Dutton's fantasy is a big departure to the kooky wilds of LNP adventurism

For political parties banished from their own heartlands, this slashing of margins can show up in the surrender of hard-won credibility.

Suddenly, we are to accept that a long-pilloried nuclear power option is the safe answer to a cumulative problem made incalculably worse by these same smooth-talking sales people.

As night becomes day, what was electorally implausible, economically unviable, and environmentally untenable is now, what ... the silver bullet?

The once dominant Liberal Party of Australia - a hitherto blue chip stock unrivalled in its electoral success and proudly headquartered in the leafy enclaves of Melbourne's inner-east and Sydney's harbourside - is now owned and run by the Queensland-based LNP.

Showing no regard for accumulated goodwill, the party's newly elevated receiver-managers, Sunshine State Holdings, have devised an unlikely phoenix plan.

It involves sinking the SS Emissions Reduction and all who sail in her, while promising to slash household electricity bills.

There is however, a catch. It turns out that nuclear power's unrecoverable build costs and colossal lead-times will make even AUKUS look deliverable.

Then there's the absent business case. But don't worry because like "Snowy two-point-Oh no!" the taxpayers will foot the bills.

Let's be clear, this anything-but-renewables fantasy is a significant departure from mainstream consensus toward the kooky wilds of LNP adventurism - like an ethanol fixation, gone nuclear. Literally.

It is a flick from Pitt Street to, well, a Keith Pitt of a policy.

Speaking of the Barnaby-loyal member for Hinkler, Mr Pitt is disarmingly frank.

Minutes before the formal announcement by the Liberal Party's Brisbane-based management, Pitt compared Labor's wind and solar to delivering seven reactors declaring, "the difference is, it works".

"You can cook your [$100?] roast and run your hospital and you can run your school and it's reliable and for those for whom net-zero floats their boat, it's zero-emissions."

For those for whom net-zero floats your boat? Global heating is not foot reflexology or line dancing, it is fact established through complex and rigorous scientific collaboration.

The same methodology by-the-way, used to understand the sophisticated process of a nuclear reaction.

And nuclear reaction there will most certainly be. In fact, perhaps this should be called the LNP's New Bradfield Scheme. Remember that? It involved turning the coastal rivers inland.

Queensland figures including Pauline Hanson were floating this 1930s boondoggle as recently as 2019.

But why "Bradfield?" Because ditching renewables could be the policy that finally sees Liberal frontbencher Paul Fletcher's Sydney seat of Bradfield, turn Teal. And more besides.