PETER VAN ONSELEN: Why everyone needs to sit up and pay attention to Ziggy Switkowski on nuclear energy - as Anthony Albanese tries to scare Aussies with silly memes

For those who haven’t heard of him, Ziggy Switkowski might sound like a cartoon name associated with the sort of childish characterisations of nuclear power being posted on social media by Labor MPs in the wake of Peter Dutton’s policy announcement. 

However, Dr Switkowski is anything but a cheap wisecrack.

Arguably Australia’s most senior business leader with scientific qualifications to boot, Dr Switkowski is a former CEO of both Telstra and Optus. 

And he’s studied business management at Harvard University too, served as a university Chancellor and sat on all manner of government boards.

But it is his scientific qualifications and experience that make his (albeit qualified) support for Peter Dutton’s venture into nuclear power so powerful, and one assumes a welcome intervention for the opposition.

It also may put the early criticisms coming from current sections of the business community - whose investments in other forms of energy production stand to be impacted by a new energy class - into better context.

Vested interests should always have their opinions taken with a grain of salt.

The now-retired Dr Switkowski achieved his PhD in nuclear physics in the late 1970s, during a time when the rest of the world was beginning to embrace the benefits of nuclear power.

It became an important energy source in his birthplace of Germany, not to mention other countries such as the United States, United Kingdom and France just to name a few.

As Dr Switkowski's 2006 study on the viability of nuclear power in Australia noted - we will come back to the origins and findings of that 250 page report shortly - 17 of 24 of the world’s richest economies embraced the technology.

But not Australia.

While Dr Switkowski was completing his PhD in nuclear physics, and undertaking a further six years of post doctoral specialist training in the discipline, left-wing factional warriors like Anthony Albanese (then in his late teens and early twenties) were learning their activist craft at the feet of more senior Left ideologues opposing nuclear power.

At the time silly images like three-eyed fish and deformed pets might not have seemed so absurd. 

Forty years later they certainly are, which is why Labor’s embrace of such images this week was so callow. 

Do they also worry about Australian submariners developing such deformities when they serve on Australian nuclear submarines as part of the AUKUS agreement Labor supports, for example.

Dr Switkowski is now 75 years old, but continues to sit on the occasional board and participates in reviews on occasion too. His well respected reputation is well entrenched.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton gave him an advanced look at the policy he was conjuring up ahead of this week’s release, the broad brush strokes of which were released on Wednesday. 

Daily Mail Australia reached out to Dr Switkowski to confirm reports today that he backs the Coalition’s bold and risky bid to go nuclear.

He told us that yes, the reports are accurate, confirming that when it comes to Australia embracing nuclear power ‘the economics can be made to work’ - and that there is no reason to doubt their capacity to return a dividend for taxpayers in the long term.

Labor has sought to discredit Coalition plans to build the reactors themselves, but Dr Switkowski points out that’s how other governments that embraced the pivot to nuclear also made the switch.

He did also note, however, that once built and established they should not continue to be managed by government. A reflection, perhaps, of the business leader’s faith in the market economy.

While Dr Switkowski began his working life as a nuclear physicist before pivoting to become a leading business figure in this country, he combined his dual expertise in 2006 when then Prime Minister John Howard commissioned him to conduct a study and report on the viability of nuclear power in Australia.

It found that Australia was indeed well placed to include nuclear power within Australia's energy mix. Doing so would be cost competitive with emission reductions benefits. It also noted that as a country with one of the world’s largest deposits of yellowcake - the key ingredient that goes into nuclear fuel or uranium - Australia was also in a good position to ramp up production and exports of uranium.

But that was nearly 20 years ago now, and Dr Switkowski did say at the time that making the shift needed to be embraced sooner rather than later. Australia lost that opportunity, continuing to listen to the concerns of nuclear opponents.

The 2006 Switkowski report, as it came to be known, was criticised at the time by some other scientists for failing to adequately address the challenges of dealing with nuclear waste. 

But now that Australia has a bipartisan commitment to nuclear submarines, dealing with nuclear waste is also a bipartisan reality, whether nuclear power becomes a reality or not.

The Coalition says reactor waste would be dealt with the same way nuclear submarine waste will be.

While Labor has used the days since Dutton's policy announcement to land childish, superficial blows on the policy with references to deformed pets, fish and koalas, with fairy tales and Simpsons references, Dr Switkowski’s injection into the debate should force Labor to get serious with any scare campaign when arguing against going nuclear. 

That is, if it wants to be taken seriously.

There certainly are unanswered questions and lots of missing details in what Dutton has revealed so far. 

Starting with how much his seven nuclear reactors might cost to build. And we know from political history that scare campaigns work and plugging big target policies from opposition is a risky business.

Dr Switkowski confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that the CSIRO’s estimate of between $8.6billion and $10billion per reactor was ‘in the ballpark’.

This debate has a long way to run, both politically and as a defining potential shift in the climate wars. 

But make no mistake, Dr Switkowski’s intervention needs to be taken seriously, and can’t simply be dismissed with a juvenile series of social media gags that aren’t particularly funny to begin with.