As an ex-pommie, compulsory voting still feels a bit odd to me.
Skip it and you’ll cop a $20 fine — more than it costs to fill your EV on off-peak electricity.
What’s really strange, though, isn’t the voting. It’s the energy policies on offer — and how little they match what the major parties claim to believe.
The Liberals’ Big Government Strategy
Let’s start with the Liberals.
Their platform has always been about small government, individual responsibility, and supporting small business. But in this campaign? They’ve been all-in on nuclear, a technology that only exists with massive taxpayer backing, long timelines, and endless red tape. It’s the ultimate big-government, centralised energy fantasy.
They are also opposed to Labor’s proposed battery rebate, even though buying a battery is one of the best things a household can do to take control of their energy bills. Add a solar-charged EV (which the Liberals have vowed to strip tax breaks from) and you’ve got real agency. You’d think that’s exactly the kind of self-sufficiency the Liberals would be shouting about. Instead, they’re waving it off in favour of reactors that might arrive long after most voters are gone.
Labor Promoting Self-Reliance
Labor, meanwhile, has a long tradition of nation-building infrastructure – think Snowy Hydro, the NBN, rail lines, ports, public power stations. Nuclear fits that tradition. It’s high-vis. It’s union-friendly. It’s a generational megaproject. So what’s their stance? Nope. Not touching it.
Instead, Labor’s energy plan is self-reliant, distributed, and household-focused. Batteries, solar and electrification, all supported by an army of clean energy entrepreneurs and small businesspeople. It’s the right approach, but it’s not exactly built for their traditional base.
Whatever colour tie they’re wearing, none of the parties’ energy platforms seem to match what they claim to stand for.
The Greens’ Ideological Purity
Except The Greens.
Still clinging to ideological purity, still allergic to compromise, and still unrepentant for blowing up the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme in 2009. If there’s one party whose energy stance matches their ideology, it’s theirs.
So maybe it’s a good thing the two main parties stopped following ideological lines on energy.
Maybe it’s time for a $20 fine for anyone insisting they should.
About Finn Peacock
RSS - Posts
I think an open question is whether Australia will end up with a too-distributed model, with too much of the nation’s power the responsibility of individual householders to maintain. Plus there have been absolutely spot-on critiques of privatisation of electricity generation and distribution in Australia, but the renewables grid will be almost entirely privatised. I wonder if that will cause problems in the future.
Without compulsory voting, only the nutters vote. Exhibit A – the UK and US right now 🙂
Is the US or the UK the result of nutters voting? Or are they the result of people who care about politics, or ‘their’ party, voting? I’d tend to think optional voting reduces the chances of the nutters voting.
In Australia you have people rock up to the voting booth asking electoral staff what electorate they’re in and who they’re supposed to be voting for. Naturally said staff aren’t allowed to provide that sort of help!!! But is it likely such voters will make informed decisions?
When you say the renewables grid will be almost entirely privatised, you mean the generation component as distinct from the actual poles and wires right? Or is all the additional poles and wiring required for renewables, plus battery support, going to be private too?
There are interesting studies showing that optional voting creates real polarisation and division, because only those motivated to vote do so. And those with more extreme views are heavily represented in that group, they’re zealous about their political positions. Which is why we often see much greater emotion and violence and division in countries with optional voting.
The poles and wires are mixed, some government-owned, some private. Much of the renewable generation and storage capacity being built is and will be privately-owned, including household rooftop solar.
With compulsory voting, I am surprised, in the absence of worthwhile formal candidates, that Dame Edna Everage or the One Legged Seagull Party do not win more elections.
Naughty Finn suggesting we should not vote. Do you judge whether or not to commit an offence by the size of the penalty, surely not. Is it OK to break the school rules because corporal punishment is banned ? Do you drop litter when no-one is watching ?
If you want to “protest” fill the forms in correctly but make your preferences such that the more sensible minority parties are chosen, the AEVA party first for example if it existed.
Possibly if voting were compulsory elsewhere more people would put some thought into who they wanted as leaders and things like Brexit would not happen, perhaps not trade wars ?
To be fair, its not like Australian politicians are renowned for actually following their party political policies!
Maybe there should also be an administrative penalty for politicians not doing what they promised? Like $20 for each vote they received, and then totally wasted?
In Canada it’s hard to get any politician to pay attention to energy. This past week we saw a Liberal minority voted in, by the provinces that have plenty of hydro + nuclear power.
