Just Transition in Australia – depoliticisation?

ABSTRACT

We cannot and should not assume that Just Transition (JT) is a straightforward and uncontested concept. In this article, we turn a critical eye on JT, firstly by looking at the origins and development of the idea. Secondly, we will look at the theoretical frameworks that have been mobilised to underpin JT. Thirdly, we will look at the way that trade unions in Australia, both through the ACTU and individual unions, have approached the subject, as well as the approach put forward by an Australian Senate Inquiry into the future of jobs in regional Australia. We will look in particular at the way that the move to a new model of regional development is critically affecting JT. We examine the impact of this emerging model with growing demands for a National Transition Authority to drive and coordinate transitions. Our concern is that in engaging with an emerging and powerful view of regional development that combines Renewable Energy Industrial Zones, hydrogen hubs and public-private partnerships, JT is being replaced by notions of decarbonisation or even diversification that threaten to undermine the value and power of the concept.

KEYWORDS:

• Australia
• Just Transition
• regional development
• depoliticisation

Introduction

Once a political influential concept, Just Transition (JT) has become increasingly nebulous with its growth in popularity. In attempting to tie down the theory and practice of JT, the 2021 Jimmy Reid Foundation report (Scandretti, 2021) helpfully suggested that we ask ‘what do we mean by ‘Just’?’, and ‘what are we expecting to Transition to?’. According to the Foundation, the key principles of what a JT constitutes are (1) that it transitions to a ‘real zero’ greenhouse gas emission economy, international justice is respected and the survival of future generations protected, and (2) it has at its core, the collective interest and participation of the workers and communities who will be affected, directly and indirectly by that transition. The how of a JT includes the role of the state in planning but also building alliances with key actors in particular environmental justice movements and international solidarity. This approach has relevance far beyond Scotland’s borders.

JT, it was argued, provides an opportunity to explore the tension within unions between representing the immediate interests of members and more long-term interests of working-class people in general. It also provides an opportunity to explore the tension in the environmental movement between an overwhelmingly white, middle-class class and urban-educated membership and the largely working-class and regional communities most directly affected by climate devastation. As the relationship between the two sets of institutions has been at best ambiguous, it is vital, the Foundation argues to promote engagement and debate within and between unions and environmental organisations (Scandretti, 2021).

However, we cannot and should not assume that JT is a straightforward and uncontested concept. In this article, we turn a critical eye on JT, firstly by looking at the origins and development of the idea. It has been suggested that it is now so broad and all-encompassing as to qualify for what Sayer (2002) called a ‘chaotic concept’, that is politically very powerful but analytically so packed full of competing political approaches, visions and applications as to be practically useless. In an effort to bring about greater clarity about JT and its political discourses, we suggest it is useful to consider the different varieties of JT that range from an ecological modernisation position embracing a ‘Green Keynesianism’ to a more radical transformative position that advocated ecological socialism and new relations of production and human relations with nature. Secondly, we will look at the theoretical frameworks and the changing terrain of applied research that has adopted a JT lens. Thirdly, we will look at the way that trade unions in Australia, both through the ACTU and individual unions, have approached the subject, and called upon the state to assist in its realisation. In considering the central role of the state in JT projects, we consider the tensions between union advocacy for a national Just Transition Authority and the how policy makers are coming to pursue and understand transition.

We will look in particular at the way that the move to a new model of development, embodied in the Next Economy’s proposals for the Gladstone regional economy in Queensland, is undermining the progressive approaches to JT and potentially completing replacing JT with basic notions of decarbonisation, or even diversification, that threaten to undermine the value and power of the concept.

JT – origins and development

As Bainton et al. (2021) have suggested, over the past decade the concept of JT has been mainstreamed within the United Nations and throughout a range of other multi-national, national and sub-national policy frameworks (see also www.adaptingcanadianwork.ca, unrisd.org and ILO, 2015). Politically, it received its most significant endorsement when it was included in the preamble to the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, and then reinforced at COP24 in 2018 in Katowice, Poland. The Silesia Agreement emerging from that meeting stressed that:

A just transition of the workforce and the creation of decent work and quality jobs are crucial to ensure an effective and inclusive transition to low greenhouse gas emission and climate resilient development, and to enhance the public support for achieving the long term goals of the Paris Agreement. (cited in Bainton et al., 2021)

On the face of it then, COP 24 appeared to have delivered on its promise. An ‘Ambition and Just Transition Day’ (10th December 2018) was arranged, and over 25 side events were devoted to JT. Clarke and Lipsig-Mumme (2020) claim that raising JT and environmental justice to the top of the political agenda represented an historically significant moment and a tremendous victory for the national and international trade union movement. However, Stevis et al. (2020, p. 2) concluded, far more pessimistically:

Yet, on closer scrutiny, the ‘Just Transition COP’, rather than providing a clear sense of how a just transition can be achieved, exposed the gap between climate policy makers’ narrow understandings of just transition, and the more complex and multifaceted reality of a ‘living concept’ whose origins and meanings lie deep in the everyday experiences of workers and frontline communities.

