Shock, denial, stress, anger. Workers are struggling to comprehend the early closure of Australia's largest coal-fired power station and the plan for what comes next.
On a mild March day in a brown bike shed at Eraring, the biggest coal-fired power station in Australia, 19 men in high-vis work gear crouch on a low bench around the shed walls. It's lunch time. The men are contractors and they are looking up at their union leader, Cory Wright, for certainty.
Employed by labour hire companies, they are among the most vulnerable workers caught up in the Lake Macquarie power station's impending closure. Many have worked at Eraring for years, some decades. But they are only entitled to a fraction of the redundancy payout that their colleagues directly hired by the station's owner, Origin Energy, will get.
When Cory asks the workers if they want to share some thoughts, some say they don't believe Eraring Power Station will really shut down. A bald man at the back is first to speak. "I can't actually see them closing as yet," he says. "That's my thoughts personally." Another man sitting two seats along agrees. "I don't know. I just can't — we can't see it closing, not by '25 anyway," he says referring to the new closure date of 2025 — seven years earlier than expected.
Union officials say this denial is a form of shock that they've heard often since the recent announcement of Eraring's closure. Each time they hear it, they remind the workers to take the closure date seriously.
Newcastle organiser Tim Jackson jumps in. "If we just go on the face value that it may not occur, we're just walking down a grey path of an unknown," he says. "So if it's 2025, it is what it is."
It's not only the 200 contractors or the 240 directly employed Eraring workers who were shaken by the news of the power station's early retirement. There are 500 workers who visit Eraring for months at a time to do maintenance work. Then there are the 250 miners at Myuna Colliery whose sole customer is Eraring. There are a host of local businesses that supply the power station. Then there are the bakeries, the pie shops, the pubs and workers' clubs that Eraring's workers frequent. And that's just in the Lake Macquarie community.
Veteran union officials say Origin's announcement sent a chill along the eastern seaboard — through the 8,000 power station workers from Gladstone in North Queensland to the LaTrobe Valley. And slowly, that shock is turning into anger.
For the most part, Eraring workers aren't angry at Origin Energy. They have seen the rapid rise of renewables like rooftop solar steal the cream off the plant's profits. And they've watched as their power station, which must run continuously, is forced to keep producing when the price of electricity crashes.
They understand that this, along with growing numbers of large wind and solar farms coming onto the grid, will make their coal-fired power station unviable.
They are angry at state and federal governments, though they struggle to nail down the reason. Some say the NSW government should never have sold a utility as essential as electricity in the first place. Others rail at the shambolic climate wars in Canberra that have robbed the energy sector of certainty. Some workers are furious that neither state nor federal governments will step in to help keep Eraring open. Others still believe governments should have seen the rise of renewables coming and planned better, so there were jobs ready for them to transfer into.
"The only anger that I've heard from anyone is anger towards the government for not taking steps to make sure that our transition out of the place is looked after," says Scott King, an assistant plant operator at Eraring.
"We're not hearing jack from the government stepping up and saying… you guys have supplied the state with 20 per cent of the electricity for the last 30 years, here's our part of ensuring that you guys are skilled and that we've mapped a path out of there for you. They haven't done that," he says.
'All that glitters and gleams'
From Wangi Road on the shores of western Lake Macquarie, Eraring Power Station is almost invisible.
Hidden in a natural depression and painted the green, yellow and brown of a wattle tree, it looks like two disconnected concrete chimneys poking up from green forest.
From the air, it is a sprawling complex of roads, canals, brutalist steel towers, low buildings, and two tall smoke stacks reaching up from the earth like pointed fingers.
To the north, sits a large triangular mound of coal. Next to that, lies a fly ash dam that forced the closure of a state sport and rec camp for fear it would slide through it if there's an earthquake.
To the west, transformers step up the voltage of the electricity generated by the station and send it down a four-lane highway of transmission towers, one of which turns south towards Sydney.
Built in the late 1970s by the Electricity Commission of NSW, Eraring gets its name from the nearby Lake Eraring. Eraring, meaning "all that gleams and glitters"' in a local Indigenous language.