And they seem uninterested in the challenges of getting to zero combustion in a mostly flat, mostly desert Prairie region.
It’s as if all Australia was ordered to simply do what works for Tasmania.
I don’t know whether nuclear power could work for Australia, or not. I look at the Open NEM graph and picture it with the continuous coal bottom part cut off and think maybe… But on the other hand, Aus hasn’t got four months of bitterly cold, dark winters to fight through.
I think it all started when Peter Dutton had a nuclear brain fart. He tried to hide it but the media wanted to know more; e.g What will it be? Where will it go? How much will it cost? So then the Liberals had to quickly come up with answers and justify Duttons random nuclear idea. Now it’s locked in. If the Liberals take government looks like we will almost accidentally go nuclear. Thanks Peter.
It’s not so much Dutton who pushed nuclear but Littleproud and his country mining party.
John Coxon: – “If the Liberals take government looks like we will almost accidentally go nuclear.”
For a bill to become law, it must be agreed to by both the Senate and House of Representatives & receive Royal Assent by being signed by the Governor-General.
Even if the Coalition had formed government, I’d suggest it’s very unlikely the Senate would be agreeing to repealing the nuclear ban. See the discussion of the likelihood of repealing the nuclear ban in my Supplementary Submission (#066.2), from page 32 to 35, at:
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Select_Committee_on_Nuclear_Energy/Nuclearpower/Submissions
I’d suggest the Coalition will likely be in the opposition wilderness for at least another 2 parliamentary terms.
Unless there is bipartisan political support, a nuclear POWER industry has virtually no chance of being developed in Australia. There’s no chance of the ALP changing its position.
There’s plenty of blogs dedicated to politics where people can post their two cents worth.
People who come here want to get updates on the latest in solar. Without the politics. And the readers can go to the political blogs if they feel the need.
Solarquotes blog should stick to solar.
I sort of agree with you Brian, but when “the latest in solar” involves choosing between a possible nuclear future (with solar curtailed) and a future where solar and batteries are actively encouraged, it’s hard not to mention politics. Normal service will resume shortly!
Can one ever be an ex-pommie? I mean it’s not the sort of term I use, but it’s also not the sort of thing you ever cease to be. You can of course get Australian citizenship, and probably cancel your British citizenship, but does that change your ‘pommie’ status? Not as far as I’m aware.
I forgot to vote a few years ago. Fine was $110.
You were scammed mate. The Guardian says its only $20 for failing to vote.
It’s all Weapons of Mass Distraction, I suspect. One BIG lie up front, behind which the mendacious pollies scurry about fighting for ministerships and party leadership, while lobbing an occasional grenade at the other mob.
$600B for 7 nukes, to supply 11% of the needed grid power, is a boat anchor, merely to drag the chain on de-fossilisation. Never to be built, they’d buy time and myriad $billions for faceless parasitic world destroyers. At your cost.
A $2.3B boost for 9.7 GWh of majority privately-funded batteries is a great kick-start for nation-building intermittency management and grid failure resilience. Damned fine for individual households too.
What’s missing? An adequate EV fast charging network. Roads are now only half the story. Societal survival requires an end to the ICE-age, possible only with ample chargers. So, yes, more grid-scale batteries too. FBT excemption on an L2 home charger, with the tax-free EV, is great for commuters, though.
Disaster averted? We’ll see.
In NSW the Nationals would never allow the sale of Essential Energy, which is responsible for power distribution in country NSW. So in this instance they agree with Labor
I think I can see where the Liberal Party is coming from. They have a problem. The central plank of their beliefs is a dislike of renewable energy, wind and solar. The problem is that they can’t think of anything else. Coal is undeniably expensive, gas even more so, and nuclear is the only remaining half-way plausible option. So nuclear it is.
Bob_WA,
There’s a lot of AI-generated Steam Punk fantasy on YT now – old-fashioned whizzy-machines shrouded in clouds of steam and smoke. Is the slow-learner syndrome more than inability to grasp the economy, efficiency, and survival benefits of photons and electrons – incomprehension amplified by a nostalgic yearning for old days and old ways, now irretrievable?
Aussies have proven smarter than Americans, choosing democratised energy generation. The question of radioactive grid power is off the table until at least 2031, so no mindshift before the 2040s = none built before mid 2060s.