It also exposed the gap between government endorsements of JT and the reality on the ground. The reality, Stevis et al. (2020) suggested was closer to vulnerable sections of society and those least responsible for the climate crisis being made either to pay the price for low carbon transition, or being used/manipulated to justify climate inaction. As a result, Bainton et al. (2021) argued, the scope and scale of the concept of JT ranged from a modest claim for jobs in the green economy in which trade unions may not figure at all, to a radical and alternative global vision that replaces extractive capitalism and expanding militarism with a ‘civilising globalisation’. JT is now one concept that has many different meanings, threatening to become an ‘empty signifier’ (Bainton et al., 2021), linking together a range of demands and differences, and in so doing limiting the possibility of contestation. The effect, Stevis et al. (2020) claim is to ‘dehistoricise’ the concept of JT, whereby it is (conveniently?) separated from the frontline communities and labour unions that not only originally developed the concept but also continue to use it in mobilising around day-to-day struggles. In uprooting the concept, it is emptied of its transformative, emancipatory and subversive potential.

JTs origins actually lie in US labour environmentalism in the 1970s and its subsequent globalisation through the agency of national and global labour unions and environmental justice groups (for an extended discussion of the labour movement origins and development of JT, see Sweeney & Treat, 2018). Widely attributed to Tony Mazzochi of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW), the approach was to empower workers and communities and enable them to act especially in the face of ‘jobs blackmail’, which sought to convince workers that they would lose their jobs if they supported environmental measures (Bellamy Foster, 2019). In the early 1990s, the idea of a JT was carried forward principally by the United Steel Workers. In 1997 the OCAW was instrumental in bringing together a Just Transition Alliance, bringing together environmental and social justice organisations. However, by the end of the century because of strong opposition from the Mineworkers Union, JT had fallen down, if not off, the agenda. The approaches towards environmental transitions in the US and beyond were not challenging the market mechanism per se, or even the concept of growth. By the early years of the twenty-first century, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) argued that society needed to confront the realities of global environmental inequalities and therefore any viable solution must recognise how labour is placed globally in relation to climate change and energy needs. The burdens of climate action should not be borne by one set of workers or communities or by any one country (Bainton et al., 2021). However, Clarke and Lipsig-Mumme (2020) acknowledged that even within the trade union movement JT had become blurred, with unions taking opposite positions despite claiming to strive for a JT. The basic contradiction lay between those advocating technological fixes, green Keynesianism or ecological modernisation, and those perceiving a transformative social and economic agenda, including zero-growth, as essential. In this regard, there emerged different ‘shades’ on JT ranging from reformist political agendas that demanded more support for disadvantaged workers and communities and renewal of fossil-fuel dependant regions through renewable energy investment and more radical positions which questioned capitalism’s ability to solve social and ecological crisis tied to carbon-emissions and natural resource depletion (Bellamy Foster, 2019).

Unsurprisingly, JT’s more moderate reformist agenda was more successful in gaining traction among government leaders and international institutions. By 2015, JT’s more reformist position was being embraced by International institutions through UN-backed initiatives around ‘green and decent jobs’ (ILO) and the ‘green economy’ (UNEP). In 2016, the ITUC launched its Just Transition Centre, although it was much less used and discussed in the Global South compared to the Global North (Stevis et al., 2020). It was still possible in the early 2020s, however, to identify the different shades of JT; those that placed JT within a broad and cohesive political economy; those that saw it as a corrective to green transitions; and those that put their hopes in the positive outcomes of green growth. The increasing ubiquity of JT had not lessened the tensions between these approaches, rather it has made them more apparent (Stevis et al., 2020, p. 21).

JT – political economy

Approaches to JT in particular, and ecological transformation in general, reflect the diversity and range of JT shades and responses alluded to above. More theoretical pieces (Bainton et al., 2021; Newell, 2019, 2021) tend towards more critical, radical responses. The more ‘pragmatic’ responses emerging from the broad Evolutionary Economic Geography influenced literature (Coenen et al., 2021; MacKinnon et al., 2021) which reflect all the limited and limiting problems associated with that approach (see Rainnie, 2021).

Peter Newell (2019, 2021) has written extensively about what he describes as the global political economy of energy transitions, arguing that this leads to question ‘who will bring the transition about and for what purpose? Who will benefit and at whose expense?’. Newell’s critique of standard approaches to transition covers much the same ground when examining EEG approaches to disarticulation. However, Newell (2019, p. 31) goes further and points firstly to an under theorisation of the state, questioning whether the state can be viewed as a progressive, collaborative, facilitator-stimulator-controller-director. This builds on Mazzucato’s notion of the ‘entrepreneurial state’ (Mazzucato, 2021). It is important to recognise the uneven distribution of power within and between states, particularly in an era where the power of finance is so important, in driving a neo-Gramscian view of disciplinary power over a state’s energy pathway (Newell, 2019, p. 34). Equally importantly Newell (2021, p. 30) points to a Eurocentrism that lies at the heart of much transition theorising. This leads to a definition of energy transition as a change in the state of an energy system, rather than a change in an individual energy technology or fuel source. Newell points to an important distinction between transition and transformation. Multiple, contested social and political transformations underpin particular transitions. This then allows for an analysis of the ability to accommodate pressures for more radical and disruptive change and to employ combinations of discursive, material and institutional power to ensure that shifts that do occur in sociotechnical formations do not disrupt prevailing social relations. Gramsci used the concept of ‘transformismo’ to describe this process of co-optation (Newell, 2019).

