LIBERAL MPs are urging the party's new leader, Tony Abbott, to take nuclear power to the next federal election as part of the Coalition's climate change policy.
The Rudd Government has signalled it will forge ahead with its plan for a trading scheme, and not countenance other ways to lower pollution levels, such as a carbon tax.
But the Opposition is open to suggestions, after the new Liberal leader, Tony Abbott, ruled out putting a price on carbon to compel industry and households to become more energy efficient.
"Whether it's a stealth tax, the emissions trading scheme, whether it's an upfront and straightforward tax like a carbon tax, there will not be any new taxes as part of the Coalition's policy," he said.
Instead, Mr Abbott indicated the Coalition would look to direct measures to cut emissions, and ''lots of things that could be done that would essentially pay for themselves because of the cost savings that they would generate - things like more efficient buildings, better land management and so on."
He recalled a January speech by Malcolm Turnbull that discussed other means of reducing emissions.
Mr Turnbull argued that restoring carbon to soil - through reversing over-grazing and excessive tillage, and embedding carbon in bio-char or charcoal - would be more direct measures to help the environment.
"Every time you see a dust storm in the bush, in areas where there has been a lot of cultivation, that's top soil, that's soil carbon being blown away, being lost," Mr Turnbull said.
Mr Abbott will release the Coalition's new climate change policy in the new year.
One source said that rather than using taxes to cut emissions, the new policy could use incentives to encourage businesses and households to lower pollution.
In the Senate yesterday, Liberals both opposing and supporting the trading scheme said the country should reconsider its ban on nuclear power.
"I am not a theological opponent of nuclear power," Mr Abbott said.
"I don't think it's something that we should rush into. But certainly I'm happy to see a debate about the nuclear option."
While there is no organised push, a large number of Liberals, including deputy leader Julie Bishop, are urging the nuclear option to Mr Abbott.
Acting Opposition whip Michael Johnson said he was encouraging Mr Abbott to be ''bold and audacious'' in embracing nuclear power as Coalition policy.
He estimated that ''close to 99 per cent'' of the Coalition supported nuclear power, and said support in the broader community was growing.
''All the fears and anxieties that have been part of a scare campaign by Labor over the last 20 years, Australians are past that,'' he said.
Mr Johnson said it was ''economic madness'' for Australia not to fully exploit its uranium deposits, and it should sell uranium to India because the best contribution it could make to reducing emissions globally was to help big-polluting countries switch to cleaner energy sources.
Tasmanian Liberal senator Guy Barnett said nuclear power was a ''necessity'' for Australia to reduce its carbon emissions.
''It should be one of our tools in the toolbox to combat climate change,'' he said.
He said the public needed to be educated about the merits of nuclear power and improvements in safety and waste disposal since the disasters at Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, and the time was now right to revisit the issue.
''I understand that many in the community have fears about nuclear waste, but the community also has fears about carbon emissions from coal, so one must look at this in a balanced way,'' he said.
Both Liberal senators who crossed the floor to vote for the Government's amended emissions trading scheme yesterday, Victorian senator Judith Troeth and Queensland senator Sue Boyce, said nuclear should be part of Australia's energy mix as a solution to climate change.
Environment Minister Peter Garrett said Australian voters had already overwhelmingly rejected former prime minister John Howard's plan at the last election to build 25 nuclear reactors.
''This is the conservative Liberal default position when they end up in a policy cul de sac like they have on climate change,'' Mr Garrett told The Age.
''They play the nukes card but they never say where the reactors will go or how much it is going to cost.''
An Age/Nielsen poll in October found Australians' attitudes to nuclear power had thawed, with 49 per cent believing it should be a potential option, and 43 per cent opposed outright.
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