Locals say jobs are their priority in the Victoria election: but does the town’s future lie in renewables or its coal-fired heyday?

When Andy McCarthy moved to the Latrobe Valley to start a solar power business eight years ago, he was tentative about what he said about renewable energy. Even the idea of renewables was threatening for many locals, an emotional topic for a region dependent on coal for generations.

These days, McCarthy is bolder and says that, gradually, conversations are becoming more sophisticated. But he watches the dying days of the Victorian election campaign with frustration.

The seat of Morwell in Victoria’s south-east has 11 candidates split on energy policy. Conservatives promise – with few details – a new low-emissions coal-fired power station, while progressives say it’s a pipe dream. The electorate sits on hundreds of years of brown coal, the heart of electricity generation for Victoria for generations.

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McCarthy isn’t objective – he’s in the renewables business. And his company, Gippsland Solar, has grown from four employees five years ago to 54 now, including half a dozen people he put on after they lost their job when the ageing Hazelwood power station shut last year.

“I’ve been thoroughly underwhelmed by the quality of the discourse in the local seat,” he says. “It’s been very disheartening to hear some of the comments, and the misleading debate around energy.”

He’s particularly “fed up” with candidates claiming they had spoken to someone who is prepared to build a coal-fired power station, but who won’t name them – the National party’s Sheridan Bond, the Liberals’ Dale Harriman have done so, and the sitting member, Russell Northe, once a National now an independent, all support a new station for the Valley.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andy McCarthy is the founder of Gippsland Solar, which employs 54 people in the Latrobe Valley. Photograph: Gay Alcorn/The Guardian

“It makes me angry when I hear that because it’s misleading,” says McCarthy. “It gives people false hope that there’s going to be a white knight who’s going to ride into town and use private money to build a new coal-fired power station when if you go outside of the Valley, it is painfully obvious that’s not going to happen.

“It’s not about ideology. It’s purely cheaper to build renewable energy facilities than to build a new coal-fired power station.”

Local newspaper editor Jarrod Whittaker says the result in Morwell is impossible to predict, but the campaign has familiar themes. Whittaker, 34, was born in this region and has left and returned several times.

“It always comes back to jobs and the future of the power industry. No matter where you sit on the political spectrum, everyone’s got a view on those issues.” But he has picked up a generational divide.

“With the older demographic, [they think] if we could just go back to the way it was, it would be good, if only there was the political will, if the government was willing to step up. The younger people I speak to, they see what’s happening in the national debate and think maybe coal’s had its day, but they still want jobs.”

For McCarthy, the election is a referendum on renewable energy.

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The Labor premier, Daniel Andrews, chose Gippsland Solar earlier this month to announce an expansion of his government’s $1.34bn promise to put half-price solar panels on homes that include rental properties.

He announced in this seat he would increase Victoria’s renewable energy target to 50% by 2030 and would stick to it no matter what the federal government decided.

That made some local Labor figures nervous – why on earth would he choose a coal town to talk up renewable energy? It was perhaps one of the big symbolic moments of the campaign.

Labor’s candidate is former Hazelwood worker Mark Richards, who has a chance to win this seat, but is fighting local sentiment that Labor was to blame for Hazelwood’s closure, rather than the company, which said the station was too old and dangerous.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Morwell’s sitting member, Russell Northe, with his rival, the Labor candidate Mark Richards (right). Photograph: Gay Alcorn/The Guardian

Andrews also announced a deal to build an electric vehicle factory in Morwell, creating about 500 long-term manufacturing jobs. The project will go ahead whichever party wins on Saturday.

A town in transition

Wendy Farmer is the president of Voices of the Valley, a community group she established after the Hazelwood open-cut coalmine caught fire in 2014, burning for weeks and blanketing the town of with toxic ash.

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The environmental disaster politicised Farmer, and she supported independent Tracie Lund to run at the last election (Lund is running again this time). There was a big swing against Northe in 2014 and he holds the seat by just 1.8%.

Farmer has watched the campaign closely.

“There have been lots of good things happening. When you have a marginal seat and you have politicians become interested in our area. We haven’t seen that for a long time and we’re starting to see positive changes,” she says.

“Yes, coal is going to play a part in what we have, but we will change along the way and transition. It’s important for the Latrobe Valley to be part of that transition.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest (L-R) Independent candidate for Morwell Tracie Lund, Liberal Dale Harriman and Nationals’ Sheridan Bond. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian

McCarthy says he has no interest in politics, but can no longer sit on the sidelines. He’s pleased with Liberal leader Matthew Guy’s announcement that all Victorian public schools will be provided access to solar power.

But he’s dismayed that Guy would scrap the renewable energy target, which the opposition leader claims would cost jobs, increase electricity prices and risk blackouts over summer. He’s sceptical of Guy’s pledge to build a new power station using gas or coal to meet the electricity needs of government services, and to reduce household energy bills. In Morwell, hopes rose that a new station would be in the Valley, and be coal-fired, but none of that is clear before the election.

With unemployment high, everyone here wants jobs and industry needs certainty to invest. McCarthy says the renewable energy sector can provide local jobs, and that slowly people are beginning to talk about it.

“Everyone wants employment and these jobs are no different to manufacturing cars or digging coal out of the ground,” he says. “They’re just jobs.”