LETTER: RE: “Statement of PJ Keating -- Peter Dutton: Climate Denialist -- Peddler of Danger”
Back in 1993 I accompanied then PM Paul Keating on his trip to China. I was the senior Austrade representative in the region* and had been asked to go to Canberra to brief the PM and then to accompany him on the visit.
I recall briefing him in a small office in Parliament House. I was impressed that he took his own notes in longhand. And even more so, later in Beijing, when we met President Jiang Zemin, PM Keating ran the line I’d suggested, with no reference to those notes. He had an impressive command of the brief, which he promoted to the benefit of Australia.
Full disclosure -- I voted for Keating, As I had for his boss, Bob Hawke.
Keating was a man with Big Policy. But who also vented his spleen.
My how he has changed. The Big Policy is gone and all that remains is the spleen.
I’ll leave aside Keating's recent speeches pandering to China. And those tearing into the media, who have sat mute, like masochists who’ve forgotten their safe word.
I refer instead to his most recent tirade, the “Statement of PJ Keating”.
There he attacks Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy plans for Australia.
But first we have to get through a miasma of his ad hominem. Dutton is variously a “charlatan”, a “denialist, a “fantasist”, a "low-rent opportunist".... “Wicked”.... “Cynical”....
All up 33 ad homs on one A4 page!
Wading through the ad hominem, I find his assertions are all wrong.
Nuclear is “the most dangerous...”, he says. Wrong. According to the IPCC and UNSCEAR, nuclear is the safest source of power. And emits less carbon than wind or solar.
Nuclear is “... the most expensive”. Wrong again. The U.S. Department of Energy lists Nuclear as amongst the cheapest of electricity generating technologies.
Nuclear is a “backward” technology. Wrong, third strike. Its technology is constantly developing: Fourth Generation reactors use the “waste” from previous generations, and cannot meltdown.
Keating’s “Statement” is a travesty of illogic. A shamefully intemperate piece that adds nothing but spleen to the debate.
I’m Australian, based in Hong Kong for over thirty years. We live right next to Da Ya Bay Nuclear Power Station and get a big chunk of our power from it. I’ve visited the Station and sailed past it many times. We have no fear of it in Hong Kong; we thank it for providing long-term clean, reliable, safe energy that gives us carbon emissions per capita less than a third of Australia’s (4 T vs 15 T).
Therefore I support the Dutton plan for Australia’s energy future. It’s a farsighted plan, quite the opposite of Keating’s manic imaginings. In 70 years, when we are both gone, our grandchildren will thank us.
What we need today is not the spleen of a Keating, but a unification of a Hawke. Someone who can see that the nation needs to talk about this together, seriously, for the sake of the nation.
Yours,
Pf … etc
* Executive General Manager, Austrade East Asia, 1990 -- 1996
