This week’s Channel Nine leaders’ debate crystallised the dire predicament facing the electorate. A Prime Minister whose woke green-left ideology is impoverishing the country is seemingly set to be re-elected because the opposition leader has refused to make the case for common-sense conservatism and been intimidated into silence and lies by the left of his party, the zeitgeist, and a preference for kowtowing to the prejudices of focus groups rather than boldly arguing for vital change.

Myriad examples illustrate this. Common sense and, finally, the UK High Court tell us that there are only two sexes and that you can’t change your sex through surgical mutilation or chemical castration. Pretending you can has forced women and girls to face the threat of rape or violence in bathrooms, change rooms, prisons and on the sports field, and deprived them of the chance to win medals in what should be fair competitions. It forces them to accept misogynistic language that erases their gender in phrases like ‘pregnant people’ and ‘chestfeeding’.

The opposition leader should have led the charge to protect the rights of women and girls because it is the right thing to do and the ‘Right’ thing to do; instead, he lamely utters that, ‘It’s not something that I think is front of mind at this election.’ Well, whose fault is that?

It’s the same with climate change. Whatever is driving the slight, gradual increase in temperatures shown by the satellite record, more than 50 per cent of the planet is increasing emissions willy-nilly, and those who want to cut emissions to net zero are doing it in the most economically devastating and least effective way with net-zero chance of achieving their goal.

In this environment, the only thing that makes sense is to forget about ‘nut zero’ and reducing Australia’s trivial emissions and maximise national wealth to pay for the best means of mitigating or adapting to global lukewarming.

The common-sense conservative would call for overturning the ban on nuclear power since Labor and the Coalition both agree that nuclear power is safe enough to have a nuclear reactor – Lucas Heights – in Sydney and nuclear-powered submarines in Sydney Harbour.

Rather than making this case, the Coalition plans to use nuclear power to cut emissions. While this is more expensive than continuing to use coal and gas, it is far cheaper than Labor’s proposition. So, why doesn’t Dutton make the case? It’s not hard.

Albanese admits his modelling, which predicted that average electricity bills would fall by $275, was wrong, and he hasn’t put up an alternative. Luckily, a prestigious consortium from Melbourne and Princeton University has modelled his plan to carpet Australia with Chinese solar panels, batteries, wind turbines, transmission lines, and gas power plants. They estimate the cost at $7 to $9 trillion, or $175 to $225 billion every year for forty years.

Compare that with China, which, over the last decade built approximately 31 nuclear reactors. Admittedly, China doesn’t have to bribe the CFMEU to build infrastructure, but France, which has obstreperous unions and high-cost labour, has built 52 nuclear power plants since the oil shock of 1973 and at its peak pace (1970s to 1980s), commissioned four to six reactors  per year.

Assuming that Australia could efficiently do what France has done, and China is doing, it could replace its coal-fired power plants with 24 nuclear reactors in a five-to-seven-year timeframe at a cost of approximately $AU84 billion. That’s 1.5 per cent of the cost of Labor’s plan – 83 to 107 times cheaper – and decades faster.

That’s because Labor’s plan demands a massive overhaul of Australia’s energy system. To make renewables reliable, they’ll have to increase the size of the grid by 25 per cent, boost generation capacity by 50 per cent, and quadruple firming capacity to deliver the same electricity we have now.

Moreover, this vast infrastructure is at the mercy of the elements. Wind, hail, and bushfires – which turbines create – take out power lines, destroy panels, damage batteries, and take days and weeks to repair, not to mention the regular cost of replacing them.

Compare that with France’s nuclear power plants – still running decades later and delivering some of the cheapest energy in Europe while Denmark – which turned to wind power in the oil shock – has some of the most expensive energy in the world, over five times more per kWh than nuclear-generated electricity in France. It’s the same here. South Australia, which gets around 75 per cent of its electricity from renewables, has the country’s highest power prices, costing four times more per kilowatt-hour than nuclear electricity in France.

Albanese says renewables are the cheapest form of energy, but the only thing cheap under Labor is talk. Thanks to Bowen’s hot air, costs are ballooning, power bills are shocking, and consumers are being burnt. Labor likes to talk about its ‘Made in Australia’ policy but the only thing Labor’s made in Australia is a home-grown cost of living crisis. All that its big spending has bought are big mortgage hikes. Under Albanese, Australians have suffered the biggest income squeeze in the developed world – an 8-per-cent nosedive.

Labor loves mass migration and mass citizenship ceremonies because it hopes to turn them into mass recruitment parties. But how many homes did Labor build for 1.2 million migrants? None. So, the cost of housing and renting goes through the roof.

Albanese doesn’t care. He’s got his clifftop mansion in Copacabana. If he’s re-elected, he’s said he won’t do a deal with the Greens, but nobody, least of all the Greens, believes him. They have already told us that they will demand that their policies be implemented as the price of propping up Labor. Does anyone imagine that Albanese will do more than feign resistance? Come on. It will be Carnival in Rio. The only reason Albanese doesn’t belong to the Greens is that he prefers to be in power. To be Prime Minister and to implement their hard-left policies will be like all his Christmases come at once with Albo playing Santa handing out billions as we sink into trillions of dollars of debt in a banana republic.