The author really does build his arguments on a house of cards doesn't he.

The claim: "Solar farms create ecological impacts, including the loss of habitats for indigenous wildlife and flora." is just silly. There are no great swathes of bushland being levelled for solar farms. There may be an argument that they are removing agricultural land from production which is valid, but cropping is usually of an introduced monoculture and grazing is usually an introduced mammal on introduced pastures, both create virtual bio-deserts.

There is growing research showing in this context that solar farms enrich local biodiversity. http://reneweconomy.com.au/how-solar-farms-can-double-as-havens-for-our-wildlife/

If so this completely negates a principle plan of the author's argument.

Good for you Steele. It is nice to see you discussing something of consequence. 20,000 square kilometres of renewable energy infrastructure to generate power for about 1.25 million homes: That in itself is a bloody disgrace, environmental or otherwise. No wonder there is anger at such projects and the lunatics proposing them.

All Labor needs do is agree to remove the nuclear ban, then we will all know the truth as to whether nuclear can deliver energy cheaply, reliably and safely. But that won't happen as Labor has a large contingent of tinfoil hat anti-nuclear exponents. Nuclear is by far the cheapest source of dispatchable energy. When you look at the Gencost report, the CSIRO boffins removed conventional nuclear from their report for a rather odd reason. I think that they did this so they wouldn't have to acknowledge that nuclear power plants in operation for several decades produced dispatchable energy at a similar or slightly lower cost compared with non-dispatchable wind and solar. When you look at the data from Europe, nuclear energy is around a third the cost of renewable energy and has a far smaller footprint.

Remove the nuclear ban and I would guess there would be much interest in building conventional nuclear generation in Australia.

Yes Fester, just call for tenders and then you will find out the EXACT
cost of nuclear in its various formats.