A senior Australian union leader has used a National Press Club address to call for the creation of a government-owned renewable energy company to power the country's industry. Michael Wright, Secretary of the Electrical Trades Union, set out the proposal in a speech titled Powering Australia's Future, delivered alongside Alison Pennington, chief economist at the Mackell Institute.
Wright framed energy as the foundation of the entire economy rather than just one sector among many. He described it as the platform on which every industry, process and household depends, from fertiliser to iron ore to data. Energy abundance, he argued, equals economic resilience and well-being, while energy scarcity amounts to economic and social sabotage for the country.
At the centre of his case was the state of Australia's ageing power stations. Wright said the country's coal and gas plants have served the nation well but are now old and breaking, held together by little more than the hard work of union members. They no longer produce low-cost, reliable energy, he said, and soon will not produce energy at all, making urgent replacement unavoidable.
He was sharply critical of the current approach, dismissing Angus Taylor's plan to run the existing fleet into the ground as a failed plan from the failing leader of a failed party. Wright argued the debate often misses that demand for electricity has exploded, with the country effectively building not to 82 or even 100 percent renewables, but toward something like 700 percent of the current grid as other fuels are replaced by electricity.
Wright argued the private market alone cannot meet that challenge. He said generation assets are increasingly owned by foreign governments pursuing their own national interests, and that private contracts are too small, too short term and too highly priced to deliver the industrial capability the country needs. Government, he said, can step up and break the industry bailout cycle without replacing the private sector.
His answer is a new public body he called Sovereign Power, with a simple job: to build, run and own renewable generation that powers Australian industry at cost. He said it would deliver reliable, affordable and long-term energy, give industry the certainty to invest and expand, and help train the next generation of workers, pointing to a shortage of 42,500 electricians by 2030 that the plan is meant to help address.
Wright said the plan would let Australia refine more of what it digs up, creating value at home instead of exporting it, and move industry off what he called life support. He rejected the idea that the concept is untested, arguing that public energy had grown Australian industry before and citing the example of the aluminium operations at Tomago. The speech was billed as the Westpac Address at the National Press Club.