Aussie entrepreneur and businessman Dick Smith has reviled Labor’s claims nuclear energy is too expensive after sounding the alarm on renewable energy costings.
Mr Smith’s claim comes after running a pro-nuclear energy advertisement in mastheads across the country on Wednesday to warn of sole reliance on renewable energy.
The entrepreneur claims Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Energy Minister Chris Bowen have been misled by the CSIRO and the AEMO on renewables pricing, with the bold warning “EXPECT BLACKOUTS” printed at the end.
The CSIRO and AEMO’s GenCost 2023-24 report found building a large-scale nuclear reactor could cost up to $17 billion, take upwards of 20 years to build and produce power which is twice as costly as renewables.
An impassioned Mr Smith joined Sky News’ Chris Kenny on Wednesday night to dive into the ad while reviling the government’s smackdown of nuclear energy.
The government’s claim nuclear would be too costly for Australia incensed the business leader, comparing Australia’s nuclear prospects with significantly poorer nations.
“The Prime Minister’s saying nuclear’s too expensive for Australia. You’ve got to be joking,” Mr Smith said.
“Pakistan and Bangladesh have embraced nuclear. Now they are really poor countries.
“They’re trying to tell me that they can afford nuclear but we can’t. To me nuclear is the gold standard for base load power and we actually have to have it.”
Mr Smith’s ad comes after running a similar campaign in 2016 urging Australia to invest in nuclear submarines, which both the Coalition and Labor were opposed to at the time.
The Aussie entrepreneur argued the Albanese government needs to reverse its position as it did on nuclear submarines.
“I was told by my friends when I ran ads in The Australian for the nuclear subs: ‘Dick, Labor will never change their mind you’re wasting your money’,” he said.
“Then I woke up one morning and what had happened? The Coalition decided on nuclear subs and – wait for it – Labor reversed 180 degrees and supported it.
“They’ll have to do the same on nuclear power. The longer they delay the worse it is for our young people.”
Shifting his focus outside the two major parties, Mr Smith expressed his dismay at the Greens and conservation groups for failing to support nuclear.
He claimed a renewables-only approach would destroy swaths of land while a nuclear plant could be contained to a fraction of the size.
“You’d think they would be objecting to this incredible destruction of the environment saying ‘no, we’re not going to put up with that’,” he said.
“They say nothing, but they’re against nuclear where you can just have five acres of a nuclear power station instead of thousands of square miles being destroyed.”
Mr Smith caps his ad off by emphasising he is pro-renewables but argued there was “no need to destroy the environment to save the environment”.
The entrepreneur has previously backed the Coalition’s nuclear stance, lauding the move as a show of “fantastic leadership” from Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.
In a radio interview with 2GB about two weeks ago, Mr Smith said he hoped Labor would flip on nuclear energy as it had on the submarines.
He claimed the Labor Party had “violently opposed” nuclear submarines but had “completely changed their minds” when the Liberals called for them because they knew it was in the national interest.
“Now we all know that they did. They changed 180 degrees because it was in the national interest, now we need them to do the same thing. We need everyone supporting nuclear for Australia,” he said.