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Expanding on this a bit, put yourself in the shoes of management of any of the major electricity companies. AGL, Origin, Energy Australia, etc.

They could build hydro for deep firming and in doing so commit themselves to a long lead time, engineering heavy major construction project that runs a very high chance of ending up with a protest.

Or they could quietly install some gas turbines and not say anything about it.

The former might be "greener" if climate change is taken to be the most serious threat environmentally but somewhat ironically it comes with far greater risk of being a target politically. Given it's not that profitable anyway, it just doesn't make sense to risk tarnishing the retail brand when there's a simple alternative - gas, diesel or just don't invest in anything since reliability isn't actually your problem.

Hence the gun shy approach to hydro.

Nuclear would face the exact same problem on steroids. Long lead time, engineering heavy, not that profitable and comes with huge risk of becoming a political target. None of the companies are likely to want anything to do with it.

The overall environment hasn't driven all investors away but it's scared more than a few hence not enough is being done.