kids

"We've got a daughter in the cemetery, we just can't move on from here."

Jason and Lee Mackay have always called Victoria’s Latrobe Valley home.

They’ve worked hard throughout their fifteen years of marriage, raising their four children, and finally building their dream home in Traralgan last year.

But their livelihood is now under threat.

The Hazelwood Power Station will shut its doors in less than forty days and Jason will be out of a job.

For 52 years, the Hazelwood Power Station – one of three in the Latrobe Valley – has been supplying up to 25 per cent of the state’s energy and generations of employment to locals. Entire families work at the station.

The plant’s owner ENGIE announced the closure as part of its plan to concentrate on low-carbon projects for power generation – which means it’s a great move for the environment but not for the locals whose income depends on coal.

Jason and Lee Mackay have always lived in the Latrobe Valley. Image supplied.

On a special edition of Insight tonight, the show will travel to the Latrobe Valley to meet the Mackay's and other locals who are on the front line of these debates.

Lee Mackay told Mamamia that they can't even imagine leaving their local community to find work.

"That's just not an option for us," she said, "We love living here, our kids are here, we've got family here."

"We've got a daughter in the cemetery, we just can't move on from here."

Both Lee and Jason grew up in the Latrobe Valley; Jason on a local farm and Lee in the town of Churchill.

It's the only home they've ever known.

The Latrobe Valley is a community built around the power stations. Both Lee's grandparents emigrated to Australia to work in the Valley and Lee's father also worked at the stations.

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"It's just a really great place to raise a family." Image supplied.

When Jason accepted the job at Hazelwood he was promised he could work at the station until at least 2025 and the couple made some pretty big life decisions based on that promise.

“We had a fourth child because we thought we’d be able to afford the cost of living on that income. We built our dream home, we leased a car. We just built our whole life around that promise," Lee said.

"If we had of known that Hazelwood was going to close, we wouldn't have built that house, we would have approached things differently," she added.

Jason and Lee had planned to set themselves up for life, to pay off their house within the next five to 10 years, and be able to live without the burden of a mortgage.

"And now we're stuck with no income and a house that might not be worth what we paid for it because house values will probably go down as the unemployment rate rises."

The employees of the Hazelwood Power Station were only told about the shutdown in November last year, and since then Jason and his workmates have been trying to find alternative work in the Valley.

But it hasn't been easy, unemployment rates in the Latrobe Valley are already the highest in Victoria, sitting at 8.2 per cent.

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Many of the 750 men and women who are about to lose their jobs are highly skilled workers with a very specific set of skills.

"Both my cousins work there and they're in their late 40s and they've never worked anywhere else," Lee explained, "They've never been for an interview, they got their apprenticeships when they were 15 and worked their way up."

Many young people in the area either hoped to work at the station or are now worried about the increased competitiveness for jobs in the fall out from the closure.

How to NAIL a job interview on Mamamia Out Loud. 

Jason and Lee, like many Latrobe Valley locals, are worried about what's going to happen to their community.

"It's just a great place to live. We've got no parking issues, no traffic issues," Lee explained, "It's the country but we've got everything that we need."

"It's just a really great place to raise a family."

Insight airs on Tuesday at 8.30pm on SBS.