Drongo lingo shrouds energy security spiels

Our alternative prime ministers for the 48th Parliament both want us to believe they are the true champions of something highly important: “energy security”.

Its importance is not in question. Secure, reliable and affordable energy — especially electricity — is critical to modern economic success and higher living standards. Not to mention the climate crisis. The problem is how our politicians weaponise it.

Although it might sound like a straightforward proposition, energy security is a wonderfully vague and subjective concept, not dissimilar to “national interest” — very much existing in the eyes (or ears) of the beholder and the mouth of the politician. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton know this, and apparently revel in it, thus far at least escaping real scrutiny from the mainstream media and political commentators about what they mean each time they talk about energy security. Is it security of energy supply at affordable prices, in real time, a fairly traditional definition related to cost of living and business productivity, and also quality of life and business continuity? Is it the mainly economic security of our vast and lucrative energy exports, coal and gas, overwhelmingly to North-East Asia? Is it our energy future, including systemic resilience and the global decarbonisation imperative, while reducing vulnerabilities such as dependence on foreign oil and also imported technologies such as electric vehicles and solar panels in a geopolitically strained national security environment? 

Is it all of the above? More? With our political class being deliberately imprecise and vague, take your pick.

And what about climate security, the primary concern of Australia’s strategically vital neighbours, the Pacific Island nations? That’s a big one given that a climate-reckless US president-elect Donald Trump wants to “drill, baby, drill”, pull Australia’s key national security ally out of the Paris Agreement and make America greenhouse-delinquent again. This is at the same time China — our key trading partner and economic ally and also ours and America’s greatest strategic rival in the Pacific — leads the world’s renewable energy technology revolution. The stakes are high.

Oh what a tangled web …

Listen carefully and you’ll hear both wannabe PMs, Albanese and Dutton, mixing and matching energy security, economic security and national security, artfully weaving in and out of this security trio to make whatever political point they desire at the time.

A Dutton version of energy security is his justification for vowing to take Australia down a path to nuclear energy, and his pro-nuclear flag carrier and climate change and energy frontman Ted O’Brien has adopted an Americanism that energy security is national security. Dutton’s headland nuclear policy speech on July 7 highlighted the same point:

 “ …  because the decisions government makes today will determine Australia’s energy future. A future where we are either energy secure and self-reliant, or energy insecure and dependent on others. Indeed, energy security has never been more interconnected with national security. Resurgent authoritarian regimes and increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks are sober reminders of the connection between energy and national security.”

Make no mistake, Dutton is locked and loaded to pivot politically to making energy politics a national security priority if global insecurity escalates and domestic fears surge, as they well may in a Trump world, and cost and clean will be sidelined. But hang on. “Energy secure and self-reliant” with nuclear power? A technology suite that even Dutton’s Liberal-National Coalition says will be totally imported, and will take decades to fully develop.

Meanwhile, when Albanese had to defend Australia’s massive exports of fossil-fuel coal and gas to ultra-climate-conscious Pacific Islanders at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa last month, he cited “energy security” as the political justification.

A press conference went like this:

Journalist: Prime Minister, the Prime Minister of Tuvalu has said that Australia is not doing enough to curb fossil-fuel emissions. What do you say to that?

Prime Minister: Well, I had positive discussions with Prime Minister Teo and other Pacific leaders here. They recognise that the challenge of climate change doesn’t mean that you can just flick a switch and act immediately. We need to make sure that energy security is prioritised in order to make sure that we have that support going forward.

It’s ambiguous whether that’s keep-the-lights-on energy security for Australia, which is also a case of economic security given our export income dependence, or energy security for our strategic trade partners and security allies, especially Japan and Korea, whose domestic manufacturing economies derive energy security from importing coal and gas from Australia. Or was it simply a matter of political security for the Albanese government as a cost-of-living election looms.

For Pacific Island nations, which in turn are vital to Australia’s national security, the climate crisis with rising sea levels represents clear and present danger to their very existence. And you don’t get much more focused on national security than that.

Good COP, bad cop

This week the latest UN annual conference on climate change, COP29, is kicking off in the obscure central Asian petrostate of Azerbaijan. Trump’s return and America’s probable departure from the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5-2C, again, has cast a pall over the event, and will affect Australia’s plans to host COP31 in 2026 in partnership with Pacific nations, and also Brazil hosting COP30 next year.

Top of the agenda in Baku, Azerbaijan’s capital, is wealthy world financial support for climate action in developing and vulnerable nations, Pacific nations included, with Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen having a key co-ordinating role. It’s also possible a decision will be made on the COP31 hosting bid, which is being challenged by a rival proposal from Turkiye. If it goes Australia’s way you’ll be hearing Dutton warming up his election attack lines about the Albanese government caring more about “Paris” than Parramatta, and Australians doing it hard.

This might be smartly aggressive short-term politicking in Australia, but is highly risky for regional harmony and longer-term national security. This is especially so given Dutton’s historic credibility problems with the Pacific after a “hot mic” incident in 2015, when he was picked up joking to then Coalition prime minister Tony Abbott about Pacific nations being “about to have water lapping at [their] door”.

Dutton leans into “energy security” to sell his controversial and still uncosted nuclear energy policy, presenting economic, energy and national security as an indivisible trifecta that can be advanced simultaneously by embracing his long-term reactors plan for just seven centralised locations, and prolonging coal and gas in the meantime. If that sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is, and even if most Australians buy into it, climate-sensitive Pacific nations will not.

Time for action, not words 

The energy and energy security debate Australia needs has to be conducted at a higher level than partisan arguments for and against renewables, fossil fuels, nuclear or anything else. Key questions include: the speed and cost of development and deployment, and who pays for it; the international ramifications of the choices made; the relative operational and security merits of decentralised energy systems vs centralised ones; the sources of key technologies that will be relied on, the vulnerability or otherwise of their supply lines across a range of geopolitical scenarios, and the genuine opportunities for a future made in Australia.

The always-important interplay between energy, economic and national security is becoming increasingly critical for Australia, the Pacific and the world, and the return of Trump to the White House in January raisies the stakes exponentially. Australia needs a sophisticated political debate, with deep scrutiny from the media and expert commentators puncturing the wall of ambiguity, misinformation and disinformation, political propaganda and ideological obsessions.

Energy security, including its inherent economic and national security dimensions, is a much bigger and more immediate priority for Australians than the AUKUS nuclear submarines. We need to ensure our politicians approach it as such, and hold them to account.

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