It took less than 24 hours for the childish fear campaign surrounding Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy policy to flood social media.
I’m not talking about posts from the average user. Labor leaders at federal and state levels and the union movement soon began posting unlikely and downright ridiculous ways to undermine nuclear power.
Deformed pets, references to The Simpsons, toxic spills causing three-eyed fish and images suggesting the locations could be near iconic natural wonders such as Victoria’s Twelve Apostles were just some of the immature games played by MPs.
I said yesterday that the mother of all scare campaigns would start soon, but I didn’t think it would be so sad.
The Australian Union movement suggested the family dog would become deformed as a result of Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy proposal
Victorian Prime Minister Jacinta Allan’s team produced this Simpsons-inspired meme – with Ms Allan branding nuclear power ‘toxic’
Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Finance Dr. Andrew Leigh shared a photoshopped image of Blinky Bill with three eyes
It’s not that there aren’t serious problems with Dutton’s announcement; I will come back to that soon.
Victoria’s new Prime Minister, Jacinta Allan, posted fake images of three-eyed cartoon fish jumping out of the water in Gippsland, writing: “The Liberal Party wants a toxic and expensive nuclear reactor in Gippsland.”
Anthony Albanese’s contribution was not much better: ‘Instead of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, this is Peter Dutton and the seven nuclear reactors’.
I wonder how long it took for the Prime Minister’s taxpayer-funded team of 11 media advisers to come up with that idea. Or did Albo proudly come up with it all himself?
Victorian federal MP Josh Burns seized on The Simpsons theme, tweeting images of nuclear reactors with the Liberal Party logo on them, with the caption ‘under Peter Dutton, Australians will glow green’.
Smart things.
Dr. Andrew Leigh – one of Labour’s brainiacs, who completed his PhD at Harvard – shared a photoshopped image of Blinky Bill with three eyes.
The man used to be a professor. Does serving in parliament lower one’s IQ?
At 62, Labor MP for the Victorian seat of Corangamite, Libby Cocker, was not yet too mature to make a similar dig, days before Dutton’s announcement.
The federal Victorian MP launched the ‘Where the hell are you’ tourism campaign of yesteryear, led by Lara Bingle.
Cocker, who was a teacher before entering politics, tweeted a mock-up of a bikini-clad Bingle standing in front of the Twelve Apostles on the Victorian coast, with three nuclear reactors billowing smoke behind him.
There really must be something in Victoria’s water – before the nuclear waste arrives, as claimed.
The Simpsons references came thick and fast
The Australian Manufacturing Workers Union shared an image of a Chernobyl-style dystopia
The official X-page of the Australian Trade Union Movement posted an image of something deformed, it was hard to tell, above the headline ‘this will be your family dog’.
Scare campaigns are rarely based on accuracy, and that’s a bipartisan problem. But they are rarely so childish in nature.
It will be interesting to see whether these reluctant MPs and vested interests continue to behave this way in the coming weeks and months, or intensify their attacks.
History shows us that scare campaigns work, especially against big bold policy ideas from oppositions. But do they work when they are that low?
Before Dutton revealed where the reactors would be located, Labor MP Libby Coker shared this meme, inspired by Lara Bingle’s famous advert in Tourism Australia
As previously mentioned, if anyone wants to seriously criticize Dutton’s policies, there’s plenty to delve into without having to resort to childish antics.
For example, Dutton says he plans to use existing coal-fired power plants and that the government will pay for and own the operations. But most private owners of these sites have already ruled out handing them over to a coalition government and were not consulted before the policy was announced.
Most of the sites announced by Dutton are in states that have banned nuclear power by law, and some of these premiers have already ruled out that that will change.
The policy has not been budgeted, let alone modeled, to determine what taxpayers might face if and when construction were to begin.
We don’t even know who brought in the coalition to create this policy. Is it rooted in any scientific research that goes beyond a superficial thought bubble announcement?
We are also still in the dark about what types of nuclear reactors the opposition is proposing to build: the new smaller modules or the more established larger variants used in other parts of the world? It’s a pretty fundamental choice not to be included in a major policy announcement.
So yes, there are serious questions that serious people can ask and that require serious answers before Team Dutton can expect Australians to get behind its proposal.
Unfortunately, the Labor government and its union partners appear largely unable to meet the high expectations and properly challenge the policy announcement.
Instead, they choose to play in the social media sandbox.
No wonder the public has such a vague image of the political class.