When construction finished in 1984, Eraring was the jewel in the crown of coal-fired power stations in Australia. Its designers convinced the state government to abandon outdated British technology and embrace modern Japanese turbines and a German control system.
It was a feat of inventiveness and modern engineering and old employees have told me they were proud to work there.
Senior power plant operator Jim Mackenzie has worked at power stations for 40 years. Eraring is likely his last job and will almost see him through to retirement.
In early March, he took me on a tour of the plant.
"I'll take you underneath the turbine," Jim yells over the deafening roar inside the turbine hall where electricity is literally generated. "You're gonna sort of feel what it's like to be under something with this kind of force behind it."
We climb down a steel grate stairs into a dark, hot, cavernous room as the turbines hum above us.
It's like walking into the belly of a beast.
This huge machine we're now inside works like a giant kettle. Its boilers are several stories high.
And beneath each boiler, there's a 1300 degree-fireball fuelled by crushed coal.
The fireball heats boiler water into steam so hot it can cut you in half. That 540-degree steam propels the turbines to make electricity.
When Eraring closes, Jim will be a year off retirement. He's not worried about himself. It's the power plant operators the same age as his own children he frets about.
In the nerve centre of the power station two of Jim's proteges are midway through a 12-hour shift. Michael "Mick" Wheelahan and John "Jonno" Kimberley sit in the centre of the plant control room. The room is dark save for the dim glow of a few recessed lights and computer screens stacked two and three high. An alarm beeps warns Mick about a jammed coal feeder.
Mick, 41, was at home when he found out about the power station's closure on the news. "I was really, really shocked," he says. "I've got a young family, so yeah it's my income for them," he says.
Mick's been at Eraring for 22 years. He arrived at the power station straight out of high school, did his apprenticeship there, and has been a plant operator for the past 16 years. "I've got a very, very small skill set that's very specific to a power station," he says, exasperated.
Next to Mick, Jonno, 36, is equally worried. He has worked at Eraring for 17 years. He also started at the power station straight out of high school.
"They'll have to drag me out kicking and screaming," Jonno says. Power plant operating is the most coveted job at Eraring. With overtime, plant operators can earn up to $250,000 a year. Jonno has spent over a decade trying to get into that dream job. He finally made it 18 months ago only to see the plant now shut down in front of him.
He tells me the past couple of weeks have been rough. He's got two kids — two and a half and six months old — and a massive mortgage. It's a constant source of stress.
"You're a bit angry that you might not have a job in a few years or how are we going to provide for the family," he says. And he'll miss the people at Eraring the most. "The friendship that you get from 20 years of hanging out with the same people, that's a big thing," says Jonno.
'Nowhere for them to go'
Veteran Mining and Energy Union official Mark McGrath arrives at the Doyalson RSL exhausted.
It's a windy March afternoon, and already he's driven from the Central Coast to Narrabri and back this week.
This morning, he had a meeting at Eraring where he convinced Origin executives to start the Mates in Energy suicide prevention program. Mark is worried. "It's devastating for the workers," he says.
Closing power stations is becoming familiar territory for Mark. He has helped workers through three closures so far. First, there was Munmorah in 2012. Then, Wallerawang near Lithgow. Lately, he's been helping workers at the AGL-owned Liddell Power Station near Muswellbrook retrain, retire early or find other work.
An angry federal government forced AGL to postpone Liddell's closure. The extra time has helped Mark spill workers into Bayswater, another AGL-owned power station nearby.
The difference between Eraring and the other power stations Mark has helped close is that he had somewhere to push those other power station workers into. With Eraring, he doesn't have that luxury. "There's just nowhere for them to go. And they know that too. And that's the problem," he says. "You can see the despair and their faces."
"Blind Freddy could see this coming," Mark says angrily. "State and federal governments… should have been able to see the increase in renewables coming in and thought, well, that puts that one at jeopardy. This one — we need to have some sort of a system to assist these workers and these communities if that power station closes.
"And now you've got the biggest power station in Australia shutting down in 2025. No plan. Nothing," Mark says.
Later, I'll learn that's not quite true. The state government does have a plan of sorts to create new industries and positions. The worry is there's not much time to put it in place. It's also not clear how many of the Eraring workers will get jobs out of it.
