Nationals secret review finds Peter Dutton's nuclear power policy hurt Coalition in Federal election

A confidential review into the Nationals’ performance in last year’s Federal election found a plan for nuclear power became one of the party’s few policies voters knew about — and was not popular.

While voters were primarily worried about inflation, they associated the country-based party with a plan to build seven government-owned nuclear power plants devised by then-leader Peter Dutton and Queensland Liberal MP Ted O’Brien.

“We were perceived as the ‘party of nuclear’ three times more than we were seen as the ‘party of cost of living relief’,” the NSW-focused review by former Victorian Nationals director Matthew Harris writes.

“In an economic environment where families were struggling, our signature message was a niche, long-term energy policy, not an immediate solution to their primary concern.”

A similar Liberal Party review leaked this week revealed the campaign was marred by deep tensions between Mr Dutton and his head office over strategy and organisational control.

The NSW Nationals review draws attention to another serious but little-noticed problem facing the Coalition: once-safe rural seats are becoming vulnerable as support for the Nationals shrinks to a rump of mainly male voters over 55.

The review presents a grim future for the party, which was founded in 1920 to advocate for government services in rural areas and has been instrumental in forming Coalition governments since.

Even though the Nationals retained all their lower house seats, party officials were disappointed at their performance in the 2025 election.

Senator Perin Davey was defeated, the party failed to win back Calare from defector Andrew Gee, and wasted money and resources fighting for Hunter, where it finished third behind One Nation and the Labor Party.

The review blames a “dysfunctional” combined campaign headquarters of Liberal and Nationals staff, “diluting our brand and ceding strategic control to the Liberal Party”.

“This reduced the Nationals from a ‘partner’ to a ‘subsidiary’,” it says.

The review savages polling conducted by Freshwater Strategy, which assured party officials they had a “strong and growing lead” in Calare, based on the city of Orange, which Mr Gee won easily.

One of the most striking parts of the review describes what it calls a “nuclear echo chamber”. The energy policy, designed to produce reliable, carbon-free power, was better known among Green and Teal voters, who generally distrust nuclear power.

“This suggests the policy was not a persuasive tool for converting undecided voters; rather, it was a polarising issue that was most effective at motivating our opponents’ base,” the review says.

The Liberal review, written by ex-MPs Pru Goward and Nick Minchin, also criticised the nuclear policy, which the Labor Party claimed would cost $600 billion. Their review revealed the party had concluded years earlier a huge publicity campaign would be needed to win voters over to a technology never used in Australia before.

“Dating from the 2019-2022 term, the Liberal Party’s Federal Secretariat had considerable research on the politics of nuclear power and the extended time it would take to convince Australians that nuclear power was acceptable,” they wrote.

“The research confirmed that a long campaign would be needed to change the minds of the majority of Australian voters, especially female voters, who were concerned about nuclear safety and viewed nuclear power sceptically or negatively. Such a campaign would take considerable effort.

“The difficulties of proposing a positive nuclear power policy from Opposition, without such an awareness campaign preceding it, were obvious.”

The Coalition never ran a large-scale advertising campaign to explain the benefits of nuclear power.

“Our primary vote is eroding, our winning margins are shrinking, and our demographic base is narrowing,” the review says.

“The belief that we can continue to do the same things and expect a different result is a recipe for future seat losses and a slow slide into irrelevance.”

Nationals federal director Lincoln Folo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.