The federal Liberal Party’s advertising agency, News Crap Australia, continues to work hard on its main client’s nuclear power account.

Ads aimed at convincing Australians to vote for Peter Dutton and a party that wants to establish costly nuclear power plants in who knows how many backyards and shun cheaper and cleaner renewable energy sources continue to pop up regularly in News Crap Australia outlets.

Our Media Glass House researchers note that many such items are given a big run on front pages of the national turdbloid The Australian, like this one (below) on Wednesday.

The ads are usually cleverly designed to fool readers into thinking they are objective news stories or columnists’ commentary pieces when they are blatant Liberal Party propaganda.

Another advertisement to be published in recent days spruiking the nuclear option was an almost-full-page plug in News Crap turdbloids on Easter Sunday, otherwise appearing as the latest column by far right-wing Liberal Party promoter and News Crap Australia commentator Peta Credlin. (below)

The ad ran all the usual lines about nuclear power being allegedly more reliable and supposedly cheaper per energy unit than solar or wind or any form of renewable energy.

But as often happens, it made no mention of the cost of building a nuclear power station. Odd that, given the headline talked about the numbers stacking up for nuclear power. Also odd because the cost of a nuclear plant would, our humble MGH teams suggest, be somewhat relevant to those who might foot the bill, be they private investors or taxpayers.

The column did extensively cite the pro-nuclear power energy minister in the Canadian province of Ontario, Todd Smith, who is planning a big expansion of its nuclear power network. But again, according to Canadian news stories found by our MGH teams, even Mr Smith is being very, very cagey about the costs involved, so he no doubt was just what Ms Credlin was looking for to build her case.

One would expect at least one essential number might feature in Mr Credlin’s advertisement… I mean, column.

It’s not as if comparative figures are not freely available.

For instance, our MGH teams took just minutes to locate stories about the cost and production timeline blowouts of the UK’s latest nuclear power plant being built at Hinkley Point. Here’s one……

Not really the sort of headline you want to read if you are pro-nuke, especially since it’s from a story published in 2017 just two years after the Hinkley Point project got under way.

Way back then the story spoke of cost rises of 1.5 billion UK pounds to take the total price of the new plant to 19.6 billion UK pounds. That’s almost A$38 billion in today’s money.

But that was then. More recently there have been stories like this from January……

So the price is apparently now up around 35 billion UK pounds, or A$67 billion. But in addition to the total and escalating cost, there is an extra direct impact on British households from the subsidy – hundreds of pounds each – they will pay to the plant’s developers on top of their actual power bills under a deal to meet cost rises struck by the UK government at the time the plant was given the go-ahead.

Yes, dear reader, you are probably wondering how a supposed “news” organisation like News can keep getting away with peddling stories or columns plugging a Liberal Party policy without divulging all essential facts, starting with the cost of a nuclear power plant.

Well, of course if the stories were genuine news items they would be obliged to do so. But if you are running ads then you can pretty much say what you like.

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