Mark knows how hard the coming years will be for them. He's vowed to stick with them all the way. "They've kept the lights on in this state for 30 years or more and they've done a good job," Mark says. "We've got to get these people through until 2025 so they can move away from Eraring, with dignity."
'A job for life'
I catch up with Jonno a couple weeks after that first meeting in the plant control room. We sit in the car park overlooking Bar Beach in Newcastle and he tells me what Eraring was like when he first started. The story of how ownership of the plant and how our whole electricity infrastructure has changed over the years is the story of Jonno's career.
When Jonno started working at Eraring in the early 2000s, it wasn't owned by Origin. He was surprised he got a job at the state-owned Eraring Power Station in the first place. He says his school marks were horrible. But he passed a test and got invited in to talk to bosses at the power station. Before his interview he grilled his father and researched online to find out how power stations work. He drew a diagram on a piece of paper, put it in his pocket and produced the scrunched up drawing in his interview. The Eraring bosses were impressed and he got the job.
He was a shy 19-year-old when he started at the power station and he clearly remembers his first day. "I remember walking in and goin' oh, there's a fair few weirdos here. A bit of a hangover from the Electricity Commission," he says, about the days when Eraring was run by a government body.
The first thing Jonno saw was porn everywhere. Pin ups posted in people's lockers, and raunchy magazines in all the toilets around the site as well. "You're kind of like, it's kind of gross that all these magazines are just in the bathroom," he says.
But he grew to love his oddball workmates and admired their dedication to the plant. "If there was ever an issue, they would take the unit offline and fix it straight away," says Jonno. "The guys who used to operate the joint, they wouldn't have accepted anything but perfect." It seemed money was never an issue. All the government cared about was that power station workers kept up the steady supply of electricity.
The workplace was more casual too. People wore thongs and were sometimes slow to get things done. "People thought they had a job for life, and everybody seemed happier," Jonno says.
Origin Energy's takeover of Eraring happened in two moves. In 2010, they bought the rights to trade Eraring's electricity. In 2013, the O'Farrell government sold Origin the power station itself.
Mark McGrath worked on the Enterprise Agreement for Eraring when the power station was privatised. He remembers warning the workers at the time. "I said, look, I'm going to be blunt, youse are in a koala sanctuary working for the state government in these power stations, but the dingo fence is getting pulled down when it gets privatised."
Jonno says Eraring tightened up when Origin arrived and everybody became more conscious of costs. Work became more fast-paced, and people no longer waved as much when Jonno drove around the site. Jonno and other Eraring workers say their jobs felt less secure.
Nine years later, Mark and Jonno can understand why Eraring is closing. "For a company, if there's no money in it, like, why would you stay open?" says Jonno.
'In Germany, none of this was an accident'
Industrial relations academics feel strongly that things could be more certain for workers like Jonno, Mick, Scott and Jim, and the community of Lake Macquarie. They point to other regions internationally that were forced to undergo a similar transition away from coal-based industries. The more successful transitions in places like the Ruhr Valley in Germany and the Limburg Region in the Netherlands all had one thing in common: long term planning.
The Ruhr region is often held up as the biggest success story because of the sheer number of people that were moved away from coal-based work to other activities. In the mid 1950s the region had almost half a million people working in coal and steel, almost 40 per cent of the workforce. But by 2018, that number had dwindled to just a few thousand.
They did this in phases, according to Peter Sheldon, an honorary professor at the University of New South Wales Business School. But it started with a shared intent and set of values. "This was a process of sustained commitment to a longer term project to see this through," says Professor Sheldon.
The Ruhr project was led and coordinated by the federal government and started with a public declaration of the need to move away from coal, and recognition of the size of the challenge. Then all levels of government, employers and their associations, unions and workers came together and worked out the order in which coal mines, in this case, should close. The planning was extensive and systematic.
The government thought carefully about the kind of economy the Ruhr region should become, upgraded transport infrastructure and established strong links with higher education. And when it came to the workers themselves, the plans were specific.
