PM, blow apart the Greens

JULIA Gillard's leadership is flat-lining. And that's according to members of the Prime Minister's own team. Desperately seeking some policy gravitas while guarding her left flank against the Greens, Gillard has been reduced to symbolic stunts such as proposing a constitutional preamble that recognises indigenous people.

What Gillard really needs is a big idea, one that demonstrably works from the reforming centre. She needs to mark herself off from the radical Left and show she is the heir to those great ALP centrist action men, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. The PM can divide the Green vote with bold policy. Forget gay marriage. Forget amending the Constitution's preamble. These issues signal the Green tail wagging the Labor dog.

Gillard can pursue a dramatic solution for the issue that brought down her predecessor: climate change. With one idea, she can show policy courage, produce an important contribution to the climate change conundrum and win rationally minded environmental voters.

Rather than succumbing to gay marriage and other Green exotica at Labor's next national conference, Gillard can take control of a real reform agenda by championing the nuclear option.

By recognising nuclear power as a rational part of the solution to climate change, Labor can expose the Greens as a party with a BANANA agenda (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) whose answer to clean energy is shutting down the coal industry and saying no to nuclear power while the rest of the world moves forward with carbon-free power.

In a letter to the Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet, long-time ALP member Phil Sawyer sets out a blueprint that could save Gillard's leadership, help reframe the ALP brand and bolster the national interest. Sawyer is no powerbroker. He stood unsuccessfully for pre-selection in the Victorian seat of Wannon in 1990. Maybe he's from the wrong faction. Maybe he's a million miles off Gillard's radar. Who knows? Who cares? Sawyer has a great idea.

The "game-changer", he writes, is "the simple declaration that the MRET [mandatory renewable energy target] legislation will be changed to recognise nuclear energy as a carbon-free source of power. This measure is simple, unambiguous and costless. But with big implications and far-reaching consequences."

Sawyer suggests the MRET scheme cover nuclear power to the years out to 2050, rising, for example, to 30 per cent by 2030, 40 per cent by 2040 and 50 per cent by 2050 so that by 2050 Australia will have 25 nuclear reactors. Following Britain, where a Labour government overcame "its Cold War prejudice" and rolled out six new nuclear generators, no government subsidies should be given to the nuclear industry. "If nuclear energy cannot compete with renewables, then so be it."

Sawyer also suggests a levy of, say, 2c a unit on the nuclear industry, similar to the US Yucca Mountain scheme to create, over 40 years, a large storage fund. And the Productivity Commission should be empowered to undertake analysis of enabling legislation, site selection protocols, infrastructure requirements and so on.

Sawyer's ideas not only have policy merit but have the political advantage of splitting rational climate change voters from the Greens, and driving them back to the ALP. A credible energy policy will drive a wedge between the two strands of Green voters without sacrificing support from the centre. The die-hard anti-nuclear rump of the Greens will limp away into irrelevance, leaving more sensible, realistic Green voters who recognise the need for carbon-free power to vote for "a credible response to the imperative of climate change".

The impact for Labor is equally instant. It will signal bold leadership where at present there is only nervous reserve. It will take the sting out of climate change scepticism within the opposition. The Coalition already signalled its support for nuclear energy under Howard. Bipartisan support will, as Sawyer says, "at one stroke change the parameters of the debate". And Labor need not endorse nuclear energy as the favoured energy option. Instead, it would allow the market to determine the eventual outcome.

Sawyer says he is reminded of "the catharsis most party members felt when they bit the nuclear bullet last time, and the silly three mines policy was dropped. I predict the same thing this time, for similar reasons."

Plenty of sensible Labor minds recognise the potential of nuclear energy for base load 24/7 power and the limits of wind and solar energy. The facts are on the table. As Ziggy Switkowski, chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, has pointed out, this is a 55-year-old industry. Thirty-one countries already use nuclear power. Fuel and spent rods have been moved across the world without incident. Britain will increase its nuclear power to 30 per cent by the 2030s. France has increased its nuclear power to 80 per cent of energy needs over 50 years. US President Barack Obama has endorsed nuclear power. Japan, the size of Victoria, with 127 million people, has 55 reactors. Germany, the same size as NSW, also has accommodated nuclear reactors. The Italians are doing the same. China, with electricity demand growing by 12 per cent each year, has 24 nuclear reactors under construction and more in the planning. Both India and China, where this debate ultimately will be decided, are projected to be the biggest users of nuclear power by 2050.

And Australia? With 40 per cent of the world's uranium resources, the present political cowardice makes no sense. As new Liberal MP Josh Frydenberg said in his recent maiden address, "It is a curious moral, economic and environmental position that we find ourselves in where we are prepared to supply uranium but not use it." In February, Australian Workers Union boss Paul Howes described nuclear power as a "political reality". We will, he said, have that debate in the future.

The future is now. Rather than allowing gay marriage to dominate the next ALP national conference, modern Labor must redefine its relationship with the Greens. And that, says the Labor member, can happen only if the left faction can "summon the fortitude to change the game". "History is tapping you on the shoulder," Sawyer told Combet.

So how 'bout it, PM Gillard?

As the leading figure from the ALP's left faction, you have a long summer break to consider how to save your leadership, rebrand modern Labor as a centrist party and do something good for the nation that will ensure you will make history beyond a mere preamble footnote.

History is tapping on your shoulder, too.

janeta@bigpond.net.au