Across the many days of the 50th National ALP Conference, the ETU was relentless in it’s advocacy for members, fighting for secure energy futures, fixing the skills shortage, and ensuring that workers are protected with the rapid development of AI and Data Centres.
Held in Adelaide, the ALP National Conference stretched across 3 days from Thursday the 23rd to Saturday the 25th of July, and the ETU achieved incredible results with our Sovereign Power campaign. Before the conference even started, the ETU kicked things off with a ‘Politics in the Pub’ event on the Wednesday night to hear from members and delegates about what issues they wanted to see brought to National Conference.
During the conference, the ETU hosted a panel titled “Powering Australia’s Future”, joined by Dr Elizabeth Thurbon from the UNSW Green Energy Statecraft Project, and Moksha Watts, former advisor to the Prime Minister’s Office on Climate Change and Energy Policy, to discuss the issues facing the electricity sector.
National Secretary Michael Wright also spoke on a panel hosted by Senator Tony Sheldon around AI, Productivity and the Workplace. As we know, we need 32,000 more electricians by 2030 to avoid facing shortages, and with the growing employment of electricians on data centres, it is imperative that data centres are taking on apprentices and training up the next generation of electricians.
The ETU also joint hosted a panel with the Smart Energy Council, titled ‘Renewables and the Culture War: Power Prices and Populism’, which aimed to discuss some of the growing challenges around misinformation and damaging narratives during the energy transition. The panel also heard from the Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, on the difficulties of the transition and protecting peoples’ jobs.
Each of these panels and events provided the ETU with an opportunity to advocate for its members, and ensure that electricians perspectives are brought into the conversations around Australia’s infrastructure projects and future. A huge thank you to the members who attended, and those who helped us prosecute our members case in front of current and future decision makers.