The oldest workers, those were closest to retirement, were given more generous redundancy payments and retirement packages. Middle-aged workers did the bulk of the 10 to 15 years worth of site remediation that took them through to retirement. And younger workers started retraining and doing work placements almost immediately, years before they had to leave their coal jobs.
The transformation of the Ruhr region took more than 50 years. Professor Sheldon says it's now a region with an advanced services industry, a vast small and medium enterprise sector, and advanced high-tech manufacturing.
"None of this was an accident," he says. "None of this just relied on the market, and none of this just relied on the owners of those coal mines making those decisions. They are all the results of coordinated planning and discussion."
'An open wound that never healed'
That hasn't necessarily happened with coal-fired power station closures in Australia. And the cost of getting it wrong is high. Large job shedding by newly privatised power stations in the LaTrobe Valley in the 1990s saw an area that was once high in employment and job security plunged into intergenerational poverty, unemployment and rising crime.
LaTrobe Valley resident Wendy Farmer watched as her community went from one of the richest in Victoria, to one of the poorest and hardest hit. She says power station job losses are "like an open wound that sits in the community and has never healed". And she has seen it all — from broken state government promises that workers wouldn't be left behind to government grants to tempt start up industries in unproven technologies. "It's all failed," she says. "These investors do what they want to do then walk away."
Wendy has a strident warning for coal and power station communities like Lake Macquarie and the Hunter Valley: "The community needs to rally together and make sure they're not left behind. They need to fight for the future of their families and they need to make governments listen to prepare for the changes that are happening. Don't ignore them. Whether it's in three years, 10 years or 20 years, don't ignore it. Take action now."
The way Professor Sheldon sees it, government has two choices — they can invest in transitioning an area well, or pay the costs of leaving a population struggling and immiserated.
'Stress is coming for me'
It's the latter scenario that's keeping Jonno up at night, trawling for articles and snippets of news online, and locked in endless conversations with his wife about what to do next.
He's feeling edgy and losing sleep. Sometimes, he feels like a broken record on repeat talking about the same thing over and over again.
He doesn't understand why Eraring would close before smaller power stations like Bayswater, that have less capacity and aren't drought-proof like Eraring. And there are other power stations he says have been fined more frequently for exceeding emissions. He hopes politicians have done the numbers and there's enough power to keep the state's lights on.
He worries about being unemployed, and retraining. And, he's not sure what he wants to do next. "I've worked at the power station so long, I don't know what it's like out in the outside world," he says.
When Jonno thinks about his family, he spirals into a whirlpool of worry. He gets thinking about interest rates, petrol costs, and the overall cost of living. He wonders if he'll have enough money to give his kids a fun life. His wife pulls him back "from going down the rabbit hole with anxiety".
Had Eraring kept its closure date as 2032, as Jonno had planned for, none of this would have been an issue. "We kind of would of just struggled along type thing. And then you look at three and a half years and you're like, Oh God," he says. "I feel like stress is coming for me and I'm stressed about the stress coming."
'A very dramatic bring forward'
When Origin's announcement about Eraring's closure hit the news, it didn't just catch workers like Jonno, Mick, Scott and Jim off guard. Reactions from politicians ranged from surprise to annoyance.
"We were disappointed by the shortness of the notice. This is a very dramatic bring forward," said federal energy minister Angus Taylor.
"The Eraring closure did come as a bit of a shock to us, we didn't think this would actually happen," state energy minister and treasurer Matt Kean said.
But few Eraring employees or union officials believe them. Although Origin didn't tell the federal government until the evening before their announcement, reliable sources say the company had been speaking to the state government since July last year about Eraring's future, and that the government refused to step in with any kind of rescue plan.
Mark McGrath is still processing this news on the Friday afternoon he meets me at the Doyalson RSL. "I'm still not over it," he says. "If we would have started back 12 months ago doing what we're doing now, we'd be a third of the way down to having a transition package done for these workers," he says.
Origin's CEO Frank Calabria says strict rules around announcing market sensitive information prevented the company from telling employees and unions earlier. "Every instinct says you would like to bring people out and inform them transparently as early as possible," Calabria says. "It's unfortunately something that's just not possible in the circumstances. But I also wouldn't want to leave you with a message that it's not one that you don't reflect on as a trade off because clearly the earlier you can do that, the better."