Newell suggests that to understand the political economy of transition, we need to understand (i) where power comes from (literally); (ii) how it is held, sustained and reproduced, and; (iii) how, where and when it might change. This is particularly true in this present conjuncture of ‘climate capitalism’ in a finance-led regime of accumulation. In summarising his approach, Newell argues that it seeks to:

Simultaneously politicise, historicise, globalise and ecologise energy transitions. The focus … .is on power and politics as manifest in contests over producing transitions between labour, the state and different types of (fossil and other) capital; financing disruption and creative destruction; governing transitions involving the state and non-state as well as transnational actors and global governance institutions; and, finally, but critically, mobilising and culturing transitions through resistance to energy extractivism and energy injustice and through building alternative pathways. (Newell, 2021, p. 61 emphasis in original)

In questioning not only how we produce energy but also for whom and for what, Newell points to situations whereby poorer communities are expected to act as ‘sacrifice zones’ for the production of (lower carbon) electricity for wealthy urban centres, as well as ‘green conflict materials’, such as rare metals, mined mostly in the global South for use in the global North. This requires moving from a NIMBY approach to a NOPE (Not On Planet Earth) approach. This is echoed in the ‘awkward questions’ facing unions and Just Transition in deciding whether strategy should focus on promoting ‘energy jobs’ as a whole or to defend jobs based on existing industries (Newell, 2021, p. 176). More generally then, it is necessary to recognise that a decarbonised industrial policy could be as ecologically unjust as a carbon-based one, if it simply externalises harm across space, time and ecosystems and continued to reproduce existing social inequities. In searching for socio-ecological alternatives, some of the more progressive JT approaches have looked to indigenous knowledges and perspectives.

Drawing upon the ‘shades’ of the JT framework, we now turn to an examination of the differences in approaches to JT among government leaders in Australia with those of Australian Trade Unions. To illustrate these differences we consider a major Senate Inquiry.

The Australian JT experience I – Unions and the Australian senate jobs for regions report

The Australian Senate Select Committee on Jobs for the Future in Regional Areas was established on 31 July 2019 to inquire and report on (inter alia) the following matters:

1. new industries and employment opportunities that can be created in the regions;

2. the number of existing jobs in regional areas in clean energy technology and ecological services and their future significance;

3. lessons learnt from structural adjustments in the automotive, manufacturing and forestry industries and energy privatisation and their impact on labour markets and local economies;

4. the importance of long-term planning to support the diversification of supply chain industries and local economies;

5. measures to guide the transition into new industries and employment, including:

   1. community infrastructure to attract investment and job creation, (ii) the need for a public authority to manage the transition, (iii) meaningful community consultation to guide the transition, and (iv) the role of vocational education providers, including TAFE, in enabling reskilling and retraining.

Commenting on evidence presented, the Report noted that Australia does not have a good track record of managing structural adjustment processes, and studies from outcomes from the demise of other industries such as car manufacturing, textiles and the logging industry have repeatedly shown that if support for workers and regions comes after closure, only a third of workers find full-time work at a similar pay rate, a third find casual or part-time work and a third remain unemployed (Senate, 2019, p. 35). Furthermore, ‘transitions don't happen overnight; they have to be planned, they have got to be executed and they have got to be delivered – and that's years, not days’ (Senate, 2019, p. 39). The Report argued that the following factors were identified as being important after examining previous transitions, both national and international:

• Collaboration and capacity building;

• Long-term planning which identifies and works towards transition;

• Fostering key projects to build successful transitions (Senate, 2019, p. 37).

Successful transition regions targeted both catalyst and magnet projects. Catalyst projects accelerate the development of new industries while magnet projects attract additional investment in the region (Senate, 2019, p. 42).

The Report noted ‘a range of stakeholders’ advocating for the establishment of a national transition authority. The primary objective of any transition authority would be to successfully realise the key factors of planning, collaboration and identifying a way forward. The Next Economy, in evidence presented, argued that a National Transition Authority could have the following responsibilities:

• overseeing funding and coordination of transition planning at both a national and regional level

• coordinating with other authorities and government agencies to ensure that the scale, type and pace of the transition will enable us to meet international climate obligations to reduce emissions

• coordinating an industry-wide, multi-employer redeployment scheme to provide retrenched workers with the opportunity to transfer to other power generators

• ensuring companies meet their responsibilities to workers in terms of redundancy payments and entitlements, retraining opportunities, and generating jobs through full decommissioning and rehabilitation of sites (Senate, 2019, p. 44).

The Committee failed to deliver a unanimous report. However, the Chair of the Committee produced some comments and recommendations of his own, including:

The committee recommends that the Australian Government support regional communities to develop local transition plans by establishing an independent Regional Transition Authority that would:

• provide financial and ‘in-kind’ support provided to bring together industry, governments, unions and community groups in regions undergoing economic transformation;

• steer and facilitate local decision-making on what jobs and industries regional communities want to attract, how they intend to make it happen and what resources and timelines are required;

• collate and disseminate final outcomes and reports for each region and ensure cross-pollination for other regions through previous or current work with other communities.

In practice, the (then) Coalition Government took no notice of the recommendations regarding a National Transition Authority. However, this was a theme that was to recur and grow in importance in subsequent years. The union movement, in particular, maintained that a National Transition Authority was a key component to managing energy transition fairly and equitably.

