Whether it’s Labor working to get transmission lines and offshore wind up and running or the Coalition working to create a nuclear industry from scratch, it will take a strong government with the capacity to articulate a plan, and the legal, financial and human resources to make it a reality.
All of these requirements were met when we constructed the Snowy Mountains Scheme, a decades-long federal government initiative undertaken in cooperation with Victoria and NSW.
Are they still in place? Not yet. Government capacity to act has been eroded over decades of neoliberalism. Particularly at the national level, public service expertise has been hollowed out and replaced by reliance on private consulting firms.
To rebuild the federal government’s capacity to act will require recreating the public service as a career which attracts the best and brightest graduates – many of whom currently end up in the financial sector.
Nuclear power
Achieving net zero with renewables or nuclear means rebuilding the hollowed-out public service after decades of cuts
in The ConversationThe question of nuclear in Australia’s energy sector
for Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation CSIROKey points
- Nuclear power does not currently provide an economically competitive solution in Australia.
- Lead author of GenCost, Paul Graham, says updated costs for a key project in the US have been found to be very high.
- The costs for small modular reactors (SMRs) could improve over time, but will be too late to make a significant contribution to achieving net zero emissions.