The Liberal Party accidentally texted me its nuclear plans

Senior Liberal party figures included me in a group chat about upcoming energy policy announcements. I didn't think it could be real. Then the Frontier reports started dropping.

The Federal opposition announced plans to centre their campaign back into office on the promises of cheap, clean, timely nuclear power. This may have surprised some — it is a bold strategy, but also an uncharacteristically risky one. It was not a surprise at the Currently Speaking offices though. The reason we knew this was coming was that, for the six months prior to that announcement, our Currently Speaking number was sent a collection of details covering the announcement through a WhatsApp chat set up by MP Ted O’Brien called “how about nukes? (not aukus) - small group”.

This is going to take some explaining.

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This story technically begins after the current Albanese Labor government was elected to office. It followed years of political and cultural wars relating to energy policy. The Liberal party had lost heartland seats to Teal independents and were sandwiched by their Coalition partners, The Nationals, who were attacking the renewable transition. The Liberal Party needed to decide whether to cede the climate change debate, or double down on fighting a transition away from electricity generated by burning coal.

This is where MP Ted O’Brien and Currently Speaking come in.

In early 2024, our number was added to a group chat established by Opposition Energy Spokesman Ted O’Brien, who opened the thread with the following message: “Team – establishing a principles group for coordination on nuclear, particularly for over the next 18 months. We are pulling together a tiger team at deputies/agency Chief of Staff level following up from the meeting in the Sit Room this morning for action items and will be sending that out later this evening.”

The message continued, “Pls provide the ideas from your team for us to coordinate with over the next couple days and over the weekend. Thx.” This was followed by various thumbs up reactions, a couple of Australian flags and Opposition Treasurer Angus Taylor commenting: “Good job Angus”.

Early conversation threads were focused on the costs of delivering nuclear reactors in Australia (agreed to be low), the viability of small-modular reactors (agreed to be high) and the best locations for disposing of nuclear waste (debated between Newtown, Brunswick and offshore in Gippsland/Newcastle).

After reading these chains, we recognized that these conversations possessed a high degree of verisimilitude. The texts, in their word choice and arguments, sounded as if they were written by the people who purportedly sent them, or by a particularly adept AI text generator. We were still concerned that this could be a disinformation operation, or a simulation of some sort. And we remained mystified that no one in the group seemed to have noticed our presence. But if it was a hoax, the quality of mimicry and the level of energy-policy realism was impressive. It was apparent that this was likely a very legitimate group chat intended to discuss the potential to develop a plan to make a policy that would (in a couple of measly decades) deliver several large scale nuclear reactors in Australia.

The group chat was host to some heated debates regarding the location of the proposed nuclear generators. After the topic was raised, Barnaby Joyce immediately replied “NOT IN MY BACKYARD” before videocalling the chat. No one appeared to answer the video call and it’s unclear whether it was on purpose.

Numerous times, the group chat veered away from its notional purpose into more mundane topics. For example, many MPs needed to be reminded that there was a separate WhatsApp chat for coal-miner make up tutorials run by QLD senator Matt Canavan. Another instance involved a drawn-out explanation about when the group cared about whales (offshore wind farm proposed = “yes”, climate change broadly = “no”).

Throughout the prolonged group chat, we remained mystified that we had continued to be able to observe undetected. At one point we thought we’d been discovered when Former Minister for Women Tony Abbott said “I think there’s an interloper in this chat” before using his admin privileges to remove Sussan Ley and rename the group chat “how about nukes? (not aukus) - small group (boys only)”.

Ley was not the only politician removed from the group. It appeared as though Craig Kelly had kept his work phone from the Liberal Party days and was also inadvertently added to the conversation. His tenure was cut short after attempting a phishing scam that appeared to have successfully ensnared John Howard’s bitcoins.

Normally we wouldn’t publish a conversation of such a sensitive nature as this, between such senior members of parliament. However since the group text contained no actual policy or anything of else of substance, we have chosen to release some examples of the contents of the messages.

Before going to press with this article, we reached back into the group chat for comment.