Australian trade unions

There have been a number of reports from trade union and academic sources that have sought to critically examine the concept of a Just Transition and its applicability in an Australian context. In a report for the CFMEU Mining and Engineering, academics from the UNSW Industrial Relations Research Centre (Sheldon et al., 2018) reviewed examples of transitions, successful and otherwise, both national and international, in a search for ‘best practice’ in structural adjustment programmes for coal power regions. These programmes would:

• Minimise and preferably eliminate forced redundancies;

• Enable voluntary redundancies and early retirement to be spread across power stations and dependent mines in a region, or across the country;

• Provide successful transfer of workers to alternative quality jobs, and;

• Provide alternative economic development for the regions that would maintain or improve the situation of the regional community.

Although the report covered much ground already reported on in similar national and international reports, particularly in considering the contrasting experiences of the coal regions of Ruhr, Germany with that of the US’s Appalachians, it did however suggest the formation of an Energy Transition Authority to plan and coordinate the transition in the energy sector, including a JT for workers and communities. In doing so, Sheldon et al. (2018, pp. 52–54) were echoing the recommendations of the Senate (2017) Report on the Retirement of Coal-fired Power Stations. The report argued that a transition to a low-carbon energy sector would also require coordination by a standalone authority that can oversee the implementation of mechanisms to close coal-fired generators and measures to support workers and communities. The report indicated the need for:

• An overarching framework that brings strong, clear, cohesive top-down leadership, coordination and sufficient funding; together with

• Encouragement of broad and open local consultation, and bottom-up initiatives, particularly through local networks that can tap into top-down finding and coordination.

In a report for the WA Government, Phillimore et al. (2019, p. 13) reinforced the assessment of the comparatively poor record of structural adjustment programmes in general in Australia. Phillimore et al. (2019, p. 22) then concur with the conclusion drawn by Sheldon et al. (2018) who argued that the handling of the closure of power stations in Australia rank as some of the worst cases in the country’s mixed record of industry structural adjustment programmes. The key factors that were found to mar the handling of closures included:

• A lack of communication and forward planning as part of a transparent public decision-making process regarding decisions over the phased timing of closures;

• A lack of input from wider stakeholders to develop an inclusive vision of the industry transition that reflects accountability and social responsibility to workers, the community and region and the environment;

• A lack of acceptance by Australian governments of their responsibilities to introduce a systemic approach that offers top-down support to affected workers and communities.

The ACTU itself adopted a policy on Just Transitions at Congress in 2018:

Congress calls for a Just Transition in the energy sector that:

1. ensures equitable sharing of responsibilities and fair distribution of the costs: those who have contributed less to the problem should not bear the burden of the transition costs;

2. institutionalised formal consultations with relevant stakeholders including trade unions, employers and communities, at national, regional and sectoral levels;

3. the promotion of clean secure job opportunities and the greening of existing jobs and industries through public and private investment in low carbon development strategies and technologies in all nations and the appropriate educational qualifications that enhance workers’ capacity;

4. formal education, training, retraining, and life-long learning for workers, their families, and their communities;

5. organised economic and employment diversification policies within sectors and communities at risk;

6. social protection measures (active labour market policies, access to health services, social insurances, among others);

7. respect for and protection of human and labour rights.

The ACTU maintained the delivery of these objectives needs to be proactively coordinated and planned at the national level. The Congress called for the establishment of a national Energy Transition Authority to oversee the orderly and equitable transition of the energy sector. The key focus of the Authority would be to minimise the impact of power plant closures on workers and their communities through managing this transition and delivering on plans for the future prosperity for affected regions.

For workers, we see the Authority as having the following main responsibilities:

1. Overseeing an orderly transition for Australia’s coal-fired power plants, which ensures a Just Transition for workers, their families and communities.

2. Overseeing an industry-wide multi-employer pooling and redeployment scheme which provides retrenched workers with the opportunity to transfer to roles with remaining fossil fuel, renewable or low emission generators and other industries.

3. Administering and developing a labour adjustment package that supports workers transition into new, decent and secure jobs.

4. Coordinating social and economic planning for affected regions, including industry planning, as well as the distribution of government services of all kinds.

5. Assisting with the development of new industries and employment opportunities for workers in affected communities.

The creation of a ‘Just Transition Authority’ was subsequently promised during Labor's failed 2019 election campaign. During the election, the Liberal and National Parties used the ALP’s commitment to establish a Just Transition Authority to claim Labor was focused on putting people out of work in coal regions rather than creating jobs. Ultimately, this assisted the Liberal and National Parties to win over marginal seats in Queensland’s coal regions and secure election victory.

The net zero authority 2023

Unions hoped the election of the Albanese Government in 2022 would finally deliver a national Just Transition Authority. Ultimately, however, it would be the Australian Greens which would introduce a bill to Parliament proposing to create a national statutory authority responsible for overseeing the renewable energy transition and supporting workers and communities to adjust. The bill’s stated aims were to ‘establish the National Energy Transition Authority as a statutory authority to plan, coordinate and provide advice on the transition to renewable energy, focusing on the facilitation of new economic opportunities for workers and communities who are currently involved in fossil fuel production and associated industries’ (Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 2022a).

