calwest,
I'm not an academic.

I'm well aware of what the RBA is, and I know it's not primarily a lending institution (although it does do some lending to commercial banks). But you asked about funding so I told you what I think the best way is. Alternatively we could fund it via the bond market; that would be functionally the same but slightly more expensive. It's more efficient for the government to cut out the middle man and borrow from the RBA directly.

Globally I'm for developing nuclear plants. But Australia has so much sunshine and so little demand (because of our low population) that I think solar could do the job more cheaply.

"Finally, the sites you have blithely nominated for nuclear plants are certainly not capital cities, but those areas still contain sizeable populations and most are not very far from large cities"
That's the point. There'd need to be a large potential workforce to recruit from, but it's better to avoid the costs of locating in large cities. There's likely to be a higher proportion of people supporting it in country areas, and the number of locals strongly opposed to it would be much lower.

As I said, the basis of my opposition is economic, but the political considerations are still very important and public opinion should not be ignored.

BTW I NEVER EVER base my opinions on the policies of Labor, the Greens or any other political party. Never have, never will.

Renewable energy iv very capital intensive, but has very low ongoing costs. Therefore its financial viability depends on the cost of finance. When the interest rate gets down to 4%, solar thermal (without subsidies) becomes cheaper than fossil fuel. Since the RBA has set interest rates to 2% it makes sense to take advantage of that and invest in solar.

Aidan,

You contradict yourself with every post. Don't have time for that.