Well over +2°C by 2040, with exponential growth or renewables & batteries desperately lagging growing feedback effects, any remedy that takes more than 2 yrs to build will by then be anathema.
All reasonable doubt is gone now. Alea iacta est.
If only the LNP had had the nouse to spruke New Geothermal, they could have saved some seats. But they are not leaders for our time. They have only problems.
Erik Christiansen: – “The question of radioactive grid power is off the table until at least 2031, so no mindshift before the 2040s = none built before mid 2060s.”
I’d suggest 20+ years if the Coalition get back into government pushing their nuclear fantasy, meaning none operational before the early 2050s. See my Submission (#066) at:
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House/Select_Committee_on_Nuclear_Energy/Nuclearpower/Submissions
What would keep the ‘lights on’ in Australia while we wait for nuclear?
Not coal – 60% of the currently operating coal-fired generator units in the NEM are 40 years or older, and they won’t be operating by 2035;
Not gas – the Australian east coast gas 2P reserves-to-production is less than 17 years. Gas will only get scarcer and more expensive. See AEMO’s GSOO-Mar2025, Fig 27.
And the current rate of global warming is 0.37 °C/decade.
+1.5 °C GMST now;
+2.0 °C around 2040.
Yeah, Geoff, I accept the modelling you quote: +0.37 °C/decade , but can’t quite convince myself that it will stick until 2040. Feedback effects are waking up, not only CH₄ emissions, and arctic albedo loss, as the arctic warms at 2 -3 times the global rate. Amelioration efforts aren’t yet up to offsetting that, I think.
Dec 2024 was +1.6°C, and Jan 2025 was +1.7°C, according to the EU’s Copernicus institute. I’m waiting to see where the transient settles back, before the new slope is confirmed.
I agree that we’ll need a mountain of batteries, geothermal, etc. to supplant coal & gas, in a flying transition, perhaps wobbly in spots until it’s done. And until then, there’ll be folk who say it can’t be done.
But, damn it’s fine powering my car with a star, zooming between country towns totally on 100% fossil-free photons.
Erik Christiansen: – “I accept the modelling you quote: +0.37 °C/decade , but can’t quite convince myself that it will stick until 2040.”
Not modelling – it’s reality! The world has been warming at a linear best fit rate of +0.37 °C/decade, post-2010. See Figure 5a at:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2025/2025GlobalTemperature.15April2025.pdf
For all intents & purposes, the GMST anomaly has now breached the +1.5 °C threshold, with a 2-year running mean, relative to the 1850-1900 baseline, using the Copernicus ERA5 dataset, & is now approaching the +1.6 °C GMST anomaly threshold.
https://bsky.app/profile/climatecasino.net/post/3lnijf7dzpk2v
Planet Earth’s albedo, the fraction of light that the planet’s surface reflects, hit a record new low, for the 36-month running mean, per the latest CERES satellite data.
https://bsky.app/profile/climatecasino.net/post/3lnnuoku3b22a
Nuclear is DEMONSTRABLY TOO SLOW to deploy to save us!
Australia has nearly a third of the world’s known uranium reserves, while the USA has about 1% and Canada has something like 10%. Canada has to choose between flooding valleys and building very long transmission lines, or building more nuclear capacity.
We need the most energy in the darkest, coldest part of the year, opposite to Australia. The Province of Alberta has made a fair start on using wind and solar to replace more of our natural gas consumption, and replaced all coal generation with gas.
We have a Large Emitter carbon tax that has tipped the field away from coal and towards nuclear generation, and we’ll need 20,000 MW of new generation to electrify.
Sure, maybe these new nuclear power plants will not come online in time to make much difference in CO2 emissions. but we will need the energy for the next 100 years regardless of climate. The level of global CO2 emissions isn’t going to be decided in Canada and Australia.
Hi Randy,
As more Australians deploy solar and batteries our grid demand will soon peak in winter, especially in Melbourne.
Have a look on YouTube for Tony Seba and you’ll find he explains even Norway is using solar to great effect.
Solar is turning the whole world upside down because it’s so cheap, while nuclear is too slow to deploy.
Erik Christiansen: – “Amelioration efforts aren’t yet up to offsetting that…”
Not sea level rise (SLR)! The daily atmospheric CO₂ at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Observatory on 7 Mar 2025 was 430.60 ppm. This is the first daily mean reading above 430 ppm ever directly recorded at this location.
https://www.co2.earth/daily-co2
Atmospheric CO₂ levels have not been this high since the Pliocene Epoch, 5.33 to 2.58 Mya. Global sea level was about 25 m higher then, compared with current sea level.
