Power plays
There is a reason why the two big policies coming out of Canberra this week are a world away from Australians’ central concern about the cost of living.
Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton both released big policies over the past 24 hours that can’t be explained by electoral politics, where the cost of living is the main game.
Albanese’s news media bargaining incentive — under which the world's largest tech companies including Meta, Google and TikTok will be slapped with a new charge if they don't strike pay deals with publishers and given a tax break if they do — is unlikely to be popular at a time when trust in mainstream media and social media is falling.
Dutton’s plan to develop a nuclear power industry in Australia is not a popular option compared to various forms of renewable energy, and it remains to be seen whether the independent modelling he released today will change that perception. The modelling, by Frontier Economics, claims that the path to net zero will be $263 billion cheaper by 2050 under Dutton’s nuclear plan than Labor’s current transition to renewables.
For Albanese, his lifeline to the major media companies needs to be seen in the context of increasing fear within the Labor caucus that the News Corp papers — The Australian and the city tabloids — are out to get him.
