Whyalla may make steel again one day. But years of uncertainty could still reshape the town
- Written by: Weekend Times
There is a shock reverberating through the regional South Australian town of Whyalla and its crisis-hit steelworks. This week, administrators KordaMentha and SA Premier Peter Malinauskas jointly announced they would abandon all
attempts to restart the steelworks’ blast furnace.
At least 500 workers will lose their jobs, along with 100 people employed through labour-hire arrangements. The future of a further 200 “embedded contractors” remains uncertain.
To be clear, the closure of the blast furnace does not mean the end of the Whyalla steelworks. Efforts remain underway to find a buyer. While primary steelmaking will remain paused for an estimated two to four years, other operations such as mining and steel rolling will continue.
Still, the future of this town of more than 21,000 people – where 12.8% of the workforce work in iron smelting and steel manufacturing – has been abruptly thrown into limbo.
Often, when news like this breaks, we focus on the economic impacts and the immediate support needed for workers and their families. That is important.
My research, however, has examined other Australian communities undergoing similar economic shocks. It suggests disruption can extend well beyond jobs and income. If we want to ensure a just transition for Whyalla, we should start preparing now.
Towns shaped by an industry
The cessation of steelmaking in Whyalla is about more than lost jobs. The town as we now know it has been built around the steelworks. As a major employer, the steelworks has shaped family life and social interactions.
People have moved to Whyalla to work there, while local businesses and institutions have grown around it.
Since steel production began in 1941, it has been integral to the town’s development. Whyalla’s identity and how people understand their place in the world have been shaped around the steelworks, the furnace, and the rhythms of work and community life that have grown around them.
The uncertainty about the steelworks can become an uncertainty about the town itself: will businesses survive, will families stay, will young people see a future for themselves, and, ultimately, will there be a future in and for Whyalla?
Immediate reactions from locals illustrate this anxiety, with some residents expressing fears Whyalla could become a “ghost town”.
Grief for an imagined future
These effects do not begin only if the steelworks does eventually close. The uncertainty Whyalla is experiencing now has consequences.
When an industry is so closely intertwined with a place, uncertainty about its future can change how people experience home. The familiar relationship between past, present and expected future is disrupted.
In my research, I explore the way this can result in feelings of grief for a future once imagined in a place that now feels uncertain or impossible.
People and communities living with deep uncertainty about the future can end up uncommitted to the present.
Feeling displaced without leaving home
I saw this in my research with residents of Wollar, a small rural community in New South Wales affected by the expansion of open-cut coal mining. As the mines expanded, the traditional economy and social structure of the place were dismantled.
Properties were acquired, people moved away and livelihoods were disrupted. The school, shop, nursery and churches closed, leaving those still there with a deep uncertainty about the future of the place they called home.
People who remained described putting their lives on hold, becoming disconnected from the everyday practices through which home and place are made and sustained.
As one resident told me:
You put yourself on hold, like I’ve done. Right after my parents passed away in Sydney and I inherited some money, I would have done the house up, painted it and used that money, but now I’m too scared to. I haven’t even dug new gardens. You put yourself on hold for all this time.
Disempowered from the future of the place they can call home, and reliant on decisions and actions of external parties such as the government and industry, people can find questions about identity, home and place become ambiguous.
This can have consequences for both personal and communal wellbeing. As those who have lost their jobs move away, other economic activity may dwindle and the social networks and social infrastructure that sustain the place become dispersed.
Population loss can, in turn, make it harder to sustain services and economic activity, creating a cycle of decline. It is this possibility that underpins the fears of industrial towns becoming “ghost towns”.
Support for those ‘in limbo’
This is why support must not only focus on workers who have lost their jobs. Training, financial assistance and mental health support for those who have lost their jobs are essential. But there is also a need for a whole-of-community approach that recognises and responds to the wider effects of economic rupture.
Steelmaking may return to Whyalla. But whatever happens, there may be a long road ahead and the intervening years matter. Living in limbo can itself reshape a community, creating uncertainty not only about employment but about what Whyalla is as a place and the future it holds for those who call it home.
In this moment, it is essential to invest in social infrastructure, maintaining services and local institutions, and creating genuine opportunities for local people to participate in decisions about what comes next.
People’s connection to place must be supported through the transition, with hope and the possibility of a future in place providing anchors for what comes next.
A successful transition cannot be measured by whether steelmaking returns. It must be measured by what happens to the community in the meantime, and whether the people of Whyalla can see themselves in, and help shape, the future of the place they call home.
Hedda Haugen Askland receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Trailblazer for Recycling and Clean Energy (TRaCE).
