PM's power plan wrong: Garrett

LABOR has painted the Federal Government as having a split personality on nuclear energy, asking how its supposed free-marketeer Prime Minister could support an industry likely to need state aid.
The ALP has also accused the Federal Treasurer of having stayed quiet on nuclear power because he doubted its viability.
Labor's environment spokesman, Peter Garrett, has homed in on the apparent contradiction of a Government "led by a supposedly devout believer in the free market" pushing hard for a nuclear power industry that will "only stand up if subsidised".
In an attack on the nuclear option's viability, Mr Garrett writes in today's Age that it would be economically smarter to allow investment in clean technologies to be determined by the market, rather than by a bias for a particular industry.
Shadow treasurer Wayne Swan, meanwhile, claimed yesterday that Treasurer Peter Costello was hiding from the nuclear issue because he knew the economics did not stack up.
Mr Swan said the Switkowski report on the prospects for Australian nuclear power, a final version of which was released last week, made heroic assumptions about the viability of new-generation reactors.
These included assumptions about the private sector's willingness to invest, the costs of storing radioactive waste, security from terrorism and the relative cost of renewables.
But, Mr Swan said, nuclear power would "only be viable in Australia if there are massive government subsidies".
"Peter Costello knows it and his department knows it, so why are they silent?"
Mr Garrett says Prime Minister John Howard has hailed the Switkowski report by saying it proves nuclear power is "clean and green" and "increasingly economic" — claims Mr Garrett seeks to refute by saying electricity generation accounted for less than half of the globe's greenhouse-gas emissions and reactors in Australia would eliminate less than a fifth of the nation's contribution.
Mr Swan said it was difficult to believe Treasury would not regard a massive nuclear program as exposing Australia to "huge financial risk" and had not made a submission to the Switkowski inquiry because "it would have been highly embarrassing" for Mr Howard.
"The Treasurer must come out now and rule out a large-scale Australian nuclear power industry as too big an economic risk for the Australian taxpayer to bear," Mr Swan said.