Per WMO’s report titled State of the Global Climate 2023, Fig. 6, the decadal global mean SLR rate was:
Jan 1993 – Dec 2002: 2.13 mm/y;
Jan 2003 – Dec 2012: 3.33 mm/y;
Jan 2014 – Dec 2023: 4.77 mm/y.
2024’s rate of rise was 5.9 mm/y.
https://sealevel.nasa.gov/news/282/nasa-analysis-shows-unexpected-amount-of-sea-level-rise-in-2024
Likely 40-50 cm SLR by 2050, relative to year-2000 baseline; ≥2 m by 2100.
We need to cool Earth to save coastlines.
Do you really think it’s a dislike of renewable energy? Other than variability of supply, what’s not to love?
Canada has almost eliminated coal for electricity, but almost all remaining coal capacity been replaced, first by nuclear and hydro in the 1970’s and 1980’s, and then by more flexible natural gas fired generation backing wind and solar since 2010.
There was bitter opposition to hydro, and nuclear generation, but the deciding factor was economics – not much coal in Ontario and Quebec.
If solar + storage meets most of the need for energy, and gas generation can cover for bad weather, you probably don’t need nuclear power to electrify, the way Canada does.
And even where Canada has one of the world’s largest nuclear power plants, there are incentives for rooftop solar, because it’s been the cheapest solution by far, to reducing peak grid load on hot days.
The other thing we need is a million public EV chargers at work, so we can use more solar.
The Greens energy policy at the election is basically identical to Labor’s, including home battery subsidies.
https://cdn.greens.org.au/cdn/ff/fk0q_VgBQA5t00ZlhkPcF6i2IEZByQHBjpMq1g6YdVQ/1744244709/public/2025-04/2035%20Powering%20Past%20Coal%20%26%20Gas.pdf
Page 24
Randy,
Canada may have ample uranium and enough snow to keep cool while more nuclear power plants are built, but your Eavor company is building the world’s first 21st century geothermal power plant at Geretsried in Bavaria, using Canadian know-how. It builds 10 times faster than a reactor and is much cheaper – nuke can’t compete, so will go broke.
This first one only goes 4 km deep, but their New Mexico research facility is working on making 7 km deep commercially viable. That’s when it really takes off, and nukes shut down. It’s dispatchable, so compatible with renewables.
For Australia, existing wireless-delivered fusion power + wind + batteries suffice. For Canada, 7 km deep natural self-fuelling fission obviates any need for more above ground radioactive accidents and ghastly waste problems. That’s obsolete tech.
My 6.7 MWh consumed in 14 months is 100% solar, not 1W from the grid. Mountains of grid batteries are going in – because they make money. Nuke cannot, here – no way.
Yes, Eavor does appear to be capable of engineering a system capable of supplying a lot of heat, at the level we need. That’s the big one, here. A hundrwd years ago, a house was heated with coal, gas, or wood,, light was from kerosene, and electricity was for the radio.
We also have a widespread radon problem in Canada, so we can’t just seal up a house or it’s a health risk. We need powered heat exchangers, etc. With electric cars we use 18 MWh per year, to heat without gas we’d more than double that.
Maybe Eavor could deliver what we need via a central district heating system, it’ll be interesting to see. Our other option is something like Drake Landing Solar Community, tested in Okotoks but on a city-sized scale.
The modest Geretsried pilot plant is scaled to produce just 8.2 MW of electrical power, but 60-something MW of heat, planned to heat two towns in the area. A full-scale plant, especially going to a full 7 km depth, would be a magical thing in polar regions. I’m beginning to see why a Canadian would put in the effort to make this work. (The idea is the easy part, I figure.)
Here in Aus, we’d need to find industial uses for the heat, as we have ample of the stuff environmentally – no need for more, most of the time. (I’ve just come inside, and the lounge is at 28°C, just from sun load at 38° S, so I had to turn on the aircon, although it’s winter in 3 weeks.)
I’m using just 6 MWh p.a., with one EV and a little wood heating in the depths of winter. Geothermal will transform your life, if you come within piped hot water range of a plant. My understanding is that they need to be distributed anyway, to extract rock heat.