Net-zero emissions approach ‘a regions job killer’, says Jennie George

Former union leader Jennie George has accused Labor of misleading workers on job losses over carbon neutrality push.

Anthony Albanese and Jennie George at the Australian Labor Party National Conference in 2004.

Former union leader and long-term Labor MP for the Illawarra steel region, Jennie George, has accused Labor of misleading workers on job losses over the move to carbon neutrality, and has warned Scott Morrison against false technology solutions such as “green steel”.

Ms George, ACTU president for five years and MP for the NSW seat of Throsby for 10 years, has declared that the “how and when” for net-zero carbon emissions will be critical — and Labor’s argument that “the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action will no longer cut the mustard”.

“Neither will promoting figures without assumptions, costings or specific jobs data,” Ms George writes in The Australian.

“The 100,000 ‘carbon workers’ in coalmining, gas and oil extraction, fossil fuel generation and ­integrated steel making deserve better than this,” she writes.

“The impacts are felt not just by them, but their families, the people employed indirectly and, often, whole regional economies underpinned by these industries.”

Ms George also warns that the Prime Minister’s embrace of so-called green steel is a risk because the systems to replace coal and coke for steel production are ­effective only in small mills and will not work for Port Kembla’s steel mills.

“It is a pity the advocates don’t tell the community there are no proven and commercially ­viable technologies to replace coal/coke in the blast furnace steelmaking process at BlueScope in the Illawarra,” she writes.

Ms George’s public intervention in the carbon neutrality debate and the future of steel and aluminium production in the NSW regions of the Illawarra and Hunter comes after months of bitter internal ALP debate over cutting carbon emissions to net zero by 2050 and protecting workers in mining, manufacturing and power generation.

Joel Fitzgibbon, the long-serving Labor MP for Hunter, resigned from the Labor frontbench last year over climate change and energy policies and effectively forced the removal last week of South Australian MP Mark Butler as Labor’s climate change spokesman after seven years.

Mr Morrison has also been shifting Coalition policy towards net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 but has argued it has to be through technology — not taxes on energy — and has cited green steel and hydrogen as ways to cut Australia’s emissions.

Ms George says the Hunter Job Alliance, supported by unions and environmentalists, raises false expec­tations that the Tomago alumin­ium smelter in NSW could run on renewable energy.

“It operates 24 hours a day, ­directly employs 950 people and produces 25 per cent of Australia’s aluminium. It is called on to reduce operations to avoid widespread blackouts when there is a system security risk,” she writes.

“Renewables are not commercially viable, nor can they guarantee the required reliability for the smelter’s continued operation. The largest South Australian battery today would power that smelter for less than 15 minutes.

“False technology solutions are as inexcusable as the rhetoric of a ‘just transition’, without the real economic costs and employment impacts of moving to carbon neutrality.”

Labor’s inability to estimate the costs and job losses of its emissions policy is credited as being part of the reason Bill Shorten lost the 2019 election. “Labor’s talk of a jobs and emissions compact and the government’s technology roadmap will be critical to the community’s evaluation of future plans,” Ms George writes.