Western Australia is considering a shift toward weapons manufacturing in Collie, its coal mining heartland about 200 kilometres south of Perth, as the Cook government pushes a plan to turn the area into a defence-oriented manufacturing hub. The announcement lands in a town already being squeezed by the state’s managed retreat from coal, with the government committed to shutting down the state’s coal mines and power stations by the end of the decade while workers face mass redundancies and forced leave during company-enforced shutdowns.
Who Gets to Decide
Premier Roger Cook announced the proposal at the Indian Ocean Defence and Security Conference, putting the future of a whole town into the language of industrial strategy and military supply chains. Defence Industry Minister Paul Papalia said the weapons hub would be "like a Silicon Valley" for the local defence industry. Papalia also said the government was not limiting the plan to missiles and that it could include "vehicles," "satellites," "uniforms" or "first aid kits." Cook said, "I'm a jobs dealer, I'm about establishing jobs."
The pitch arrives as Collie faces an uncertain future after more than a century as the heart of coal mining and power production in Western Australia. Premier Coal is cutting jobs because it has a surplus of coal and no-one to sell it to, while Griffin Coal receives millions in taxpayer subsidies each year to keep the coal flowing. The people who built and sustained the town’s industrial life are the ones being told to absorb the shock of decisions made above them.
What People at the Bottom Are Facing
The local workforce is facing mass redundancies and being forced to use up personal leave during company-enforced shutdowns. That is the immediate reality beneath the glossy talk of a defence hub and a future manufacturing renaissance. The town is being asked to reinvent itself while the old economy is being wound down by corporate and government decisions that leave workers to carry the cost.
The article said the average mine worker earns $2,761 a week, according to the latest available ABS figures, compared with $1,500 in manufacturing. Locals who spoke to the ABC said lucrative FIFO work in the Pilbara or Goldfields seemed more likely than a local job in another sector. The numbers make the hierarchy plain: the work that pays best is still tied to extractive industries and remote labour systems, while the promised replacement jobs sit lower on the wage ladder.
John Spoehr, a former director of the Australian Industrial Transformation Institute, said switching a coal-mining workforce to defence manufacturing would be challenging. He said, "The process of skill upgrade would be long and difficult," and added, "You're talking about people with engineering degrees, electronics degrees, master's and PhDs. That sort of investment would have to be made very soon, or would have needed to be done in the past."
What They Call Transition
The government's "just transition" plans for Collie have included millions in funding, local tourism attractions such as Guido Van Helten's enormous mural at Wellington Dam, smaller grants for individual businesses and local programs, and the installation of four "big batteries" to modernise energy storage capacity. The article said those efforts had generated an estimated 140 jobs so far. Chris Martin, a Collie resident, said, "We're staring down the barrel of the death of coal now, so the town really has to reinvent itself," and added, "Tourism is a part of that, but the town needs more than that to survive."
The town has already been through one round of grand promises. Early last year, Collie was one of seven locations across Australia put forward to house a Small Modular Nuclear Reactor under a future Dutton Liberal government. The then-opposition leader promised "thousands of jobs," and the town's federal MP, Rick Wilson, said the plan would be transformative and help it transition to a clean energy future. Collie Shire president Ian Miffling said of Peter Dutton's pitch last year, "There were questions around safety, waste management and the water issues," and "There were no definitive answers on that."
Miffling said of the defence hub proposal, "I wouldn't get too excited about whether it's missiles or hand grenades, it's … about all sorts of equipment," and "It's all very broad at this stage." Local Labor MP Jodie Hanns said, "We don't know which industries are going to put their hands up, and which industries might express an interest in Collie."
The WA government said it would not contribute any money itself to the defence hub and would only open up the land for development. The federal government, which is all-in on AUKUS, congratulated the Cook government for its forward-thinking but said it would be up to Western Australia to fund it. So the apparatus offers land, applause, and a new industrial label, while the actual bill and the consequences remain pushed downward onto the same community already being told to survive the collapse of coal.