It’s the energy election everywhere, but nowhere quite like the Hunter

On a warm Monday night in Port Stephens, north of Newcastle, it is standing room only at the local game fishing club.

Half a dozen candidates for the seat of Paterson are on stage, taking questions from the crowd.

One issue dominates the rest — an offshore wind farm proposed off the coast between Newcastle and Port Stephens.

Though it’s a heated issue, the forum is polite, and candidates are given time to make their case.

But two men sit discretely to one side, watching proceedings from off stage. They are AFP security officers, there to intervene should tempers flare.

It’s a sign of just how tense the energy debate has become in this part of the country.

Big energy questions, small-town politics

The energy divide in this election is enormous, as both sides grapple with how to manage a total transition of the energy grid over the next 25 years as coal-fired power winds down.

For Labor, the answer is a massive expansion of renewables. For the Coalition, it’s the development of an entirely new nuclear power industry.

The questions are felt particularly acutely in the Hunter region of New South Wales.

It’s home to large coal mines, soon-to-be-retired coal fired power plants, and the country’s largest single energy consumer, Tomago Aluminium. It’s also the proposed site for a nuclear power plant, a gas-fired power plant, and an offshore wind farm. 

All are housed within two marginal Labor-held seats in Hunter and Paterson, and the Coalition is sensing opportunity in both.

The Liberals are pouring resources into Paterson, trying to tie Labor directly to the proposed offshore wind farm — and promising to dump it immediately if they win.

It is a key target seat for the Liberals at this election, held by Labor on a margin of 2.6 per cent.

And meanwhile, the Nationals are making another run at Hunter, playing on uncertainty about what the net zero transition might mean for the region.

It’s a bigger ask here, with the seat held by Labor’s Dan Repacholi on a margin of close to 5 per cent, and having only ever been in Labor hands.

Labor is hoping both attempts will backfire — and that voters will reject a nuclear pitch in their backyard, and ignore what it calls ‘misinformation’ on projects like offshore wind.

Waging a wind war

On billboards leading into Port Stephens, Liberal candidate for Paterson Laurence Antcliff is making his message clear.

“Only Laurence Antcliff will stop Labor’s offshore wind farms,” they read.

It cuts through with some.

Fisherman Ben Hayes, who runs fishing charters off Port Stephens, said he expects the issue is costing Labor votes.

“You just have to have a look around and talk to a few of the locals. Labor equals wind farms, it’s what the signs are saying everywhere,” he said.

The former Morrison government introduced the legal framework that allowed for offshore wind to go ahead, calling it “an important new opportunity”, but the Coalition’s rhetoric on wind has changed enormously since then.

The party has pledged to dump offshore wind projects off the Hunter, Illawarra and WA.

No projects have yet been approved in any of the three regions.

One proponent in the Hunter, a joint venture between Norwegian energy giant Equinor and Australian company OceanEx, has been given a seven-year feasibility license allowing them to apply for environmental approvals.

The proponents say the site would be 22 kilometres from the coastline at its closest point, and would directly employ 3,000 people at the peak of construction.

It would have a total generation capacity of 2GW, about two-thirds the size of the nearby Eraring coal-fired power station.

Laurence Antcliff told the candidate’s forum there was nothing to be gained from it.

“I cannot think of one positive for the offshore wind farm here in Port Stephens, not one,” he said.

In a later interview, he said dumping the project before it is even approved would provide certainty for the area.

“This project is causing unnecessary stress and anxiety to the families that have called this place home for decades, and also the small business operators,” he said.

“It is not fair to have this happen in our beautiful area here in Port Stephens. They don’t want it in Manly, they don’t want it in Bondi.”

Pushing back and pointing to positives

Labor’s Meryl Swanson, who has represented Paterson for nine years, argues the project has a huge number of hurdles to jump before it is approved — but if it does go ahead, it could do a lot of good.

“It’s got to stack up economically, and it’s got to stack up environmentally,” she said.

“Now, if it does, it could power one million homes in our region, and things like Tomago Aluminium. Keeping places like Tomago open is vital.

“So if offshore wind stacks up in the Hunter, it’s going to create thousands of jobs. It’s going to help stabilise our grid, and it’s going to help manufacturing as well.”