The key functions of the Authority under the bill were to support workers and communities impacted by the closure of coal-fired power stations and coal mines to adapt in the following key ways:

1. attracting new public and private investment in job-creating industries and social infrastructure in affected areas;

2. ensuring employment and social services are sufficiently resourced in affected area to support transitioning workers;

3. working directly with employers in affected areas on early retirement and job transfer schemes so younger impacted workers have the opportunity to take up jobs in remaining industries where skills are broadly transferable;

Among the areas where the Authority would be empowered to provide advice were:

1. the sources of renewable energy that should be used to generate electricity at particular locations;

2. whether a particular electricity generation project is likely to achieve one or more of the authority’s objectives;

3. models for guaranteeing returns on investment in relation to electricity generation projects;

4. workforce modelling and planning for energy and related industries that are suited to a zero emissions economy, with consideration of existing national, State Territory and regional workforce trends;

5. how communities and workers affected by the closure of fossil fuel mines or coal–fired power stations can be worked with to ensure equivalent employment opportunities and social services are maintained, including by attracting new industries to affected areas;

6. how, and to what extent, emerging renewable energy and related industries can replace existing exports of coal and gas (section 11).

Generally, unions supported the bill as its aims were closely aligned with what they had been calling for many years. However, there were concerns raised about the proposed authority’s relationship to local communities and workers and the voice they would be provided in relation to the activities of authority. The National Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU), for example, raised concerns that local communities and workers would be marginalised in the planning of community futures. The success of the Transition Authority, they argued, depended on worker and community buy-in:

Without workers being consulted in its development, the authority will not be capable of delivering what it needs to – the confidence of workers that it will deliver justice for them in this transition. (Steve Murphy, National Secretary, AMWU cited in ABC, 2022)

In May 2023, the Albanese government announced a legislated Net Zero Authority to provide support for communities during the transition to a low carbon emissions economy. An executive agency would be set up within the Department of Premier and Cabinet to advise on final design and establishment of the authority. The Net Zero Authority would:

• Support workers in emissions-intensive sectors to access new employment, skills and support;

• Coordinate programmes and policies across governments to help regions attract new clean energy industries;

• Help investors and companies to engage with net zero transformation opportunities.

At the same time, the government announced a $400 million funding stream to support decarbonisation initiatives in the regions (Skatssoon, 2023). Former Labor minister Greg Combet was announced as the Chair of the new Agency with an advisory board that included academics, energy regulators, union leaders such as Tony Maher from the mining unions, and Michelle Oneill from the ACTU, as well as executives from Rio Tinto Australia and BHP. The announcement gained broad support from, inter alia, the ACTU, Local Government, the Climate Council, and the Australian Financial Review.

A number of challenges emerge out of an Authority with these functions. First, how will it work with other state authorities, such as the Latrobe Valley Authority set up by the Victorian government in response to the Hazelwood Power Plant closure in 2017, who were effectively performing these functions already? What would be the role of local government, who were arguably much closer to and representative of the local community, was an equally important consideration. Second, the functions of the authority in the 2022 Bill were broad covering both employer assistance, industrial relations, electricity generation and regional development and this overlapping with the jurisdictions of numerous government departments. This would be no easy task to accomplish and once achieved there was still the danger that the Transition Authority would simply create yet another level of bureaucracy and institutional complexity with limited impact. This was one of the reason provided by Albanese Government officials for their cautious approach to pursuing a federal transition authority. National authorities were not well known for providing place-based and community-involved solutions. Unions, however, maintained that this was a risk worth taking for nationally enshrined protections for workers and communities.

To what degree this authority would ultimately empower or disempower workers, communities and unions, however, were complex and difficult questions to answer when what was being proposed was not all that different from what was currently taking place. The Bill was not proposing any new solutions to the dilemmas that carbon-exposed regions were confronting. It advocated market-based solutions to regional regeneration and employment assistance which was largely reflective of current practices involving massive retrenchments. The Bill called for employment and social support services to be sufficiently available and resourced but did not question who should own, operate and deliver their services. It advocated for working with employers of early retirement and redeployment schemes but did not suggest employer prerogative on their hiring or redeployment processes be challenged in any way. One assumes that ‘carrots’ would be provided by the Authority to employers in the form of payments to cover the costs of early retirement and redeployment schemes. The approach to regional revitalisation was equally unoriginal and relied on private investors being attracted to regional development plans initiated by the Authority. At best what was proposed was a green Keynesian approach where government would intervene where required to assist the private sector to deliver better public outcomes workers and communities in these transitioning regions. While there was acknowledgement of the challenges workers and communities would confront with the closer of power stations and coal mines there was little appreciation of their regional development histories and the difficulties in reengineering these histories in a market economy. Many of the regions this bill sought to support and the Authority was expected to assist transition were established for little more than providing cheaper sources of power for the Australian economy and have struggled for decades to diversify their economic base or attract investment outside of these industries. The bill was silent on how the Authority would be able to achieve success where other government departments and agencies had failed over so many years.

More generally, the whole debate is couched in the language of decarbonisation, jobs, growth and regional development. More expansive and radical JT agendas have been left behind. This has been further reinforced by reaction to the US Inflation Reduction Act, with demands for much-enhanced investment in domestic green industries.

In looking more closely at the JT questions emerging at the local level we now turn to the differences emerging between regional policy makers and unions over renewable energy projects that offer transition opportunities.

Advocating for local JT solutions: the emerging new transitional regional strategy and offshore wind

Recently, a model of sustainable regional development has emerged in Australia, focused on revitalising regions historically reliant on fossil fuel-dependent heavy industry. This is based on the concept of Renewable Energy Industrial Zones (REIZ). We have examined this in some detail in Rainnie and Snell (2023). Here we outline one of the most important examples of this initiative, the Next Economy’s prescription for the Gladstone region of Queensland, and place this in the context of its interaction with and effect on the concept and content of JT.

