POWER AND THE PASSION: Eraring Power Station workers need support to retrain

Legislative Council education committee chair Mark Latham asked new Minister for Skills and Training, Science, Innovation and Technology, Alister Henskens, at a Budget Estimates hearing on Thursday whether he had spoken with Minister for Energy Matt Kean about the retraining of the plant's workers.

Origin Energy has brought forward the plant's closure by seven years.

"We haven't yet had that discussion, Mr Latham, but I think the power station is going to close in 2025 so we'll certainly have an opportunity to have those discussions, but I haven't had them yet," Mr Henskens said.

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Mr Latham asked whether the ministers had spoken about what skills the plant's workers would need to access jobs in Mr Kean's job creation package.

"I agree that it is incredibly important Mr Latham to have a plan and to develop a plan in terms of how we can transition those workers into new employment, new skills so they continue to be employed," Mr Henskens said.

"If I can draw on my own personal experience, I know when the BHP shut in Newcastle in the 1980s there was a similar program and that's something that I will work with Mr Kean towards but we haven't had those discussions yet."

Mr Henskens said he had heard about the revised date for the plant's closure through media reports.

Shadow Minister for Skills and TAFE and Newcastle MP Tim Crakanthorp said he found it "very strange that with the importance of transitioning the Eraring workers" that the ministers hadn't yet discussed the matter.

"These people need to be reskilled and the Minister's portfolio - and TAFE especially - will have a massive role to play," Mr Crakanthorp said.

"Minister Henskens is new to this portfolio and this would be a very good opportunity for him to put his money where his mouth is and support Eraring workers through the transition."

Training Services NSW executive director David Collins said his organisation had started discussions with the Department of Regional NSW and a jobs taskforce in the Hunter.

"It's a process that's tried and true, we used it for example with changes to BlueScope in the Illawarra where we will work to get an understanding of what the labour market opportunities are, we will start discussions with the organisation and with the workforce," he said.

"That will be part of the process that we'll go into which will be about identifying what opportunities there are, working with those workers to see what their interests are, what skills they've got, what they may need to help them to move to other opportunities."

The committee heard TAFE NSW awarded contracts to EY and Deloitte to help update training and assessment materials and that EY sent some of this work overseas.

A TAFE spokeswoman told the Herald all materials undergo stringent quality controls with TAFE subject matter expert residents in NSW, plus meet its Quality Assurance standards and the requirements of the independently set national training packages.

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