During the 2007 federal election campaign, Labor ran a TV scare ad in Queensland about the then prime minister’s plan to introduce nuclear power.

“John Howard says a nuclear industry is a solution to climate change but he won’t say where the reactors should go,” the voiceover says, to golden waterfront scenes and a lazily twanging guitar. “He refuses to talk about a list of possible sites for reactors that includes Rockhampton, Bundaberg, Mackay, Townsville, the Sunshine Coast – even Bribie Island.”

Those last words come over an image of backlit birds and nuclear cooling towers superimposed against the evening sky. The ad’s kicker plays on Queensland’s “perfect” climate and best-known tourism slogan.

“Queensland. Beautiful one day. Nuclear the next?”

Of the five winnable federal seats covering those sites, Labor gained four. Fear of nuclear fallout was far from the only thing that swept Kevin Rudd and Labor to power in 07. But it played its part.

Opinion polls suggest Australians now are much more ready to countenance low-emissions nuclear power in the nation’s energy mix than they were then. That’s one of the reasons Peter Dutton decided it make it central to the Coalition’s energy policy.

Dutton says he’ll soon unveil his own list of proposed sites for future reactors. He’s been saying that, off and on, since March. Suddenly, a month ago, the timeline got fuzzy. And Queensland’s at the heart of things again.

It seems the pause came after Dutton and the Nationals leader, David Littleproud, were mugged by some Queensland reality. It wasn’t so much that the state Liberal National leader, David Crisafulli, didn’t support their nuclear option. It was why.

With his own election looming, Crisafulli had argued nuclear power’s high cost and long lead times meant there was no point pursuing it until it had bipartisan support. But in the background, it had become clear that attitudes to nuclear power haven’t changed quite as much since 2007 as the federal Coalition leadership believed.

People may support the concept of Australia introducing nuclear power but they still don’t want to live near it. And their support is soft, meaning they’re open to persuasion either way. This started to show up in internal state polling.

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