The Chaser Report - Duttonheimer

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Dom and Charles address the story of the week: Dutton's nuclear future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. Charles, I am in Queensland. I'm on the Gold Coast and let me say the 80s architecture here is absolutely brilliant. I've come here in part to understand what it is that makes Peter Dutton, Peter Dutton, as the Queenslander that we know he is, there's something about the Gold Coast

that makes me not worry so much about the risks of a nuclear meltdown. No, exactly. Because if the world was destroyed, at least that would get rid of the Gold Coast. Well, I just think architecturally, it would be a clean slate, you know? Yeah, it would actually improve it.

So I think they've made a mistake. Petit up in the list of seven new nuclear reactor sites, I think the Gold Coast has to be added to it. But other than that, Matt, since I've landed in Queensland a short while ago, I'm really starting to think this is going to work. There's a couple of minor issues that we will talk about, but I reckon they're all completely workable.

Okay, great. Well, let's get into it straight up to this. So, look, as people will know, Peter Dutton's come up with his list, his bold, brave list of seven places around the country where he will turn mouldy old coal-fired power stations into exciting new, in some cases, cutting edge, amazing nuclear power stations to get us to net zero without any worry about renewables. Yes, yes.

I think this is a plan. It is. It's a bold vision. No one in opposition since, I don't know, Bill Shorten or John Houston has come up with such a bold. Or Mark Latham, I think. Mark Latham. Policy for opposition. Arguably, wasn't it?

Yeah, John Houston, yeah, you're right. John Houston was the other one, yeah. To be honest, I think what this announced, a lot of political commentators, including clearly UDOM, have got it slightly wrong in terms of what actually was announced a couple of days ago.

Really? And what petted up and was saying, yeah. I think everyone's a bit confused because they're thinking... A lot of people think that what he was announcing was seven nuclear power plans. Yeah. What actually happened...

Bill, Charles. They're as good as Bill. No. See, and I know this because I was talking to some staffers in Peter Dutton's office about this just after the announcement. And what has happened is Peter Dutton thought that it was opposite stay on the day that he did the announcement. Right. So the whole thing is the entire policy is opposite stay policy, right? So the whole thing is, so I'll just outline a few of the key things. Like, he wanted to reduce electricity prices by bringing in the most expensive form of electricity

generation known to mankind, right? That is, see what he's doing? Like, he was just playing the opposites game. Like, he was going, I'm going to reduce electricity prices by making them more expensive, right? See? Well, we do this. I do this with my children all the time.

It's a very fun game. You know, like, because he's a conservative government, right? And the whole policy is that they're going to, they're going to be government-owned. All these nuclear power plants are going to be government-owned. All these nuclear power plants are going to be government. known. The government is going to take over an entire sector of the economy and nationalise it, like the communists. And so to be a conservative, I'm going to have a communist-style command economy, state-run, electricity sector, right? Do you see what it is? It's quite

funny when you realize what he was doing. You know, like to solve climate change, what we're going to do is we're going to extend coal-fired power stations until 2035. See, that's again, we're going to extend the life of coal to solve climate change. That's a joke, right? That's like opposite stay, right? Like to get, you know, like in the way he would get. Yeah, yeah. And the final one, the very funniest one, was the idea that to get elected in Australia,

I'm going to propose a big policy just before the election with really specific details. Because that doesn't happen. You don't do that if you want to get elected, right? So it's all just. Right. So you're saying that that's the thing that makes it clear. Yes, yes, if you actually I must say that the opposites day meme, that was devastating.

He thought it was an opposite start. And I think he thought that everyone knew that. I think he went out there and he went, well, you know, let's have some fun. Let's just do an opposites day little announcement. But then everyone's taking him seriously. And I think I think you can blame the sort of left liberal media, the Craig Rucasels, the ABC Brigade, you know, all these sort of naysaysays. have come out against it like climate 200 and you know like all those sort of lefty organizations like

you know the business community and the mining sector and Andrew forest you know all those lefty you know people that Peter doesn't hate you know they've all come out against it well that that's that's that's because they didn't understand no no no no no no it's just opposites day I must say that's the what do you think this is opposites day attack has it's only sharpened in its effectiveness since primary school. Absolutely. That's one theory. But I put to you, Charles,

I put to you that I'm in Queensland. I am actually in Queensland. Every day is opposite state. A little bit, a little bit, yeah. You know, I think that the White Sandshoe Brigade developers who've built all these massive ugly condos around, I think they thought they were beautifying and modernising the place. Yes.

But the thing is, Charles... Yeah, he's opposite state. And to save the Great Barrier Reefers, if they build a massive cold port. Yeah. Didn't they? Well, actually, did you know that, oh, I found this out the other day.

Under Joe, there was a serious plan to drill and mine and break down and sell 80% of the Great Barrier Reef. Did you know that? Queensland claimed that they owned it. And did they do it? No, they couldn't, because in the end that the federal government got involved and stopped them. But Queensland asserted the right to just basically demolish the whole thing under Joe. If he'd had his way, it would have been decades earlier.

