Renewables sceptic Peter Dutton aims for Australian PM s job

SYDNEY - Hardline former policeman Peter Dutton, the man aiming to become Australian prime minister in May 3 elections, is a self-professed sceptic of the rush to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.

The 54-year-old leader of the conservative Liberal Party has climbed in the polls, while attacking centre-left Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s “weak leadership” at a time of rising prices.

Mr Dutton – the son of a bricklayer and himself a former Queensland drug squad detective – accuses the government of failing to tame inflation, responding meekly to a spate of anti-Semitic attacks, and backing a “divisive”, failed referendum on indigenous peoples’ rights.

But one of Mr Dutton’s starkest policy disagreements with the government is over how to tackle climate change.

He has attacked the speed and scale of the government’s plans to boost solar and wind-driven electricity to slash Australia’s carbon emissions.

Mr Dutton wants to ramp up gas production and overturn a 26-year-old ban on nuclear power with a US$200 billion (S$267 billion) scheme to construct seven industrial-scale nuclear reactors.

He insists it would be cheaper than the existing plan to increase renewable energy – despite the national science agency declaring it would be 50 per cent costlier.

“You can’t run a full-time and functioning economy using part-time power and unreliable power,” he told a conservative campaign rally in 2025.

‘Civilised country’

Mr Dutton – who has run defence and home affairs in previous conservative administrations – had to apologise in 2015 after a quip about the threat climate change poses to the Pacific was picked up by a microphone.

“Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to be, you know, have water lapping at your door,” Mr Dutton was caught saying.

It is not the only time his rhetoric has caused controversy.

In 2018, Mr Dutton