KATE EMERY: Anthony Albanese’s unforced errors can’t mask Peter Dutton’s nuclear silence

At this year’s US Open, Frances Tiafoe was just two games from victory in the men’s semi-final when he racked up back-to-back double faults and four consecutive unforced errors to hand the match to rival Taylor Fritz.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese — who, appropriately enough, donned tennis whites in Perth during his visit this week — is Tiafoe and Opposition leader Peter Dutton is Fritz.

At least, Mr Dutton will be hoping to cruise to victory largely on the strength of his opponent’s unforced errors. More on how that might play out for him at the end of this column.

It is increasingly absurd that Mr Dutton has yet to release costings for the Opposition’s nuclear power plan, despite repeatedly promising to do so.

Instead, Mr Dutton has been content to sit back, stay quiet and let Mr Albanese’s unforced errors pile up. He’s been allowed to get away with it only because Mr Albanese has seemed so determined to keep serving into the net.

Buying a $4.3 million home in the middle of a housing crisis and a cost-of-living crisis? Thwack! Qantas flight upgrade saga? Thwack!

Sure, that’s politics. As much as the people whose lives can be ruined by bad policy would like to think otherwise, to some politicians it truly is a game.

But, at a certain point, even the most die-hard nuclear enthusiast, who would happily install Fukushima 2.0 in their backyard, wants to know how big the bill is going to be.

The absurdity of Mr Dutton’s failure to release costings was thrown into focus this week when the CSIRO’s GenCost report concluded — again — that the nuclear option in Australia would likely cost twice as much as renewable energy.

The report is in part a response to Opposition criticism that its last report, which concluded that a nuclear power plant in Australia could cost $17 billion and not be up and running until 2040, didn’t factor in the long life of a nuclear reactor.

This update offered no good news for the Opposition, largely reiterating its previous findings and dumping a bucket of ice-water over claims that nuclear power would mean cheaper power bills.

The Opposition cannot reasonably continue to claim the CSIRO — Australia’s globally-recognised national science agency — has its numbers wrong when all it has provided no numbers of its own.

The latest word from the Opposition camp is that its nuclear costings will be released this week.

Hopefully that promise is a little more rock solid than the one Mr Dutton made in March when he vowed to reveal the small print on the Opposition’s energy plan within weeks… only to deliver some proposed locations with no details on a price-tag.

In case you’re wondering how Fritz fared in the rest of the US Open, he lost in the finals to Jannik Sinner. Apparently you can’t always rely on your opponent making mistakes forever.