Have you gone snorkeling in the... Great Barry Reef? Never. I'm too late now. Isn't it dead? Yeah, it's too late. It's very beautiful. But it does make you go, you know what I want to do?

I want to dig this up. Drill it. I want to kill it. That's right. So let me explain to you in a moment, Charles, how Queenslanders think differently. And where you see, oh, your sort of southerner, opposite day, irony, political satire, I see possibility, Charles. I see possibility.

The thing you've got to understand about Queenslanders, and I'm now a Queenslander. Now, I'm here, I'm staying, right? This is my new home, is that we see possibility. You see, and Joe's the one that set the tone for this, right? You see heritage listed, you know, ancient, you know, historic pub. I see a building site that we just demolished in the middle of the night. You don't take no for an answer. And that's the thing that Southerners don't understand about Peter Dutton.

If he wants to build a nuclear power plant or seven of them, it's going to happen. And I've got a list here, Charles, of all the objections that the lefty media have made, In the past couple of days. Yes. That's just a question of getting a big enough bulldozer. Right, yeah. Great. Okay.

Well, I mean, one of the things, Charles, is that every Premier says they won't allow it and that they've actually made nuclear power illegal in their states. Yes, yes. To which Peter Dutton says, I'm going to make them. I'm going to pay them so much money. And this is what he said. Premier's never say no to money. I'll just give them money until they say yes.

But whose money will he be giving to the states? Taxpayers. But wait a minute, if he can give money to the states from taxpayers, why doesn't he just do that anyway? Because, Charles, the point you need to understand is that when you can give so much money, every Premier says yes, if the cheque's big enough, if the grant's big enough, they'll just say yes. And that's how you make power cheaper is by giving the premiers lots of taxpayers money.

But wait a minute, who's paying? But wait a minute. So the power's going to be cheaper because our taxes will be high? What? I don't understand. No, you're just going to a bit of debt. It's all about the electricity bill, Charles. You've got to get cheaper bills.

It doesn't matter how much we have to pay the Premier's to allow it. It's you've got to think big. That's our money that he's paying. I don't understand. Well, it won't be any more. It'll be the Premier's money. So that's one objection. So I forget that.

It's going to come in light. That makes no sense to go on. You stop the Southern thinking. I don't want the Southern thinking. CSIRO. They issue their boring gen cost report, you know, every year. Oh, so boring. They look at the prices of how much it would cost to,

to generate electricity. And they've said that nuclear is by far the most expensive as you mentioned before. That means the economy grows by more when you build a bigger power plant, Charles. They've said $8.5 billion per power plant that the bigger ones, get this,

the bigger ones, if we build the bigger ones, they'll be 12 billion, the full scale ones, except that, here's the trick. That's once you've got an existing nuclear program. CSIRO says the first ones, like the first couple, big ones, will be double. That's what they say.

So the first ones are going to be $24 billion per power plant, the ones that he wants to build in 2035. Yeah, but you never include, you amateurise your start-up costs. Yeah, and as I say, this will grow the economy. Don't worry about it. It's just a rounding error. It's a $24 billion injection into the economy. But I don't understand.

Oh, I see. So you're saying it's actually good that they're going to be so expensive. It's pump priming. It's vision. Vision's not cheap, Charles. Isn't the $24 billion is mainly going to go to overseas? nuclear power plant makers? Like, it's like general electric.

Don't they get the money? Because it's, we don't have the technology. I don't mean that the Australian economy is going to grow, Charles. Oh, right. No, no. The world economy will grow. Yeah, right. So there's not...

So how does it grow our economy? Because the thing is, the nuclear is just to replace the coal, right? Like, it's not like there's any extra electricity. Or is you going to keep the coal on even after? No, in fact, there'll probably be less. They'll probably be less. So we'll talk about that. Because I've got some numbers on that as well.

But essentially, I think one of the things is he's going to have to pay a lot of money to security guards to keep out the anti-nuclear protesters. That will generate jobs in these communities. It does. Unless you just go a little bit more Queensland cop style and shoot the protesters. It might be cheaper. No, you just hit them with phone books, Charles. Phone books.

And that keeps the phone book industry in production as well. So that's good. Good for the paper industry. Now, Charles, another objection that's been leveled at this is that it's not clear whether they're large scale, like I've been mentioning, all these new small modular reactors. And Anstow, you know, Anstow, the people that run the Lucas Heights reactor. Yes, yes.

They say, and I quote... Drive past there all the time. Yeah, they say, it's fair to say that the small modular reactors are still in their infancy and a relatively untested concept. So, test it on us. Yes, test it on us. Make us the test bed. Put the first one here.

If you're talking as a Queenslander, I agree. If you're talking as an Australian, I kind of disagree. But if we're talking about, like, testing it on the Queensland nucleosides, then, yeah, that's a good idea. Although that is strange, because in Queensland we like big things, not small things. Small modular reactors have got to be, you know, we want the big small reactors. No, but you make a big small reactor. That's right. That's what you do.

