My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 30 January 2024

Dangers of nuclear energy

Supporters for a nuclear energy industry in Australia increased their disinformation media activity following the announcement of the AUKUS agreement. Internationally the campaign reached a crescendo during the COP28 climate meeting. As a federal election looms this year no doubt the Coalition will also ramp up its advocacy of this hair-brained policy.

The misleading pro-nuclear campaign is based on incorrect claims that opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fears, that nuclear energy is necessary for climate mitigation, that new nuclear energy technologies will be cheaper and safer than existing ones, and that there are allegedly no scenarios for the transition to 100 per cent renewable energy. The disinformation, misinformation and outright lies smack of the No campaign during the Voice referendum, so the Coalition’s infatuation with this this madness.

“To the contrary, critiques of nuclear power have been published by physical and social scientists and engineers. They argue that, in the real world, nuclear energy is too expensive, too dangerous (both in terms of accidents and the proliferation of nuclear weapons), and too slow to plan and build. These issues determine the current status of nuclear power. Nuclear power’s share of world electricity production has been declining from its peak of 17.6% in 1996 to 9.2% in 2022” wrote Mark Diesendorf in Pearls and Irritations. 

Because nuclear electricity from existing types of reactors is very expensive, proponents promote a new technology, the small modular reactor (SMR). ‘Small’ means generating capacity less than about one-third of existing large nuclear power reactors. ‘Modular’ means serial factory production of reactor components, which could reduce costs.

According to physicist MV Ramana, they “cost too much for the little electricity they produced, the result of both their low output and their poor performance”. They are unsuitable for mass production. So, small modular reactors do not exist.

Recent attempts to develop them depend on enormous subsidies, e.g. US 452M offered by the US Department of Energy. So far, the only SMR design approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission was that of NuScale. In November 2023, after receiving huge grants for which it did not have to compete, NuScale terminated its SMR project.

The most recent (Generation III+) large reactors under construction in Europe and the USA have been economic disasters, taking much longer to construct than planned and costing over three times original estimates.

Studies by the LUT and Stanford research groups cited above show that energy futures based on 100% renewable energy, including electrified transportation and heating, are cheaper than nuclear scenarios.

At the level of individual power stations, the multinational investment advisor Lazard finds that nuclear electricity is several times as expensive as wind and solar. In Australia, the annual CSIRO GenCost studies, performed with extensive stakeholder consultation, find that electricity generated by large-scale wind and solar farms, together with storage and connection to the local transmission grid, is much cheaper than from a hypothetical SMR.

Nuclear proponents argue that the method used by CSIRO, which is based on the levelised cost of electricity, does not include the cost of upgrading the main transmission system. However, CSIRO have used the standard method, for good reason. The system would still have to be upgraded if Australia’s zero-carbon electricity generation were based partly on nuclear. Electrifying transportation and combustion heating will substantially increase demand on the grid which will require major grid augmentation.

Nuclear power stations take a long time to plan and build. At present Australians are divided on nuclear energy and very few would accept a reactor or waste repository in their locality. At best, an autocratic government could possibly get one nuclear power station operating by the time Australia had 100% renewable electricity.

And of course, there’s the pesky question of where to store nuclear waste. We still haven’t come up with a site for the waste from our existing and very small Lucas Hights medical nuclear facility. So finding sites for the waste from multiple facilities, whether large or small, renders nuclear power untenable.

So to the rational mind, nuclear power has no future role in Australia and the claims for future cheap electricity from new, allegedly safe, nuclear technologies are baseless fantasies. Thankfully the Greens can see this, and so far Labor has resisted the temptation. Stay firm, Mr Albanese.  

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for Tuesday 23 January 2024

Stage-three tax cuts are bad policy and bad politics

There are two very bad Morrison government policies that Albanese undertook to keep during the 2022 federal election campaign, and both need to be ditched: the stage-three tax cuts and the AUKUS nuclear submarines deal. Today I will focus on the tax cuts

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese refuses to rule out changes to the stage-three tax cuts “PM pledges tax cuts will go ahead”, Daily Advertiser 16 January 2024. However, economists believe the Scott Morrison-era policy currently makes even less sense than when it was introduced by the Liberal Party, as Parker McKenzie noted in The New Daily. They’re right, and I’ve yet to find anyone arguing otherwise.

Though Albanese, in an interview with the ABC last week, refused to conclusively guarantee that the tax cuts would come into effect in July. “I know there’s an ongoing debate about the impact of those tax cuts,” he said. Then he added, “We support reducing tax. We haven’t changed our position” and accused the interviewer of playing “word games”.

The controversial policy, first envisaged by then-treasurer Scott Morrison in 2018, will abolish the 37 per cent marginal tax bracket and lower the 32.5 per cent tax rate to 30 per cent. This will favour the wealthy at the expense of the not-wealthy, that is, the vast majority of us.

