What Labor MPs REALLY think about nuclear power in Australia – but are too afraid to say in public

At least two Labor MPs think that the Commonwealth legislative ban on nuclear power plants should be removed, telling Daily Mail Australia that the law is ‘stupid, unnecessary and out of date’. 

The MPs indicated that they would even be willing to cross the floor and support a Coalition move to lift the ban, if Prime Minister Anthony Albanese were to guarantee that they wouldn’t face sanctions for violating party rules when doing so. 

‘If it’s ok for her [WA Labor senator Fatima Payman] to do it why wouldn’t it be ok for the rest of us to also exercise our conscience on other issues?’ one of the MPs told Daily Mail Australia. 

The reference is to Senator Payman crossing the floor last night to side with the Greens on recognising Palestine as a state. The Prime Minister has decided not to sanction his WA senator. 

But they insist they do not support Peter Dutton’s policy to build state funded nuclear reactors. 

‘We shouldn’t be afraid to lift the nuclear ban. Doing so would expose why [Peter] Dutton’s policy isn’t financially viable,’ one MP says. 

Their argument is that by lifting the ban businesses would be entitled to commercially invest in nuclear power, ‘but they never will’, the MPs says, ‘because the business case for doing it doesn’t exist’. 

Nuclear power was banned at the Commonwealth level back in 1998 as part of a horse trading deal between the then-Coalition government John Howard led. 

Labor MPs would consider crossing the floor on the issue if Anthony Albanese would guarantee they wouldn’t face censure

Needing the support of the Greens and the Australian Democrats to pass changes to laws affecting the existing Lucas Heights nuclear rector, the Howard government agreed to a blanket ban for any more nuclear reactors across the country. 

The ban is now enshrined in Section 140A(1)(b) of the 1999 Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. ‘The Minister must not approve an action consisting of or involving the construction or operation of: b) nuclear power plant.’ 

The law could be simply changed by amending part B of the act, but would need the support of both the House of Representatives and the Senate.    

Lucas Heights is a scientific research reactor, not a nuclear power reactor. Australia is one of only a handful of rich developed nations not to embrace nuclear power. 

The decision by the Howard government to horse trade away any potential nuclear powered future for Australia came in the wake of French nuclear testing in the Pacific which saw a surge in opposition to nuclear power in Australia. 

Australia’s national nuclear ban is the result of the Howard Government’s horse-trading with Bob Brown’s Greens in 1998

While the Labor MPs are adamant lifting the ban two-and-a-half decades later would prove their case against Dutton’s policy, ‘including that we are the party of the free market’, they aren’t willing to be named as wanting to do so because they do believe reprisals would follow if they were. 

The calls within Labor for lifting the ban on nuclear power come in the wake of a number of Labor MPs tweeting out juvenile images of three eyed fish and koalas affected by nuclear waste. 

‘We’ve gone all-in opposing Dutton’s policy and demonising even the concept of nuclear power’, one says, adding that you can oppose nuclear power on economic grounds in Australia without ascribing to the hysteria surrounding the environmental risks attached to it. 

‘Championing lifting the ban would be political suicide, so no thank you,’ was one MP’s response when asked if they would put their name to the story.