Graham,

I see your list as being in the realms of what's possible rather than a list of unattainable desires. Since Australia going nuclear is something that will never be acceptable to the majority until most of them spend a power interrupted winter, talk of going down the atomic path is wasted. The obstacles that the courts through lawfare and the left through rolling protests, would put before any attempt at such a plant means that no organisation is going to go down that path.

For the same reason, coal is problematic due to lawfare and civil disobedient protest and sabotage. Again no commercial group will stick their hand up to build a new plant unless they were somewhat assured of compensatory profits, which rather defeats the purpose behind such a new plant. Hence the need for government to build the plant. They would also need to put legislation in place to defeat frivolous lawfare and civil disobedience.

This would go a long way to resolving electricity prices. We simply have to get back to where we were in 2005 and that means no subsidies for so-called renewables and encouragement for the most efficient energy systems, coal and gas.

In terms of Paris, I think its no longer possible for a government to just walk away since the scare campaign would write itself and the public have been deceived for too long to recognise that Paris won't save the GBR or do anything worthwhile. I suggest however that we alter our commitment to one that seeks to mirror the efforts of the rest of the world. Develop a weighted basket of our major economic, partners, rivals and peers and then promise to meet the actual results achieved by that weighted average. So we'd agree to cut emissions by the weighted-average of China, India, NZ, Japan, Indonesia, Canada and the EU (for example).

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I think that could be sold to the public on the basis that we are doing our bit but not more than our bit. Of course, such a weighted-average would actually mean that we'd need to do bugger-all, which would offer cover for us to scrap the NEG (or whatever acronym replaces it) and cease renewable fetishes.

2. Immigration

Just cut it. Call it temporary if you want but its too high and is unsustainable. Good luck trying to enforce policies that try to keep people to their promises to live in Upper Kumbukta West. It'd take about 4.3 nanoseconds for the first such immigrant to tell Four Corners why they simply have to move to inner Sydney and for 'our' ABC to run a campaign to defeat the policy. Take refugees if we must, but only on protection visas which are immediately forfeit if the refugee visits the country he is seeking protection from.

home Affordability.

Cutting the immigration in-take partially resolves this issue. Reduced demand equals lower prices. But the government has a tiger by the tail here. They say that they want to reduce prices which is really a mandatory position. But they know that many people and industries are dependant on prices rising or at least not falling much. Vast numbers are mortgaged to the hilt and a US (2007) style crash would, at the very least, create a massive decline in consumer spending. At the worst it would result in massive numbers of mortgagor sales. Governments don't want prices to fall, they just want to seem like they want it.

Education

Just get the Feds out of the issue. Give it all back to the states. That, or introduce a voucher system which also negates all Federal meddling

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Health -as regards sugar taxes and the like.

The government should be in the business of advising people about the health issues, not enforcement. The obesity crisis was caused by governments meddling in poorly understood science and thinking they can now solve it is absurd. Tell people that sugars bad (m'kay!) but don't force them to do what experts currently think is right. Also allow others to make the alternate case.

Indigenous rights

Well they already have all the rights they need or will ever get. As to welfare, someone, someday has to just say that people who want to live a 'traditional' life in the middle of the never-never is never going to achieve the same health, welfare and educational outocomes as someone living next door to some inner city world-class hospital. Just say it and then go from there ie we can't achieve parity but we'll do what we can, so long as those we are helping put in some effort as well

mhaze,
have you forgotten where you are ? Your suggestions make way too much sense.
I fully support pushing for everything you stated.

//Since Australia going nuclear is something that will never be acceptable to the majority until most of them spend a power interrupted winter, talk of going down the atomic path is wasted.//

I don't how true that is, mhaze. I fail to see what is unique about the Australian situation that would stop people accepting nuclear power here when it is acceptable in similar liberal Western democracies. Canada, UK, France, US.... they've all gone nuclear, without any real hassles except for Three Mile Island.

It seems to me that the only thing standing in the way of most people accepting nuclear power is a lack of education. For people outside of STEM fields, the most rigorous education on the nuclear power industry that they receive probably comes courtesy of the Simpsons. A lot of people really think that nuclear waste is green glowing ooze. I suspect that many of them don't really understand that a nuclear power reactor works by producing heat to run steam turbines; I think they imagine that nuclear reactors are like the engine room of the Starship Enterprise whereby useful work can be extracted by having a sufficient density of flashing LEDs, machines that go ping and boffins to operate them, and then the rest sort of just happens by magic.

What's required to combat such widespread scientific ignorance is a comprehensive public education campaign. Ideally this could be included in the junior high school science curriculum, but it's already pretty jam-packed. But a decent fact-based advertisement campaign could go a decent way to shifting public opinion.

Did you know that nuclear power stations actually emit more ionizing radiation to the surrounding environment than coal fired power stations of the same output? True story: all coal contains trace levels of a variety of radioisotopes - minute concentrations, but they can add up to a fair bit when you consider the staggering amount of coal that power stations go through. When the coal gets burnt, some of those isotopes go up the chimney and then fall out on the surrounding environment. Nuclear power plants typically keep their radioisotopes better contained.

If I had a house that was close enough to a coal fired power station and a nuclear power station that their radiation output was measurably above background radiation, equidistant from both and both of the same power output.... I'd be receiving a higher radiation dose from the coal fired power station than the nuclear one unless something went mushroom shaped. Which is staggeringly improbable; it's like being attacked by a shark, getting struck by lightning and winning lotto simultaneously.

I think if more people had a slightly better education about the actual facts around nuclear power, they might get on board... after all, if an ardent lefty like myself is in favour, it seems it couldn't be that hard to win over all but the rusted on hippies.