Fear by Survey

The Australia Institute’s ‘research’ on public opinion about the potential location of nuclear power plants in Australia is not actually intended to help public debate. Its real intent is to create fear in order to serve the Institute’s own aims on the issue. How do you create fear by survey?

First, you start with the assumption that there is a lack of public knowledge about nuclear power. A safe assumption in most countries.

Next, you write a question that asks something like ‘If there were plans to build a nuclear power plant in your local area, would you be in favour of it or against it?’ And you don’t add anything that would help the respondent give an informed answer. This is par for the course with the Australia Institute. Look at its website. It certainly is a nuclear information free zone.

But you know, by looking at research from overseas, that people have a negative view when asked about specific siting possibilities, like their backyard.

Lo and behold! Public opinion, uninformed by anything you could do to help it make an informed judgement, says it does not want nuclear power stations in its backyard.

You have knowingly traded on people’s fears to produce the polling result you expected. Case closed.

Simultaneously, you publish other ‘research’ on the potential location of nuclear power plants and you say – with a straight face - you are doing that to inform public debate. You do this because you know –you just did the polling - that, due to lack of knowledge, people are fearful when confronted with specific siting ideas for nuclear power plants.

What have you actually achieved by this? You have added to the fear of things nuclear by demonstrating that public opinion, in the absence of knowledge, is fearful of things nuclear. And you have implied there is a secret plan about the location of nuclear power plants. Because if you can identify possible locations, then they might be real. And you’ve made it seem immediate. And you might even have implied that it will happen against people’s wishes.

There’s a fair bit of dogwhistling going on here. Especially when you consider that there is a very respectable recent government report by Ziggy Switkowski that says the development of as Australian nuclear power industry depends on a range of technical and policy issues as well as public confidence and acceptance. In other words, Switkowski says that we need to continue the debate and, if ever there was to be a nuclear power industry in Australia, public opinion would have to have change first. In effect, Switkowski has already acknowledged the crucial role of public opinion.

Looks a bit suspect if you ignore Switkowski, doesn’t it?

In short, this ‘research’ is a stunt. Creating fear is a pretty reprehensible price to be prepared to pay for a mere stunt. The Australia Institute is not to be taken seriously.

Michael Angwin
Executive Director
Australian Uranium Association

WNA
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