In April 2021, The Next Economy convened a Central Queensland Energy Futures Summit in Gladstone (Whittlesea, 2021), the objective being to bring regional leaders together to consider new developments around renewable energy zones and hydrogen production, as well as increasing speculation about the future of coal. The event attracted 140 delegates from public and private sectors, unions, community organisation, state and local government:

There was near unanimous support for better regional coordination, with three options identified to be progressed simultaneously – a Regional Transit Authority, broader community engagement and local government leadership. (Whittlesea, 2021, p. 2)

There were seven key messages:

• Fossil fuel is declining and renewable energy generation and storage options are expanding;

• Net zero goals leave little room for fossil fuel use;

• Solar energy is the cheapest form of energy in history;

• The pace of change tends to be underestimated;

• Central Queensland is vulnerable as a leading producer, user and exporter of coal but there are also opportunities due to a mix of solar, wind and hydro energy generation;

• Queensland has potential to be a large-scale clean energy producer and exporter;

• The energy transition must be well managed to avoid significant job and business losses (Whittlesea, 2021, p. 3).

From this emerged eight priority action areas:

• Maximise employment and industry opportunities from renewable energy;

• A regional coordination body is needed to manage changes not just to the energy sector, but to the whole regional economy;

• Regional research and strategic planning are urgently needed;

• Protect employees and communities impacted by the energy transition;

• Need a variety of training and employment transfer options;

• Additional infrastructure is needed (e.g. transmission upgrades) but existing infrastructures can also be repurposed;

• Better coordination, communication and engagement between industry players, the workforce, local communities, government, environment groups and First Nation groups is critical;

• Government and political leadership and support are crucial (Whittlesea, 2021, p. 4).

In conclusion, three options were put forward to be progressed simultaneously:

• Regional Transition Authority – to coordinate all aspects of the energy transition;

• Broader Community Engagement – urgent need to engage rest of the community in a more public conversation about the changes to the energy sector;

• Regional Council Leadership – regional transition authority would not replace the need for strong leadership from local government, and the CQROC would play an important role in taking the conversation forward (Whittlesea, 2021, pp. 65–66).

More generally, in a subsequent report Cahill (2022) put forward the argument for a New Transition Authority for Queensland. She concluded that:

While there were some differences in views regarding what form a transition authority should take, particularly in terms of its level of autonomy from government, there was a very high level of agreement across all stakeholder groups that establishing some form of transition authority would be beneficial. (Cahill, 2022, p. 2)

The report pointed to an increasing number of other reports that focus on the number of jobs that might be created in renewable energy construction, generation, storage and transmission as well as renewable export industries such as hydrogen and green metal processing. Instead, the Next Economy report focussed on the form and function of a Transition Authority in delivering these possibilities. The main role of an Authority, it is suggested, is to work with all affected communities and other key stakeholders to strengthen and diversify regional economies as fossil fuels are phased out and renewable energy expands. The second main role is to ensure that all stakeholders can meaningfully participate in decision-making processes in the design of new plans and programmes to decarbonise the economy, and that they remain informed and able to participate as change unfolds over time (Cahill, 2022, p. 8). The third responsibility of the Authority would be to enable the flow of information and resources to enable effective, timely and regionally appropriate investment and action. This would include facilitating:

• Energy security, stability and affordability;

• Regional workforce support and planning;

• Economic diversification;

• Investment in regions;

• Infrastructure development;

• Research and development;

• Land and waste management;

• Community benefits; and

• Policy and regulatory frameworks.

According to Cahill, successful Transition Authorities share a set of common features:

• Clear and legislated mandate;

• Timing is everything – a long-term mandate;

• Power, authority and independence;

• Generous, long-term public funding;

• Calibre of key staff and leadership team;

• Participatory and inclusive planning approaches (Cahill, 2022, pp. 26–28).

The report suggests that an ideal model would start with a National Transition Authority, but in its absence, and with little prospect of one emerging in the near future, then a STATE-based authority was the preferred option to support regions grappling with changes in the energy sector. The approach should be ‘blended’ combining place-based decision-making at the regional level with a state-wide strategy (Cahill, 2022, p. 30) While the language of JT is often present in the vision being put forward in this new transitional regional strategy it has lost its historical connotations and underpinnings connected to local empowerment and restorative justice. The focus is more on institutional responses and economic diversification.

Unions working at the local level, to some degree, have been captured by this turn in emphasis and direction as they look to regional solutions for members confronting uncertain futures. However, they also continue to agitate for more progressive JT solutions to regional adjustment challenges. At the more local level, unions have continued to pursue JT solutions to regional adjustment challenges. In 2019, for example, the Victorian Trades Hall Council, along with some of its affiliates (MUA, AMWU, CFMEU, ETU and GTLC), released ‘Putting the “Justice” in Just Transition’. The report was based on the prospect of developing the Star of the South Offshore Wind project in Gippsland and aimed to ensure that the benefits of the project flowed to local communities and workers in the neighbouring Latrobe Valley coal region under threat from decarbonisation, while not ignoring the opportunities for Victoria and Australia more generally. The project potentially provided direct transition opportunities for workers in high-emission industries. In relation to the Star of the South, it was argued a Just Transition had to include:

1. Maximising local jobs in renewable energy;

2. Ensuring good union jobs;

3. Maximising the number of jobs available;

4. A job guarantee and no forced redundancies;

5. Detailed skills and training assessments;

6. reducing inequality;

7. Developing necessary infrastructure;

8. Ensuring community engagement and development (VTHC, 2019, p. 6).

More generally, the Star of the South project, to achieve a just transition and a speedy development of renewable energy would require:

1. Planning for offshore wind

2. Safety and training

3. Public energy system ownership

4. Energy system management (VTHC, 2019, p. 7).

It can be seen by this example that the policies emerging from the Australian trade union movement fall comfortably within the range of Green Keynesianism, albeit with lighter and darker shades of Green. This accords with earlier analysis of Australian union and social movement policy in the jobs and environment sphere (see Dean & Rainnie, 2021).

