🤷 What happened: In the 1980s, the Tomago Aluminium Smelter, in New South Wales, was powered by publicly owned electricity from the Bayswater coal-fired power plant.
It was one of many manufacturing facilities, like smelters and refineries, set up near these power sources so they could tap into cheap, publicly-owned electricity.
Over time, however, those power stations were sold off to private companies. Bayswater was sold in 2014 by the New South Wales Government. Meanwhile in Victoria the Loy Yang and Hazelwood power stations were sold off in the mid 1990s.
🏦 Bailouts: Many of these facilities are now grappling with the end of their long-term, often decades-old, cheap power contracts.
As a result, governments all over Australia have spent billions of dollars to prop up facilities like steel and copper smelters because running costs are spiralling.
Rio Tinto, which owns Tomago, said it can't find an affordable energy deal beyond 2028, with electricity now making up more than 40 per cent of its operating costs.
🤨 Why? Operators say they need the public money to subsidise their operating costs, otherwise they will close.
While these bailouts may be protecting jobs, it’s not addressing a key reason these facilities need a bailout in the first place.
The Electrical Trades Union wants the government to build and own energy systems again.
It argued this will keep heavy industry in Australia, as well as the thousands of jobs that come with it.
⚖️ The difference: Instead of coal-fired power plants, the union is pushing for government-owned energy to be made up of solar panels, wind turbines and battery storage because they are cheaper than their fossil fuel counterparts.
The CSIRO’s Gen Cost Report found wind and solar, backed up by batteries, is the cheapest new way to make electricity ahead of coal, gas and nuclear.
👷 The Union: ETU Secretary Michael Wright told the National Account the success of heavy industry in Australia has historically been linked with access to cheap electricity.
“It's literally why Tomago, Australia's biggest aluminium smelter, is where it is. It was on the back of a 20-year commitment for cheap, publicly-owned electricity,” he said.
At the end of 2025 the state and federal government announced a joint bailout package for the smelter which is still in negotiations.
This isn’t exclusive to Tomago either, other packages include:
$600 million for Glencore’s Mount Isa Copper Smelter and Townsville Refinery, being spent by the Queensland and Federal Governments announced in October 2025.
$2.4 billion joint state and federal funding package for the Whyalla Steel works in South Australia.
👁️ Long term vision: Wright said there needs to be long term vision for cheap electricity.
“Whether it's Whyalla, Liberty Bell, Glencore, Tomago, we need a long-term solution for this rather than just these big multinationals coming back every couple of years seeking more short-term government finance, another sugar hit, just keeping them on life support rather than giving them, and more importantly the workers in their community, a real future”, he said.
“If we're not exercising every natural advantage we have, in the global race, we're going to lose. Simple as that. So it's about leveraging the gifts that we have as a country to give our industry a real future.”
Watch the National Account’s Archie Milligan below: