A red herring to prompt a Labor split - Opinion - smh.com.au

John Howard's call for a debate on nuclear energy is about politics - not policy, writes Peter Hartcher.
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WHY did the Prime Minister abruptly declare during his overseas trip that it was "inevitable" that Australia would one day have a nuclear power industry? A member of his Government snidely refers to it as his "Canada declaration" - a sudden and apparently ad hoc pronouncement, wildly out of the normal course of Government business.
Howard followed up in Dublin: "I didn't say lightly what I said in Ottawa," he said. And: "I'll be having something more to say about that when I get back."
He is planning to announce next week some form of major inquiry into the subject. He was working on the details on his flight back from Ireland.
The idea did not emerge from any cabinet discussion or formal process. It caught his ministers completely by surprise. And they find themselves committed to what Howard described as "a full-blooded debate". It was just as it appeared - sudden and ad hoc.
Howard is right to point out that the surge in oil prices has provoked a worldwide rethinking of nuclear power. But it is very odd for the leader of Australia to embrace it as inevitable. Why?
One reason the world has long been sceptical of Iran's claim that its nuclear program is intended for electricity only is that it is a country drenched in oil. It is simply implausible that the world's fourth-biggest oil exporter could need a nuclear-powered electricity supply.
Similarly, it is extraordinary that Australia, another country awash in cheap energy, should be enthusiastically embracing a much more expensive source of power. Even the most energetic advocates of nuclear power see it as a forlorn cause for Australia.
The World Nuclear Association, the global nuclear lobby, published a paper last month on the economics of nuclear-fuelled electricity, and this was its conclusion: "Nuclear power is cost-competitive with other forms of electricity generation, except where there is direct access to low-cost fossil fuels."
Guess what? Australia has the world's best access to low-cost fossil fuels. Indeed, Australian exports of fossil fuels are so plentiful and competitive that they account for a quarter of our national export income, a total of $25.9 billion in 2004-05. And how much uranium does Australia export? It was a little less than half a billion dollars worth in 2004-05, about 2 per cent of the value of the national export of fossil fuels.
Yet now Howard, in his advocacy of nuclear policy as "cleaner and greener" than fossil fuels, seems to have lost his sense of proportion.