An advertising campaign targeting women ahead of the federal election is promoting misleading information about nuclear energy.
New analysis undertaken by the Climate Council shows that 63 per cent of all nuclear energy advertising active across Facebook and Instagram as of January 2025, was viewed by women.
The ads are largely being driven by the Get Clear on Nuclear group, which is backed by the Minerals Council of Australia, a peak mining lobby group.
The ads are part of a misinformation campaign targeting women voters to undermine their confidence in renewables and promote nuclear energy and gas as false solutions to the climate crisis.
Speaking to Women’s Agenda, CEO of the Climate Council Amanda McKenzie said the advertising campaign is using misinformation to compel women to vote for the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy.
“What [our analysis] indicates is that it’s being pushed specifically towards women, and it’s largely driven by the Minerals Council,” she said.
“That’s where the funding for those ads is coming from, and I think it reveals what is known in the polling, which is that women tend to be more undecided in their vote, and that women need to be persuaded if Australia was to go nuclear.”
Polling shows women are unconvinced about nuclear energy and are more likely to consider nuclear to be high risk and high cost.
“Women are quite inherently skeptical of nuclear power as a proposal,” McKenzie said.
“I think women have a lot of valid concerns about the risks of nuclear reactors, whether that’s concerns around disaster risk, toxic waste, cost blowouts or the length of time it takes to build nuclear. And I think women feel a bit left in the dark when it comes to the Coalition’s nuclear scheme.”
Despite some claims the ads are making, McKenzie says that all the evidence, including from the CSIRO, shows us that nuclear power is the most expensive form of new power. On top of that, the Coalition’s policy would see Australia remain reliant on fossil fuels until at least 2036.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton has pledged to build seven publicly-owned nuclear power plants in locations across the country if he is elected Prime Minister this year. The first of these plants would be operational by 2036, Dutton claims, although experts have questioned this date and suggested it is more likely to be the 2040s.
McKenzie said it’s important to know that over the last few years, Australia has moved to 40 per cent renewable power for our whole economy. And we can get to nearly 100 per cent renewable power within the 2030s.
“Nuclear wouldn’t come online until the 2040s, so it’s inherently a big delay in changing our energy system,” McKenzie says. “Our coal fired generators—all of the ones that are the most polluting energy source—are all slated to retire because they’re very old, by the end of the 2030s.”
“We have this urgent climate crisis because of the pollution that all of those fossil fuels are creating, and we’re actually underway in solving the problem now.
“The main message for women is that there is actually progress that has been made. The energy system is changing and becoming cleaner, but we need to double down on that this decade if we’re going to safeguard our kids’ future.”
Women are not being exposed to the facts
Ahead of the election, McKenzie said she is concerned that women are not being exposed to the information they need to make informed decisions on energy policy.
She says the Get Clear on Nuclear advertising is attempting to persuade women on nuclear power, but it’s misleading.
“The advertising is really being designed to try and persuade women, but our concern is that women are not being exposed to the facts,” she says.
“There is this sort of David and Goliath battle between groups like ours, who are representing the community, trying to educate the community with facts and with scientists versus industry bodies that are trying to push ideas that are going to benefit their vested interests.”
There are also many unanswered questions about nuclear, McKenzie says.
“Where will the toxic radioactive waste be buried? Which communities will the trucks drive through when they carry that toxic rate waste? Will the proposal for seven nuclear power plants be the full story?” she says. “Because actually, you would need far more nuclear plants if you were genuinely going to be powering Australia with nuclear.”
“There’s a sense that there’s a downplaying of risks, and women want those sorts of questions answered.”