PAUL MURRAY: Anthony Albanese’s willing embrace of the irrational and the unforgiveable

Labor’s byzantine mix of union-based factions, widely disparate State branches and single-interest internal splinter groups gets a chance once every three years at its national conference to update the party’s political platform to meet Australia’s challenges, not just provide new doctrinaire guardrails for its MPs.

But next week’s conference in Adelaide will studiously avoid dealing in any meaningful way with two of Labor’s dismal failures in office.

They are its irrational opposition to reliable baseload nuclear power in preference to intermittent renewables and the premature recognition of the non-existent state of Palestine that greenlit the spread of anti-Israel sentiment and Jew hatred in Australia.

One is fundamental to our economy and future prosperity; the other to our morality and sense of national unity.

Getting real about the former would mean dropping Labor’s ingrained aversion to anything nuclear and following the lead of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who last week signed a deal with the Albanese Government to power his country’s economic future — especially its massive expansion into AI data centres — with Australian uranium.

And on the latter, Labor intends to walk away from the conditions that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese set on his government’s decision that appeased supporters of Palestinian terrorists dedicated to destroying Israel, a nation state Australia once proudly helped create.

Labor has a long history of tying itself in knots over uranium mining and nuclear energy, but the N-powered submarines agreement at the heart of AUKUS and the deal to supply India with massive amounts of yellowcake have taken its dated and nonsensical policies to abject inanity.

It is a perfect lesson against allowing ideology to overpower reason — and basic economic self-interest — which can lead to devastating consequences just over the horizon.

Bob Hawke and Paul Keating took to heart former Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew’s view in the 1980s that Australia risked becoming “the white trash of Asia” because of its economic stagnation, complacency and outdated policies.

Albanese’s path will make that prediction come true. Labor’s continuing nuclear ban makes his AI policy announcement this week a joke.

While much of the developed world accelerates their nuclear programs in the face of the energy-hungry AI boom, Australia is stuck in the slow lane which will lead to a shortage of reliable energy, uncompetitive costs and much lower living standards.

Albanese’s vainglorious promise to regulate AI within Australia will be like trying to bottle lightning. Attempts to constrain its infrastructure in bureaucratic red tape is another socialist ploy doomed to fail, if only by sending it elsewhere.

And Albanese will get nowhere insisting the AI promoters invest in renewable energy, which will not meet their needs. Most are US-based and heavily back nuclear for reliable baseload power.

Ironically, Turkey — currently building its first four reactors — who beat Australia for green bragging rights in hosting the UN climate change conference this year, says its nuclear power program, which began in 2018, is key to hitting their net zero target of 2053.

Some 38 nations have now joined the nuclear power club and 75 reactors are under construction. Labor thinks windmills, sunshine and batteries will be enough for us, as it shuts down coal and the Greens demand an end to using gas.

While that slumbering issue will further erode the government’s dwindling economic credentials, the conference motions on Palestine go to the heart of Labor’s morality.

Albanese promised last year that the overturning of 50 years of foreign affairs policy to meet his long-held personal ambition to recognise Palestine came with a range of protections to ensure we were not abetting terrorists and undermining Israel.

The draft resolutions to be debated at the conference have been stripped of Albanese’s requirements for Hamas to disarm and for the corrupt Palestinian Authority to hold elections, making the PM’s commitments to Australians meaningless.

This is another major breach of trust, designed to allow the government to crabwalk away from what should have been pre-conditions to recognition, not unenforceable waffle to legitimise the illegitimate.

But back to Modi and his deal with Albanese, who has long opposed selling uranium to India, citing concerns about waste and weapons.

India’s development of nuclear power from the 1960s was hampered by its lack of uranium resources and being outside the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

A series of breakthroughs between 2009-10 allowed the rapid development of nuclear reactors which will see power output grow more than 10-fold over the next 20 years.

As well as creating indigenous nuclear power technology while it was shunned for developing an A-bomb in 1974, India has more recently partnered with a wide range of countries — including the US, Russia and France — amassing 23 reactors, with another six under construction.