Associate Professor Ben Phillips, a principal research fellow at Australian National University, said he doesn’t believe the government would pursue a tax cut in the middle of the year if it “was starting fresh and ignoring politics”.

“They’re trying to convince people that they’re providing cost-of-living relief to those who need it the most, but really it’s just tax relief for high-income earners,” he told The New Daily.

“One of the great strengths of the Australian tax and welfare system is the progressive tax system and I think ideally, people who are earning much higher incomes are paying a higher marginal rate of tax.”

But Morrison’s plan will also raise the 45 per cent marginal tax rate, ultimately resulting in everyone earning between $45,000 and $200,000 paying tax at the same rate.

John Quiggin, senior fellow in economics at the University of Queensland, said the policy is far worse now than it was when introduced by the Morrison government in 2019 because of the current economic situation in Australia.

“It was a bad policy then. It’s a worse policy now,” he told The New Daily. “The government’s position has been driven by politics all along.”

Quiggin believes the Albanese government’s fear of breaking promises is leading it towards poor economic management.

“Promises are important, but equally important for Labor governments is not making working people worse off,” he said.

“The tax cuts have come at the expense of a bunch of other commitments that Labor took to the 2019 election.”

Australia’s economic outlook is vastly different now than it was in 2019 and 2022, with the COVID-19 pandemic, rising interest rates and cost-of-living pressures now affecting those who are set to gain the least from the tax cuts.

Matt Grudnoff, senior economist at The Australia Institute, said reforming the policy could be beneficial to Australians and the government.

“The majority of people say yes, if the economic situation changes, then of course the government shouldn’t just blindly follow bad policy because they promised it before the election,” he said.

He said several alternative tax cut models would not only reduce the amount of money being gifted to Australia’s highest earners, but also benefit those earning less.

Parliamentary costings, requested by the Greens and delivered in May 2023, forecast the cost of the stage-three tax cuts at $313 billion over a decade, of which $157.5 billion in savings will go to people earning more than $180,000 a year.

The tax cuts will result in a diminished progressive tax system and increase income inequality in Australia. It’s tax relief for the top end of income earners and does very little for middle- and low-income earners.

Only the Liberal and Nationals parties would argue that the changes should still go ahead, loudly backed by their Murdoch media empire mates. Mr Albanese needs to have the courage to resist them.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed column for this week

Monster SUVs and utes dominating our streets

Over the past year or so I’ve noticed huge increases in the size of SUVs and utes – or perhaps, given their American origin, we should now call them pick-ups or even trucks.

Enlarged SUVs include the Toyota Landcruiser and Nissan Patrol. Only last week I noticed an advertorial for the latest Hyundai Santa Fe that shows a new huge bull-nosed front end, which now seems to be de rigueur for both new model SUVs and utes. The massive American RAM 1500 and Chevrolet Silverado are prime examples of this trend, but even the ubiquitous Ford Ranger and Toyota Hilux have been super-sized.

Where does this trend come from? It surely can’t be due entirely to SUV and ute driving men suddenly needing to compensate for not feeling sufficiently well endowed. However, as is often the case, we can find the answer by ‘following the money’, for “the surge in popularity of larger vehicles in Australia has been driven by tax perks that incentivise buying SUVs, Utes and other 4WDs instead of less-polluting smaller sized cars and sedans, transport experts argue” noted the Guardian Australia.

Marion Terrill, the transport and cities director at the Grattan Institute, said tax rules for both businesses and employees were subsidising the costs of buying a car and many saw this as an opportunity to upgrade. “When you subsidise the purchase, people probably take some of that benefit as a cash saving, but we also see people who see it as a way to get a more expensive vehicle and, often, more expensive means larger.”

Terrill points to two tax incentives that she believes are behind the surge in sales of larger vehicles: the instant asset write-off for businesses, and the car concession in the fringe benefits tax. Both changes were introduced by the Morrison government.

For businesses, including tradies and sole traders, the instant asset write-off scheme allows for the cost of a vehicle to be deducted from a business’s taxable income in the current financial year, as opposed to having to depreciate it over several years.

Terrill also identifies fringe benefits tax – designed to tax nonmonetary forms of income – and the rise of salary sacrificing programs for employees that tax cars at a concessional rate.

What are the consequences of these super-sized vehicles? Clearly increase petrol/diesel consumption is one. Increasing SUV and ute ownership means Australians are needlessly spending an extra $13bn a year to fuel their cars, and the trend is sending transport emissions into overdrive at the same time similar nations are reducing them.

Analysis from the Australia Institute has found that the recent uptake in SUVs in Australia has led to the nation’s vehicle fleet now being 24% less efficient than the UK’s, a similarly developed right-hand drive country.

And of course from it flows increased carbon emissions and so a great contribution to global warming.

Another consequence is the need for more space to accommodate them. This will include cap park spaces and traffic lanes.

