June 4, 2026 • 11 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We know that workers at the Impacts if these gas
(00:02):
projects have begun industrial action earlier this week after negotiations
over new pay and conditions.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Well, they stalled.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Employees at both onshore and offshore facilities walked off the
job earlier in the week, with another to our stoppage
planned now. The Electrical Trade Union and Offshore Alliance are
seeking improved conditions and annual pay rises of three percent.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Joining us on the.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Line is Dave Hayes or Strawbs from the Electrical Trade Union.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Good morning to your Strawbs.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Good morning Katie, and good morning to the listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Mate, How did that action go earlier this week and
talk us through what happened.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Look, our actions have been positive and they're putting the
required pressure on Impacts to stay at the table and
work through the outstanding issues we have. You know, we've
been in this process since October last year. We've had
a strong no boat to a proposed agreement in the
last three weeks with us. It's been a good solid
couple of weeks of that in the Fair Work Commission
(01:03):
with assisted bargaining, where we made significant progress in that process.
But we're down to a few of the a few
of the remaining claims that we haven't reached agreement on
and the workers have the right as part of this
process to take industrial action to get the process moving
and get the results for after.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Storms, tell me what exactly are they after.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
So look where we've had really good process in the
agreement around locking in some of the current practices that
were in place and weren't provided for in the agreement,
things like travel training, lead provisions, all those bits, and
police systems, some improvements in those areas. One of the
big things that's been part of this is the career
progression train work. So we have six levels out there
(01:48):
amongst all the different classifications and from entry level all
the way through to your absolute experts you with ten
years plus tenure on the plant. Job Secure is another thing,
so ensuring that impacts are employing their own people to
perform their own work and adequate numbers of them, some
redundancy provisions, and obviously there's remuneration that comes in it
(02:11):
as well.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
When you say that, you know you're wanting them to
make sure that they're using their their employees to do
the work. With a flying people in and out or
what was the guy So if.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
You look at the Obviously you're offshore facilities are all
flying fly out. We have all a small cohort on
shore of fly and fly out workers. But there is
an absolute commitment from Impacts to maintain a residential workforce
in Darwin and that's one of their commitments of had
in place since building the plant and they want to
continue that.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Good.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
But there is a small cohort of flying ploy out
who have the required expertise at certain certain disciplines on
the plant where we can't get them in Darwin. So
there's a commitment there for that and some of those
provisions are included in the agreement.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Hey, Storms, there were claims this week that you know
that what workers are after is going to take their
pay to half a million dollars a year.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Is that accurate?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
That is absolutely rubbish, Katie. So we've got Area who's
the Resources and Energy Employer Association who have put out
this narrative into the media to try and muddy the
waters and inflating air claims in the bargaining process. As
I said before, we have a career progression framework which
goes from entry level that can be someone coming out
(03:27):
of an apprenticeship all the way through to ten plus
years of experience on the plant where yeah, you do
earn good money. I mean, these people aren't delivering newspapers.
They're working on a major hazard facility and the technical
knowledge and expertise that is needed to do the work
that they do and on the offshore facilities is top notch.
You know, these are the top of the tree of
(03:48):
tradespeople working on these facilities providing gas not only to
Australia but the world.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
But I mean even them, is it five hundred k.
I've got a few mates that work at Impects and
none of them are driving around in rolls royces living
in multimillion dollar properties.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
But maybe they're in lower level jobs. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Look, Katie, that there's well and surely over one hundred
percent inflation of those of those figures being put out
when we put a lot of claims into bargain around.
Obviously there is there's some ambient in that log of
claims and you're put in figures to bargain around, But
we're nowhere near what's being proposed, and I can assure
you that there is none of the technical trades people
(04:29):
that work out on that plant that are anywhere near
that money.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I know. The argument, I guess from the other side
is that, you know, like if that if Ossie workers
want too much in terms of you know, the amount
of pay that they're going to end up getting, you know,
getting people from overseas or somewhere else, Like, what do
you say to that.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Look, Katie, our claims inlign with the industry standards in
the oil and gas and the offshore industry. If you
look at your chevrons, your shelves, your woodsides, all the
Tier one oil and gas companies that operate in and
around Australia, our claims are in line with what these
people learn. You are working in highly dangerous industry. You're
working for our offshore crewise. You're sitting out there in
(05:10):
the middle of the ocean keeping a bomb from exploding
as part of the work that you do every day.
It is challenging work. It tastes the best of the
best and the right people to do those jobs as well,
to be able to work in these environments and make
the decisions when needed and make them quickly, and the
knowledge is required to do that. We need to remunerate
people for these jobs.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
So we're too from here, like you know obviously those
you know there was industrial action taken earlier in the week.