Although Matt Kean expressed shock, he wasn't caught completely flat-footed. In the absence of clear federal climate policy, Kean's office had been working on a plan his government calls "the electricity infrastructure roadmap". It was legislated in 2020 and provides a blueprint for the rollout of renewable energy in NSW.
When Origin announced it was closing Eraring seven years early, Kean rushed his plans forward. He announced a half-billion-dollar jobs package that he said would create 3,700 jobs and provide the communities impacted by Eraring's closure with certainty.
Treasurer Kean says there'll be 500 jobs over five years in manufacturing for the renewable energy sector, 500 jobs over 10 years to help build the state's green hydrogen industry. And 2,700 construction jobs to fast track the building of transmission infrastructure to connect the state's new Renewable Energy Zones.
But five days later, when the Treasurer was grilled in Budget Estimates on exactly how many of those jobs would go directly to Eraring workers, Kean didn't answer directly. Instead, he spoke about the plant owner's responsibility to its workforce.
"I expect Origin Energy to meet their obligations to their workforce. I expect them to do everything within their power to ensure that those workers and their families are supported throughout this period," the Treasurer said. He insisted the best way to replace existing jobs was to help private enterprise create new ones, and he said this was the government's role.
In response to questions from the ABC, a spokesperson for the Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor used similar general language around creating new jobs. "The Morrison Government is focused on creating an environment conducive to business growth, innovation and competitiveness.," the spokesperson said.
Professor Peter Sheldon says the NSW government's overall energy agenda is a vast improvement on what was there before and tackles a number of problems that Australian governments have had in the energy sector. However, he says it's not enough. He says Kean's plan is too top-down, leaving much of the transition process to employers and the market. He believes it falls short of best practice seen in places like the Ruhr region.
Mark McGrath, district vice president of the Mining and Energy Union, is scathing. "The plan's not enough, too late," he says. "At the 11th hour a big cash splash comes out. The jobs plan won't help the employees at Eraring." Mark says the government should have started investing 10 to 15 years ago. "Anybody with any sense knew back then that climate change was real and change had to happen."
Others aren't quite so pessimistic. Cory Wright, state secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, sees cause for cautious optimism.
"I think it's pretty clear that the government does recognise the need for this to have bipartisan support and go beyond the normal election cycle campaigning that we've seen in recent years and decades, to be honest," he says. "I think that they understand the size of the problem and the effect it's going to have on the community." But when Cory and his team went looking for more detail on the jobs plan, they couldn't find anything substantial.
For its part, Origin Energy plans to install a battery on the site of Eraring Power station. That will require a construction workforce of approximately 128 people.
After construction, Origin estimates there will be 10 ongoing jobs to operate the battery. There will be another 50 jobs in rehabilitating the power station site and managing the coal ash dam.
And, in Wednesday night’s budget, the federal government announced $750m for energy and infrastructure in the Hunter Region, which includes Lake Macquarie, and further funding for regions “undergoing long-term structural adjustment” — but it’s not clear how long it will take for these projets to get up and running.
'One day renewables will be enough'
"All right fellas, I know it's early days, if there's nothing else, we'll call it to a close," says Cory as he wraps up the bike shed union meeting. "We'll come back and see you in the next couple of weeks. But as always, reach out if there's anything else fellas. Thanks." People rise, clap, and slowly file out of the Colorbond shed.
An older worker who worked with Cory on another site ambles up to share his thoughts with him and Newcastle organiser Tim after the meeting.
"I got the impression from that Frank dude, what's his last name?" the worker says, grasping for the name of Origin's CEO, Frank Calabria. "I got the impression that he really felt that the power station would really become redundant one day," the worker says. "He said, sure, there will be times when we need lots of power. But he thinks that one day we'll wake up and renewables would be enough and this place would be redundant," he laughs then pauses for a moment.
"It's a shame," he says. "This power station's in good condition and could go for a lot longer yet."
Credits
Words: Mayeta Clark
Photographs: Matthew Abbott
Production: Leigh Tonkin