That's the solution. The Chaser Report. More news. Less often. A couple of other things, child, minor objections. The small modular one. ones are about 350 megawatts. The big ones are 1,400 megawatts.

According to Graham Redfern from The Guardian, who's an expert on this, at the moment right now, do you remember how many megawatts we're generating with coal just on the East Coast? Oh, I don't know, like 10? 21,200, Charles. But given the slated closures, given the closures that we know are going to happen by 235,000, there's only going to be 5,000 megawatts left. Oh. So we need to keep them all running.

all the coal plants and probably build more. So nuclear will actually mean that we don't replace coal within. Like, we just have to keep it going. No, because it's only 1,400 megawatts for the big ones and 350 for the small ones. And we need 21,000 plus more, because we'll have even more people. Plus, that's only the East Coast. So when we say we need seven of these things, it's probably more like 70. It's 70, yeah.

Well, that was the original number. Remember, he said, we're going to build 70 nuclear power plants? Of the small ones, yeah, the fun-sized ones. So that's a good idea. No private investor wants to do it because it's so expensive. And in fact, the one trial of the small modular technology in America was shut down because it got too expensive. But Charles, to a Queenslander, this is an opportunity. Yes.

They said it couldn't be done. I mean, Charles, they said you shouldn't build a freeway on the bank of the Brisbane River because it would be ugly. You just build it. You just build it. That's right. And they said that you couldn't make the NBN go on the existing copper network. But the coalition, they just did that anyway. They did it anyway.

They found the loophole, which was not minding how slow it was. And it's the same with these power plates. You don't mind how little they generate. They're a great investment. They're a great investment. Don't mind every detail about them. No, no, that's right. Ignore the megawatts.

Ignore the fact that they don't know any of the land. They've all got privatized and sold to people like AGL. We've got to buy it back. We've got to re-nationalized, Charles. That's what we're doing. We've got to get the poles and wires. A communist. Do we think that maybe, you know, Peter Dutton's a bit of a communist at heart?

Well, on this issue, because he's a Queensland, you know, sometimes the state's got to get in. You know, the state's got, we're going to paint all the poles and wiles, wise, marone. Yes. And it's going to completely happen. Now, I'm just to actually come up with a way to do this that would actually work. Oh, wow. Does it involve Queensland out-of-the-box thinking? Yes.

Oh, good. And it builds on your. your idea, which is what we do is we design an Aussie-style nuclear reactor. Oh, now you're talking. Which is both a nuclear reactor, maybe a small one, are combined with a sports stadium, right? Then every electorate, every electorate is going to want to build their nuclear sports stadiums, and suddenly you link the two, and then you get the lights, you know, you get good lights for your stadiums.

Yep. And then it's, it's, and you put it all in charge, you don't make the energy department in charge of everything. You just outsource it to the NRL. They run the nuclear power program. News Corp, because, you know, NRL is partly owned, isn't it still by News Corp? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Super League.

So News Corp can do this for us. Russell Crow could become the chairman of the National Nuclear Energy Authority. Yes, the NRL could be the Nuclear Rugby League. Yes, yes. That will be a very, very, very good. good idea. And for the southern states, maybe the AFL could also run half of it. Yeah. Oh, no, that'd be part of it too. We're building everything we want, Charles. That's the whole approach we're doing. It's all happening. And then so instead of it being sort of private enterprise,

it's sort of community enterprise, it's sort of, you know, like it's, it's got a real, I mean, I know it's highly commercialised, football is highly commercialised, but imagine going to, you know, like your kids wanting to go to the nuclear power station because they want to set the footy. It's literal grassroots that you're playing footy on. I think I'm going to move to New Zealand. No, but actually, I'm not going to move to New Zealand because it's opposite stay.

And if Peter Dutton thinks that this is going to get him elected, then it's never going to happen. This is never going to happen. And actually, isn't that the analysis that everyone knows it's never going to happen? But what it does is it just throws enough sawdust into renewables industry, just the threat that it might happen, that it slows it down. And that's Peter Dutton's end game. All he wants is for, you know, the coal industry to thrive.

Because I'm sure he gets his money from. You know what the real renewable thing is, the thing that seems as though it will never. It's the climate wars. They're endlessly renewable. We all thought we were past that and that we weren't going to have another climate election. This is all we're talking about between now and election day, Charles. Fuck. Fuck.

I just think, I'm glad that at least on this point, Peter Dutton has learned that you don't always need details for a big policy plan. It's a bit sad for the people who wanted the voice, but you could argue that they won the argument in the end. I don't think they'll be cheered up much by that, but there you go. You don't always need detail. I just don't think I know enough about this nuclear policy. So as Peter Dutton says, if you don't know, I'm going to vote no on this.

No, Charles, if you don't know, put all your eggs in small modular nuclear reactors. That's the lesson from this. Our gear is from Ride. We're part of the Oconocles Network. Dom, you've turned into a Queenslander. I don't think I'm liking this vibe, really. Well, I've got some phone books. I'm going to go out and meet some locals.