Is that going to need to happen again, or a
confident that you know that things are moving along a
bit more positively.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
We've been taking industrial action every day, Codie, on every
shift across all the facilities. We have another suite of
work bands that come into play on the elevens of
June next week, which where we can ramp up the
pressure on Impacts with a whole lot more different challenges
that they'll have to work with if these bands get
put in place. But we're hoping in the coming week
(06:08):
we can continue our discussions with Impacts and get this
over the line before having to go down that path.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
And what do you say to anybody out there listening
who thinks that you know things?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
People are being greedy?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Oh, Katie, I'd say to those please, I'll challenge those
people to take a career path into the oil and
gash industry. Do the study, get the trades, get the expertise,
do the one hundred courses and training that they do
continue us throughout the year to keep their skills up
to date. Take that career path and see the challenges
that are involved and often with five FO work and
(06:44):
things like that, and see if you think you deserve
that remuneration, because they certainly do well.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Dave Hayes, we really appreciate your time this morning. As always,
please keep us in the loop and let us know
how things are tracking along.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
No wries, Cadi. Can I just give it an update.
We talked about Nathan River Resource.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely I've been wanting
to hear about that.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah. So Nathan River Resource, the administrators have been brought
in to them. So there's a group of five companies
that they have administrators have taken them all over. So
now people have to go through the process to to
become creditors, et cetera, and go through an arduous process
of trying to get their money back.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Storms, can you explain to us a bit more about
what that means and for those workers.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
So there's a there's a company called bri Freer who
are the administrator. They've taken over this process. So they've
taken control of you know, the company's financial you know
and assets to an extent. And look, obviously people put
their their claims in of what they're owed and then
the administrator has to work out how with what's available
(07:55):
these people can be paid back or compensated or whatever
it may be in relation to the monies that they're owed.
So it's going to be a struggle for a lot
of people. Yeah, we've backed it on behalf of our
members out there for the last a couple of months,
but it's going to be a quite a quite a
battle for a lot of people going through this process.
(08:16):
And how many cents in the dollar or things like
that do they get returned, that's still obviously to be determined.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
So and like for some of those workers strokes, like
you know, we were hearing situations where some of them
were owed you know, week's worth of money. What like,
can you give us some examples of, if possible, of
the situation that some of these workers are actually in now.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Well, now they're in a position where the where the
administrator of that's been appointed now has to see what
assets potentially can be sold. That's sort of that sort
of thing. And then those money is then get distributed
in a process too, you know, and often it goes
(08:59):
in ages and things like that first, and then companies
that are owed money et cetera, et cetera. So it's
a very long drawn out process, Cardian. I'm hoping that
people get something back, but you never know the oircomes
of these in the whole of this company.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Actually was I was going to say, like, is there
a possibility here that some of these workers could be
thousands of dollars out of pocket for work that they've.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Already done very much? So, yeah, well that's bloody awful.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
And you know, like I just think you're away from
your family working on a mind sight, you're working hard,
thinking that you're doing the right thing and you know,
providing for yourself and your family, and to then wind
up in that situation, it's pretty heartbreaking stuff, it.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Is, Cardian. If I can just go back to IMPEX
just for a minute. One question that's been put to
us a fair bit is around the domestic gas supply
and the our actions how we would affect that if
we would. I just want to make the point that
it's our advice that Impacts don't actually have a a
(10:00):
contractor supply gas to the anti market, but they do
they supply emergency gas. But if we all remember, we
think about eighteen months ago, Gemina did all that work
on the Northern Gas pipeline to reverse the flow, and
so the NT often receives gas from that, and we've
got an example over Christmas where all our power was
supplied from the East Coast Gas for over a week.
(10:25):
So we're obviously mindful of domestic gas, but there is
contingencies in place that the government have put in place
because impacts can trip and do bits and pieces like
that in normal operations and they need that other supply.
So we haven't got concerns at all about the domestic
gas supply with what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Okay, all right, well that is good to hear. Yeah,
look a few concerning things there. I mean that you've
spoken about that Nathan rivermine situation. Yeah, I'm pleased that
you had a bit of an update for us, but gee,
it doesn't sound like it's good news for.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Those workers, not at all. Codie, Hey, I really appreciate
your time this morning. Strawbs. Thank you. Good to talk
to you and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Thanks, Catie, thanks for your interesting No worries at all.