India will soon embark on an ambitious program of at least six small modular reactors, the first to be operational by 2033, which were only flagged in 2023.

While Australia opts for intermittent renewables and batteries — backed by gas until it is outlawed by net-zero zealots — progressive India sees nuclear power as central to making the country a “developed nation” by 2047, the centenary of its independence, and hitting net-zero emissions by 2070.

We once had that sort of nation-building zeal. For those selling the canard that it is too late for Australia to adopt nuclear power or that renewables and batteries will be able to supply sufficient, affordable energy for us to be a competitive economy, here are some facts.

Bangladesh, Turkey and Egypt will be the next countries to embrace the nuclear power renaissance. Each started construction of their first reactor in the years going up to 2020, all with Russian assistance. The first two will be producing this year, Egypt by 2028.

The next in line, with firm plans, financial commitments and signed construction agreements are Rwanda, Senegal, Kenya, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Kazakhstan, Poland and Estonia. All more progressive than us.

Just behind them and believed close to committing are Oman, Qatar, Indonesia, Vietnam and Chile. Ireland, Albania, North Macedonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Uruguay, Paraguay, Mongolia, Nepal, Ethiopia, Cambodia and Laos are all investigating adopting nuclear, particularly SMRs.

This moronic movement of juvenile Jew haters is what Albanese — a founder of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine in 1999 — has unleashed and what the Labor national conference this week will further facilitate.

Do we have significantly more wind and sunshine to rely on than all of them?

Then there’s the 31 countries already operating 417 reactors: US, France, China, Russia, South Korea, Ukraine, Canada, Japan, India, Spain, Sweden, Britain, United Arab Emirates, Finland, Czech Republic, Pakistan, Switzerland, Slovakia, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Brazil, South Africa, Argentina, Mexico, Romania, Iran, Slovenia, the Netherlands and Armenia.

The Australian Left’s hollow cost and nuclear waste arguments obviously don’t apply to those nations. We are among a tiny handful with a nuclear ban and an intention to rely on renewables backed by other sources, mainly hydro or burning imported gas: Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Denmark, Austria and Portugal.

What eventually replaces gas, which has become the baseload after coal? However, it appears that Albanese’s desire to keep a lid on Labor’s AUKUS tensions will mean the conference avoids all nuclear issues, leaving the nonsensical policies in place.

And the same fear of blood on the carpet will likely see the Palestinian policy debate similarly chloroformed, instead of facing its failures.

When the Albanese Government recognised Palestine in 2025 — in line with Labor’s platform but without any electoral mandate — the Prime Minister outlined a list of pre-conditions.

After one phone call with the corrupt head of the derided PA, Mahmoud Abbas — who has avoided elections for 20 years — Albanese accepted these undertakings: a demilitarised Palestine; Israel’s right to exist in peace and security; to hold elections and undertake governance reforms, including education system reforms to not promote further violence; no role for Hamas.

None of these has been met and there has been no significant attempt to do so. As a result, Labor will now provide a fig leaf for Albanese to hide behind.

Draft conference resolutions already public show the wording of its platform will move from “elections must occur” to “Australia supports elections when conditions permit.” Abbas has used that excuse for two decades.

The provision that “Hamas must be disarmed and excluded” will shrink to “Australia condemns Hamas and supports steps toward demilitarisation and security guarantees.” Piss-weak appeasment.

A leader of Students for Palestine defended calls for intifada at the antisemitism royal commission this week because she doesn’t “hold movements for the justice of the oppressed to a standard that says there can never be any violence.” Clearly a dim-witted Hamas stooge.

She dubbed the second Intifada — in which about 4400 people died, some 1140 Israelis and 3200 Palestinians — as a “legitimate act of resistance.” And she’s at university to get an education.

This moronic movement of juvenile Jew haters is what Albanese — a founder of the Parliamentary Friends of Palestine in 1999 — has unleashed and what the Labor national conference this week will further facilitate.