However, it is worth noting Australian unions have also sought to work with First Nations People on advancing a JT vision that requires transitions to include indigenous interests and perspectives. The ACTU in consultation with the First Nations Workers Alliance and the ACTU Indigenous Committee have sought to ensure protections for Indigenous communities and Native Title Rights so they receive benefits from the projects built on their lands and waters. Individual unions have also worked to reinforce this position in various ways. For example, in a recent submission by the CFMMEU and ETU (2022) on proposed offshore wind developments in Victoria and a proposed Offshore Electricity Industry (OEI) Act they argue:

First Nations must be able to provide free, prior and informed consent to in both the Declaration and licensing process. At a minimum, existing rights must be fully respected.

In this regard, unions are working to protect not just the rights and interests of First Nations Peoples but their agency in relation to JT processes and proposals that will impact on their communities.

JT and indigenous knowledges, perspectives and resistance

By the 2020s, the more progressive approaches to Just Transition also encompassed issues of indigenous rights and environmental justice, arguing that a just transition must confront a legacy of exploitation, ecocide and environmental, energy climate and economic injustice (Bainton et al., 2021). Although there has been a fairly widespread understanding that indigenous communities and countries outside the global North have suffered disproportionately from climate change, focussed now shifted to how indigenous communities had often initiated and led movements for environmental justice. Overtime this has become increasingly mainstreamed. In 2020, for example, the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre released a Global Framework for Renewable Energy and Human Rights. These principles included:

• Adopting specific policies to ensure respect for land rights of communities and rights of indigenous peoples’ in areas of operation, including to secure free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) of indigenous peoples with regard to renewable energy project development.

• Exploring shared ownership models with communities; and incorporate benefits-sharing with communities as a core component of projects, with priorities and activities defined by the affected communities (ACTU, 2020, p. 33).

However, in the Australian context. Butler and Ben (2021) argue that the legacy of settler colonialism in regional and rural Australia casts a long shadow, in that deeply embedded racisms drastically affect the possibilities of ‘living together’. In many circumstances, an intact racial hierarchy based on white dominance and Aboriginal subordination remains an entrenched part of life. This raises questions of who constitutes ‘local’ in rural and regional multicultures (Butler & Ben, 2021, p. 2188):

Current transformations are taking place in rural towns occur within the ongoing legacies and structures of settler colonialism, existing racialized and classed hierarchies, and complex local conditions of belonging and exclusion.

Crucially, these conditions inform prejudices and racisms towards and amongst more recent arrivals from migrant and refugee humanitarian backgrounds.

However, mainstream and critical analysis is slowly beginning to acknowledge that indigenous communities in particular have been at the forefront of climate action. In the Australian context, Katona and O’Neill (2021) argue that it is time to revisit successful First Nations campaigns against the fossil fuel industry, ‘these battles are good, old fashioned, come-from-behind, David-versus-Goliath examples we can all learn from’. They conclude that ‘Australian and Torres Strait Islander communities have faced hundreds of years of colonisation, industrial desecration of their sacred lands, and destruction of their country. However, in many cases, they have won battles against the odds.’

Somerville and Turner (2020) argue that the primacy of connections to place, specifically what First Nations Australians call Country or Nation is vital to research conducted with Indigenous individuals and groups. In so doing the idea of the researcher as an objective researcher, interpreter and translator is shown to be limited and limiting (echoing our earlier criticism of so-called place-based analysis Rainnie, 2021). Instead, researchers must understand the relationality between all entities in Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing. Community priorities can then be privileged. tebrakunna country et al. (2019, p. 1509) argue that to be Indigenous is generally to be in receipt of other people’s regional development ideas. Policy makers tend to construe Indigenous groups as communities in need of assistance to overcome disadvantage, rather than as important regional development actors. Indigenous communities ‘see’ regional development differently than the mainstream and therefore they ‘do’ development differently as a result. Traditionally, regional development has tended to soft pedal social and cultural considerations in favour of flashier technical terms that are more appealing to policy makers: e.g. regional innovation systems, knowledge spillovers and smart specialisation (tebrakunna country et al., 2019, p. 1510). Community and culture, though at the heart of regional innovation processes are sparsely theorised in regional research (tebrakunna country et al., 2019, p. 1516).

With regards to JT, attention to Indigenous regional development enables one to look beyond surface social dynamics to begin to appreciate how different communities within regions have different ways of seeing, ways of knowing and ways of working. Appreciating and engaging with these differences across boundaries can uncover the potential for new regional development trajectories. Indigenous regional development opens up new conceptual spaces grounded in the cultural idea of country. Country is a relational concept in which the region itself is a regional development actor, and the relationships are inclusive, reciprocal and focused on the long term. As policy-makers seek to grapple with complex problems, and Indigenous communities seek to create their own futures, concepts such as country can create frameworks for new kinds of cross-community engagement in – and with – place (emphasis in original).