We know that workers at the Impacts if these gas
(00:02):
projects have begun industrial action earlier this week after negotiations
over new pay and conditions.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Well, they stalled.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Employees at both onshore and offshore facilities walked off the
job earlier in the week, with another to our stoppage
planned now. The Electrical Trade Union and Offshore Alliance are
seeking improved conditions and annual pay rises of three percent.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
Joining us on the.
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Line is Dave Hayes or Strawbs from the Electrical Trade Union.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Good morning to your Strawbs.
Speaker 3 (00:34):
Good morning Katie, and good morning to the listeners.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
Mate, How did that action go earlier this week and
talk us through what happened.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Look, our actions have been positive and they're putting the
required pressure on Impacts to stay at the table and
work through the outstanding issues we have. You know, we've
been in this process since October last year. We've had
a strong no boat to a proposed agreement in the
last three weeks with us. It's been a good solid
couple of weeks of that in the Fair Work Commission
(01:03):
with assisted bargaining, where we made significant progress in that process.
But we're down to a few of the a few
of the remaining claims that we haven't reached agreement on
and the workers have the right as part of this
process to take industrial action to get the process moving
and get the results for after.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Storms, tell me what exactly are they after.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
So look where we've had really good process in the
agreement around locking in some of the current practices that
were in place and weren't provided for in the agreement,
things like travel training, lead provisions, all those bits, and
police systems, some improvements in those areas. One of the
big things that's been part of this is the career
progression train work. So we have six levels out there
(01:48):
amongst all the different classifications and from entry level all
the way through to your absolute experts you with ten
years plus tenure on the plant. Job Secure is another thing,
so ensuring that impacts are employing their own people to
perform their own work and adequate numbers of them, some
redundancy provisions, and obviously there's remuneration that comes in it
(02:11):
as well.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
When you say that, you know you're wanting them to
make sure that they're using their their employees to do
the work. With a flying people in and out or
what was the guy So if.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
You look at the Obviously you're offshore facilities are all
flying fly out. We have all a small cohort on
shore of fly and fly out workers. But there is
an absolute commitment from Impacts to maintain a residential workforce
in Darwin and that's one of their commitments of had
in place since building the plant and they want to
continue that.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Good.
Speaker 3 (02:39):
But there is a small cohort of flying ploy out
who have the required expertise at certain certain disciplines on
the plant where we can't get them in Darwin. So
there's a commitment there for that and some of those
provisions are included in the agreement.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
Hey, Storms, there were claims this week that you know
that what workers are after is going to take their
pay to half a million dollars a year.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Is that accurate?
Speaker 3 (03:06):
That is absolutely rubbish, Katie. So we've got Area who's
the Resources and Energy Employer Association who have put out
this narrative into the media to try and muddy the
waters and inflating air claims in the bargaining process. As
I said before, we have a career progression framework which
goes from entry level that can be someone coming out
(03:27):
of an apprenticeship all the way through to ten plus
years of experience on the plant where yeah, you do
earn good money. I mean, these people aren't delivering newspapers.
They're working on a major hazard facility and the technical
knowledge and expertise that is needed to do the work
that they do and on the offshore facilities is top notch.
You know, these are the top of the tree of
(03:48):
tradespeople working on these facilities providing gas not only to
Australia but the world.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
But I mean even them, is it five hundred k.
I've got a few mates that work at Impects and
none of them are driving around in rolls royces living
in multimillion dollar properties.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
But maybe they're in lower level jobs. I don't know.
Speaker 3 (04:07):
Look, Katie, that there's well and surely over one hundred
percent inflation of those of those figures being put out
when we put a lot of claims into bargain around.
Obviously there is there's some ambient in that log of
claims and you're put in figures to bargain around, But
we're nowhere near what's being proposed, and I can assure
you that there is none of the technical trades people
(04:29):
that work out on that plant that are anywhere near
that money.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I know. The argument, I guess from the other side
is that, you know, like if that if Ossie workers
want too much in terms of you know, the amount
of pay that they're going to end up getting, you know,
getting people from overseas or somewhere else, Like, what do
you say to that.
Speaker 3 (04:48):
Look, Katie, our claims inlign with the industry standards in
the oil and gas and the offshore industry. If you
look at your chevrons, your shelves, your woodsides, all the
Tier one oil and gas companies that operate in and
around Australia, our claims are in line with what these
people learn. You are working in highly dangerous industry. You're
working for our offshore crewise. You're sitting out there in
(05:10):
the middle of the ocean keeping a bomb from exploding
as part of the work that you do every day.
It is challenging work. It tastes the best of the
best and the right people to do those jobs as well,
to be able to work in these environments and make
the decisions when needed and make them quickly, and the
knowledge is required to do that. We need to remunerate
people for these jobs.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
So we're too from here, like you know obviously those
you know there was industrial action taken earlier in the week.