There’s also the safety issue to consider. Research shows that it is the shape of the bonnet rather than the mass of the car that makes the difference to pedestrian survival

Best practice for pedestrian safety is a system where the pedestrian rolls up onto the bonnet, which absorbs the impact. These systems are common in European cars, because the EU has high standards for pedestrian protection. America has no such rules — because they don’t suit the US vehicle fleet.

If the bonnet is higher than the pedestrian’s chest, all that happens is the pedestrian is smashed down onto the road and goes under the wheels. The risk of death after being hit by a full-sized ute is 3.4 times higher than from being hit by a passenger car, according to research published in the UK by the British Medical Journal.

How can the multiple problems from monster trucks be solved? Fortunately potential solutions are do-able, government resolve willing. Two solutions come to mind, and they are much simpler than rocket science. One is to rescind the Morrison government legislation that led to the importation of the super-sized pick ups in the first place. Secondly, the long overdue introduction of fuel efficiency standards, which would lead to financial incentives for people to buy smaller vehicles, whilst at the same time promoting the use of electric vehicles.

My Daily Advertiser Op Ed colun for Tuesday 9 January 2024

Vale John Pilger

Though the end of year media gave very full coverage of the deaths of significant individuals who died in 2023 one death came too late in the year to receive such attention. Noted Australian campaigning journalist and documentary film-maker John Pilger has died on 30th December, aged 84. I’ll devote my column today to pay homage to this renowned figure, given that most mainstream media ignored his passing in favour of building hysteria over fireworks.

“His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family he was simply the most amazing and loved Dad, Grandad and partner. Rest In Peace”, posted his family.

Throughout his career, Pilger was a strong critic of western foreign policy and his native country’s treatment of Indigenous Australians, noted The Guardian in its obituary. In his column for that paper he condemned how “Aboriginal people are to be driven from homelands where their communities have lived for thousands of years”.

John Pilger was always on the side of the oppressed. He denounced Imperialism and all its violent predations–war, genocide, exploitation–as well as its endless lies and propaganda. 

Thankfully he gave voice to the invisible and the voiceless: , shining a light in the hidden, dark recesses of the hell of Empire and Capital. He denounced and fought racism, war, privatisation of public assets, neoliberalism, neocolonialism, the dangers of nuclear war, and much of US foreign policy.

Born in Bondi, New South Wales, Pilger relocated to the UK in the 1960s, where he went on to work for the Daily Mirror, ITV’s former investigative programme World in Action and Reuters.

He covered conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh and Biafra, and was named journalist of the year in 1967 and 1979. Pilger had a successful career in documentary film-making, creating more than 50 films and winning a number of accolades includes honours at the Baftas.

In 1979, the ITV film Year Zero: The Silent Death Of Cambodia revealed the extent of the ruling Khmer Rouge’s crimes. Pilger won an Emmy award for his 1990 follow-up ITV documentary, Cambodia: The Betrayal.

Pilger also made the 1974 ITV documentary Thalidomide: The Ninety-Eight We Forgot, about the campaign for compensation for children after concerns were raised about birth defects when expectant mothers took the drug.

Kevin Lygo, the managing director of media and entertainment at ITV, said: “John was a giant of campaigning journalism. He eschewed comfortable consensus and instead offered a radical, alternative approach on current affairs and a platform for dissenting voices over 50 years.”

Pilger made a number of films about Indigenous Australians such as The Secret Country: The First Australians Fight Back in 1985 and Utopia in 2013, as well as writing a bestselling book, A Secret Country, which explored the politics and policies of Australia.

His last film, The Dirty War on the National Health Service, was released in 2019 and examined the threat to the NHS from privatisation and bureaucracy. It was described by The Guardian’s film critic Peter Bradshaw as “a fierce, necessary film”.

In 2003, Pilger received the Sophie prize for “30 years of uncovering the lies and propaganda of the powerful, especially as they relate to wars, conflict of interests and economic exploitation of people and natural resources”.

Pilger was a vocal supporter of Julian Assange and visited the WikiLeaks founder in the Ecuador embassy in London where he sought asylum after facing charges related to the publication of thousands of classified documents.

The former Pink Floyd musician Roger Waters, who has also supported Assange, said of Pilger: “I miss you my friend, what a great man you were. We will carry you in our hearts forever, you will always be there to give us strength. Love R.”

Pilger edited the 2005 book Tell Me No Lies: Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs, in which he summed up his journalistic values. “Secretive power loathes journalists who do their job, who push back screens, peer behind façades, lift rocks,” he said. “Opprobrium from on high is their badge of honour.”

I’ll conclude with a quotation from Dissident Voice, in which Pilger comments on future prospects, “I’m confident that if we remain silent while the US war state, now rampant, continues on its bloody path, we bequeath to our children and grandchildren a world with an apocalyptic climate, broken dreams of a better life for all and, as the unlamented General Petraeus put it, a state of “perpetual war”. Do we accept that or do we fight back?” It’s up to us, but I thank John Pilger for his prescient warning.