Ms Swanson points out that the proposed site of the wind farm is much smaller than the area originally identified, and concentrated towards Newcastle rather than Port Stephens.

And she argues misinformation and ‘scaremongering’ has had a damaging effect on the local discussion of the project.

Some anti-wind activists have been accused of distorting debates and misrepresenting the true scale of opposition to projects.

But she concedes poor community consultation up to this point has been a significant problem for the project.

“[The proponents] have promised that they are going to do a much better job of taking the community on the journey,” she said.

The political fight for coal country

For nearly 40 years, two things were certain in the Hunter. It voted Labor, and it voted for a Fitzgibbon.

From 1984 to 2022, the seat of Hunter was represented first by Eric Fitzgibbon, and then by his son Joel.

But for years the Nationals have coveted the coal-mining seat, given the hold it has on other coal mining electorates like Flynn, Capricornia and Dawson in Queensland.

Speaking to Mining and Energy Union members at a meeting in Kurri Kurri, Dan Repacholi warned of the election fight he was facing.

“You will hear over the next two weeks, especially once pre-poll starts, that Labor is here to close down coal mines,” he said.

“That could not be further from the truth. And I don’t know what more I can do to showcase that.”

Labor still bears scars from a bruising fight over the Queensland Adani coal mine during the 2019 election.

While Labor was supportive of the project, the Coalition benefited politically from prominent ‘Stop Adani’ protests throughout the campaign fuelling fears the project could be axed.

The Carmichael Coal Mine is a very long way from Cessnock, but Labor’s primary vote in the Hunter fell more than 14 per cent at the 2019 election.

Dan Repacholi said he has no hesitation in talking up Labor’s support for the future of coal mining.

“There’s not a person that’s spoken more about coal mining in parliament than I have, I talk about it freely,” he said.

“I talk about wines, mines, equines and the beautiful Lake Macquarie. I just can’t make it rhyme.”

An unexpected nuclear strike

Labor was handed a political gift early in the campaign, when Peter Dutton appeared on the Seven network, and offered this:

“If you look at an area like the Hunter, or really any coal mining area, their jobs and that industry, that town is done,” he said.

Mr Dutton was trying to make a case that as coal winds down, the Coalition would create new jobs in nuclear power.

But Labor pounced — quickly taking to social media, to spread the message that the Liberal leader thinks there is no future for the Hunter — or other coal towns — beyond nuclear power.

Dan Repacholi said Labor plans to keep up the pressure on it.

“To come out and say to a mining community, to an agriculture community, to the world’s best wine area, to come out and tell us we’re done — that’s disgusting,” he said.

“[Peter Dutton] really needs to have a good hard look at himself.”

A week or so later, Nationals frontbencher Barnaby Joyce appeared at a ‘politics in the pub’ event in Cessnock, alongside the party’s candidate Sue Gilroy.

Asked about Mr Dutton’s comments, Mr Joyce sought to clarify.

“What he was saying was that you have to broaden the economy in continuation with coal, because coal is not done,” he said.

“The world is using more of it. Thank God coal is not done.”

Part of the Coalition’s pitch to the Hunter is a nuclear power plant on the site of the former Liddell coal-fired power station.

It argues nuclear power can provide an industry for regions like the Hunter for decades to come.

Sue Gilroy said while nuclear should be “part of the mix”, coal is still a big part of the region’s future.

“I know very well that the coal towns aren’t done,” she said.

“And you know, anybody who knows me knows that I will support coal, and I will support the coal towns — as we call them — to the end.”

Mr Joyce’s pitch to the two dozen or so gathered at the pub was energy-heavy, focusing largely on the impact he argues more renewables in the grid will have on power bills.

“[Energy Minister Chris Bowen] came out the other night and said we’re at 46 per cent intermittent renewables,” he said.

“Look where our power bills have gone. Look what’s happened to us.”

The argument over the future of energy in the Hunter, and nationally, involves some huge questions.

It involves hundreds of billions of dollars and decades of work to largely re-build the Australian power grid.

The Coalition hopes Australians are unconvinced by renewables, concerned about reliability, and unwilling to take on more solar panels and wind turbines.

Labor is hoping Australians are unconvinced about introducing nuclear power, and place more faith in the technology already mounted on many voter’s rooftops.

Both sides think they’ve got a winning argument.