Is that going to need to happen again, or a
confident that you know that things are moving along a
bit more positively.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
We've been taking industrial action every day, Codie, on every
shift across all the facilities. We have another suite of
work bands that come into play on the elevens of
June next week, which where we can ramp up the
pressure on Impacts with a whole lot more different challenges
that they'll have to work with if these bands get
put in place. But we're hoping in the coming week
(06:08):
we can continue our discussions with Impacts and get this
over the line before having to go down that path.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
And what do you say to anybody out there listening
who thinks that you know things?
Speaker 2 (06:19):
People are being greedy?
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Oh, Katie, I'd say to those please, I'll challenge those
people to take a career path into the oil and
gash industry. Do the study, get the trades, get the expertise,
do the one hundred courses and training that they do
continue us throughout the year to keep their skills up
to date. Take that career path and see the challenges
that are involved and often with five FO work and
(06:44):
things like that, and see if you think you deserve
that remuneration, because they certainly do well.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
Dave Hayes, we really appreciate your time this morning. As always,
please keep us in the loop and let us know
how things are tracking along.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
No wries, Cadi. Can I just give it an update.
We talked about Nathan River Resource.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Oh yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely I've been wanting
to hear about that.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
Yeah. So Nathan River Resource, the administrators have been brought
in to them. So there's a group of five companies
that they have administrators have taken them all over. So
now people have to go through the process to to
become creditors, et cetera, and go through an arduous process
of trying to get their money back.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Storms, can you explain to us a bit more about
what that means and for those workers.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
So there's a there's a company called bri Freer who
are the administrator. They've taken over this process. So they've
taken control of you know, the company's financial you know
and assets to an extent. And look, obviously people put
their their claims in of what they're owed and then
the administrator has to work out how with what's available
(07:55):
these people can be paid back or compensated or whatever
it may be in relation to the monies that they're owed.
So it's going to be a struggle for a lot
of people. Yeah, we've backed it on behalf of our
members out there for the last a couple of months,
but it's going to be a quite a quite a
battle for a lot of people going through this process.
(08:16):
And how many cents in the dollar or things like
that do they get returned, that's still obviously to be determined.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
So and like for some of those workers strokes, like
you know, we were hearing situations where some of them
were owed you know, week's worth of money. What like,
can you give us some examples of, if possible, of
the situation that some of these workers are actually in now.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Well, now they're in a position where the where the
administrator of that's been appointed now has to see what
assets potentially can be sold. That's sort of that sort
of thing. And then those money is then get distributed
in a process too, you know, and often it goes
(08:59):
in ages and things like that first, and then companies
that are owed money et cetera, et cetera. So it's
a very long drawn out process, Cardian. I'm hoping that
people get something back, but you never know the oircomes
of these in the whole of this company.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Actually was I was going to say, like, is there
a possibility here that some of these workers could be
thousands of dollars out of pocket for work that they've.
Speaker 2 (09:21):
Already done very much? So, yeah, well that's bloody awful.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
And you know, like I just think you're away from
your family working on a mind sight, you're working hard,
thinking that you're doing the right thing and you know,
providing for yourself and your family, and to then wind
up in that situation, it's pretty heartbreaking stuff, it.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Is, Cardian. If I can just go back to IMPEX
just for a minute. One question that's been put to
us a fair bit is around the domestic gas supply
and the our actions how we would affect that if
we would. I just want to make the point that
it's our advice that Impacts don't actually have a a
(10:00):
contractor supply gas to the anti market, but they do
they supply emergency gas. But if we all remember, we
think about eighteen months ago, Gemina did all that work
on the Northern Gas pipeline to reverse the flow, and
so the NT often receives gas from that, and we've
got an example over Christmas where all our power was
supplied from the East Coast Gas for over a week.
(10:25):
So we're obviously mindful of domestic gas, but there is
contingencies in place that the government have put in place
because impacts can trip and do bits and pieces like
that in normal operations and they need that other supply.
So we haven't got concerns at all about the domestic
gas supply with what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Okay, all right, well that is good to hear. Yeah,
look a few concerning things there. I mean that you've
spoken about that Nathan rivermine situation. Yeah, I'm pleased that
you had a bit of an update for us, but gee,
it doesn't sound like it's good news for.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Those workers, not at all. Codie, Hey, I really appreciate
your time this morning. Strawbs. Thank you. Good to talk
to you and we'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Thanks, Catie, thanks for your interesting No worries at all.
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