Hollow promises: Labor's side-stepping out of tune with bullish vow on miners
by Phillip O'Neill · Newcastle HeraldYancoal announced recently the closure of the Ashton coal mine at Camberwell. Its workers were summoned to the Singleton town hall on a wintry morning to be told their mine would be shuttered by January 2028.
You would think that, this far into Australia's march towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, there would be government measures in place to support these workers well before they lose their jobs, and to support Upper Hunter communities as they take another hit from contraction in Australia's coal economy.
As reported in the Newcastle Herald ("Loophole means 'not a single Hunter miner' will be helped by transition authority," 2/7, 2026), Singleton mayor Sue Moore and Muswellbrook mayor Jeff Drayton looked to the federal government's Net Zero Economy Agency (NZEA) for immediate help. But the NZEA was nowhere in sight. Instead, the mayors were told that the NZEA's remit is to deal with the closure of coal-fired power stations and their feeder coal mines.
Because Ashton produces coal for export not for local power stations, the NZEA seems, somehow, unable to be involved. Local Labor MP Dan Repacholi says the closure has nothing to do with the federal government. There's a lot of looking away going on. It's very weird.
The NZEA has an important history. The idea of an authority to ensure orderly exit from fossil fuels landed in Labor Party policy in 2019. Labour economist, Professor Al Rainnie, in the Journal of the Academy of Social Sciences, traces the idea of a just transition to discussions between labour unions and environmental groups worldwide in the early 2000s. The motivation was awareness that stemming the impacts of climate change should also require the management of impacts on workers and regions.
Labor didn't gain office in the 2019 election, but it carried the idea of a transition authority into its successful 2022 campaign. An interim body, the Net Zero Economy Agency, was established in July 2023, with Labor legend Greg Combet as inaugural chair. Then, Minister Patrick Gorman, representing Prime Minister Albanese, delivered the second reading speech in Parliament to establish the NZEA on March 27, 2024. Gorman was bullish. "The NZEA's mission," he said, "will be to promote orderly and positive economic transformation for Australia, for regions and workers, as the world decarbonises". No backing off by the minister, was there?
A week later, addressing the National Press Club, Combet was equally ambitious. He said the authority "... will play an important role in one of the most significant economic events in Australian history, the transformation from fossil fuels to an economy pioneered by renewable energy and clean industries". He added, "My instructions [from the government] are clear, develop a plan that will help people and communities through change ... and leave no one behind."
No one hearing these words - from Gorman when delivering the NZEA bill to Parliament, and from Combet in his powerful public address - would have thought that, by July 2026, this new authority would be side-stepping responsibility for direct assistance to Ashton coal miners and to Upper Hunter economies.
Sadly, there are similarly hollow promises from the NSW government's Future Jobs and Industry Authority. In its NSW Coal Industry 2026-50 statement, the NSW government says the FJIA "... will inform long-term strategic planning in NSW coal regions," and "... deliver targeted support to coal mining workers and communities".
It seems the FJIA, like the NZEA, has a grand charter. Yet, like the NZEA, the FJIA hasn't yet shown a willingness to dirty its boots doing the chores that come with the on-the-ground consequences of net zero ambitions.
Both the NZEA and the FJIA are the initiatives of Labor governments. It's a simple thing to amend their charters if their charters are the problem. Ashton is the latest closure in the end of coal. It's gobsmacking, after such a long process to get these authorities in place, to see them wary of getting onto the paddock.