Conclusion

In a recent paper (Rainnie & Snell, 2023), we pointed to the Australian governments’ response to the ‘decarbonising imperative’. This involved state-capitalist, large-scale transformations in regional Australia promising lots of jobs.

The hydrogen-driven REIZs and wind farms fit precisely into this picture. What has been described as the polycrisis – covid, economic stagnation and climate change – are driving particular patterns of restructuring in the Australian settler colonial economy. The new Cold War has also driven a militarisation of industrial policy and strategy (Dean & Rainnie, 2021). Rhetoric focussing on self-reliance and domestic resilience drove a re-emergence of interventionist industrial policy, but with a particular spin. An old ‘Jobs & growth’ mantra is getting a refurbishment, embellished with regional, strategic and environmental dressing. Decarbonisation of, and continuing support for, heavy industries is now put in the context of the growth of hydrogen-driven regional economies. Mazzucato’s mantra of the ‘entrepreneurial state’, keenly seized upon as an alternative to the dominant neoliberal paradigm, was rapidly embellished to become the ‘environmental state’.

Accompanying this is a retreat from the language of a Just Transition in policy formation and practice, towards ‘decarbonisation’ but ultimately heading inexorably in the direction of ‘diversification’, which is simply resurrecting a standard neo-liberal regional development strategy with a new coat of paint.

A recent American study (Vachon, 2022) has argued that, firstly, climate action without a just transition will never work pragmatically. Secondly, climate action without a just transition would be morally wrong, and thirdly, achieving a full Green New Deal requires a Just Transition that is more than merely protective but one that is also proactive, by increasing political voice, and transformative by eliminating forms of structural inequality and marginalisation. However, Vachon acknowledges that there is opposition to Just Transition even within the labour movement, not least because of bad experiences of previous government policies supposed to help workers displaced by restructuring. In a report for the European Trade Institute (ETUI), Mandelli et al. (2022) show that eco-social policy mixes for a just transition are rare and, when in place, they are characterised by a narrow scope and an investment-oriented approach, while also being sometimes alarmingly attached to low climate ambitions:

With respect to what kind of just transition the EU and its Member States are promoting, we found two main characteristics that define this policy goal, as presented by most European policies. First, just transition most often has a narrow scope, mainly targeting challenges that are identified as the most urgent. This translates into almost exclusive attention to what can be seen as the ‘low-hanging fruits’ of decarbonization.

Second, the current EU eco-social policy mix overstates the role of investment- oriented measures as the sole means to address the new social risks generated by decarbonization.

A report for the European Commission (Harding et al., 2022) argued that there had been little citizen involvement in any of the policies. In a Policy Brief for the ETUI, Akguc et al. (2022), echoing our point regarding depoliticisation of Just Transitions, argue that:

While the ILO, the UNFCCC and the European Commission all talk about a comprehensive policy framework and an integrated concept, in practical terms the fragmentation of just transition policies has even been reinforced.

A recent report on Just Transitions in Australia for the British Academy (2022) laid out an impressive list of criteria on which JT could and should be placed but no examples of where and how this had actually been implemented.

Flanagan and Goods (2022) argue that Just Transition pulls unions in opposite directions both within and between individual organisations. Union-led green transformation is seen to be highly constrained focussing on job protection and technological incrementalism. There is a broad international consensus at the European on a need for action, but this is not reflected on the ground with the relationship between social actors. More broadly action is seen to be limited by the limitations of corporatist social partnership itself. Flanagan and Goods (2022, p. 485) conclude that:

‘Just transition’ is nevertheless a concept that appears to hold considerable imaginative potency for parties striving toward collaborative engagement with each other over a future that is geared toward human and environmental needs, rather than merely embody market demands. However, its conceptual substance is far from coherent or universal, and in practice outcomes are perpetually heavily shaped by configurations of power and politics on the ground. For the core elements of a just transition to be realised (not to mention its more utopian ones), functioning pluralist industrial relations frame- works appear to be necessary, in many contexts, are presently out of reach – that is, an interventionist state, an acceptance of the contribution of workers, unions and communities and employers willing to negotiate.

More positively, what is now necessary Barca (2019, p. 213) argues, is to reclaim the Just Transition strategy from a simple campaign for jobs in a green growth agenda, to a campaign that advocates for public disinvestment from the fossil fuel and nuclear sectors, coupled with energy democracy and food sovereignty at the community level but also embraces Indigenous knowledges, perspectives and agency.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council: [grant number SR 200200466].

Notes on contributors

Al Rainnie

Al Rainnie is an Adjunct Professor at the University of South Australia and Curtin University. His latest book – Work, Workers and Waste – written with Andrew Herod and Susan McGrath Champ will be published by Edward Elgar in the near future.

Darryn Snell

Darryn Snell is an Associate Professor in the School of Management and coordinator of the Work in Transition Research Group and co-coordinator the Skills, Training and Industry Research Network at RMIT University, Melbourne. Darryn has worked extensively on just transition, employment, skills and workforce development questions. His research has focused on a range of industries including electricity generation, cleantech, auto manufacturing, transport and logistics, and agri-foods.