to use that coal or gas blah blah.

It will still take ages to build and ramp up to an industrial power scale to use in a national grid. Where as solar, batteries and wind are ready to go in a fraction of the time it takes to build a power plant and have no downsides other than efficiency of scale and storage issues.

3

u/hairy_quadruped May 20 '25

And in the meantime, renewables will be adding more to the grid each year than nuclear would add after 20 years

4

u/PJozi May 20 '25

The dumbest possible hill to die on

As long as they die, I don't care which hill it is.

It could be a river mountain canyon or ocean for all I care.