It's bad news and the timing isn't great, but it was never going to be.
The question now that we have a date for the end of the Tiwai Point Smelter is where to from here.
Is this maybe a case of one door closing and another one opening?
On the downside, replacing a couple of thousand well-paid jobs in Southland is not going to be easy.
People are talking about aquaculture and the like, but the truth is we're not talking big numbers and we're not necessarily talking big dollars.
I'm keen to hear what Shane Jones has to say on this later in the programme.
On the question of the power well, don't expect any big dividend there.
The smelter partly came out of the think big era it guzzles more electricity than any other single user in the country.
It's enough to run nearly 800,000 average homes, more than half of Auckland if you like and it's sold at a sweetheart super-cheap rate.
So do we expect this sudden glut of power to mean sharply lower prices for the rest of us?
Well, no, not right away, not for years if ever.
The power is generated in the deep south. 
And because our poor old power network is somewhat neglected it's stuck there.
Work has started on upgrading those links, but we're talking hundreds and hundreds of kilometres of ugly transmission cables...and years and years to put them up.
Meantime, Meridian will be spilling water from its dams in the South, and we'll still be forking out a fortune for power elsewhere.
Answers well, maybe we take the industry to where the power is.
Microsoft wants to build a big new data centre here and those things really guzzle it up.
But after the build are there that many ongoing jobs and could they be enticed to Southland?
What about hydrogen production it could use the power but then you've got to get the product to the markets.
I asked at the start...is this a case of one door closing...and another one opening?
I don't know...but I think it's an occasion when we need to 'think big' again.

It's a waiting game as to whether there'll be any Government action on the planned closure of Tiwai Point aluminium smelter.
Rio Tinto's Southland-based smelter company will stop operations in August next year, due to high power costs and poor outlooks for the industry.
Regional Economic Development Minister Minister Shane Jones says there are options that can be worked through.
He told Tim Dower no panic-stricken decisions will be made with 14 months to go.
"There are other options which we will work through with Southland, but at this stage we are not going to make panic."
Jones says New Zealand First MP Mark Patterson, who's based in the area, is putting together a report, which caucus will wait for.
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The bars and restaurants are full. People are out enjoying themselves. Spectacular geological attractions are wide open to tourists. Anyone visiting Iceland right now could be forgiven for thinking they've arrived in a parallel universe where the coronavirus never happened.
It's a tantalizing prospect. For people arriving from countries still under lockdown, the sheer normality of eating lunch in a bustling Reykjavik cafe is almost as thrilling as peering over the thundering abyss of Iceland's mighty Gullfoss waterfall.
There's an added bonus for anyone who does make the trip here at the moment. Usually crowded with travelers at this time of year, the country is empty. Visitors will more or less have attractions like Gullfoss or the explosive hot springs of Geysir to themselves.
This isn't because Iceland has been immune to Covid-19. In its early stages, the infection wreaked havoc among the island's relatively small population. But thanks to a rigorous regime of tracking and tracing, it has more or less been eliminated, giving the country confidence to reopen borders on June 15.
Two days later, on June 17, Iceland celebrated its annual national day with its usual zeal, locals mingling in the pretty Nordic streets of the capital. There were no face masks or social distancing as Prime Minister Katrin Jakobsdóttir came out to address the crowds.
Journalist Lara Omarsdottir joins Tim Dower to discuss how Iceland is handling the crisis
- with text by CNN

Friends of widowed Kylee Guy are fundraising for the family to continue a private investigation into the murder of Scott Guy.
Kylee Guy's husband was found shot dead at the end of their Fieling driveway in the early hours of July 8, 2010.
The murder remains unsolved.

Kylee Guy, wife of murdered Feilding farmer Scott Guy, is comforted by her two-year-old son, Hunter, during an emotional 2010 press conference in Palmerston North following the murder. Photo / File
Funds from the public appeal will pay for private investigation fees and any extra funds will be put towards a trust fund for Kylee and Scott's two sons.
Kathie Rifle, the driver behind the fundraiser has known Kylee Guy since 2006.
Following the 2012 trial, the Guy family hired private investigators, however in 2015 the family could not continue the investigation due to lack of money.
Ewen Macdonald, Guy's brother-in-law and a pall-bearer at his funeral, was charged with his murder in April 2011.
He was acquitted at a jury trial the following year but was jailed five years for other offences.
Ten years on from the young farmer's death, his widow spoke to TVNZ's Sunday in an exclusive interview.
She said the killer is still out there and she has just one message for that person.
"You are a coward. If you can live with yourself for doing this - taking a father away from his children, who was a good man - you are a coward."
Guy met 18-year-old Kylee Bullock, who was training to be an early childhood teacher, at a Havelock North pub after a rodeo.
The pair fell in love and married in 2005. At the time of the murder, the pair had a son and a second on the way.
The Givealittle page has the goal of rasing $50,000.
The fundraising page has had 70 donations in the last day.
One donor wrote "May justice be done. You are such a beautiful brave lady."
"Let's help Kylee, and their precious sons, get justice for Scott" says Rifle.

Donald Trump's niece Mary Trump levels scathing criticism at the President in her forthcoming book, accusing him of being a "sociopath" and charging that Trump's "hubris and willful ignorance" dating back to his early days threatens the country.
Mary Trump's book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," accuses Donald Trump's father of creating a toxic family dynamic that best explains how the President acts today. Mary Trump, whose father, Freddy Trump, died following struggles with alcoholism, writes that she could "no longer remain silent" following the past three years of Trump's presidency.
"Donald, following the lead of my grandfather and with the complicity, silence and inaction of his siblings, destroyed my father. I can't let him destroy my country," Mary Trump wrote in the book, a copy of which was obtained by CNN.
Mary Trump writes that some of the book is based on her own memory, and in parts she reconstructed some dialogue based on what she was told by some members of the family and others, as well as legal documents, bank statements, tax returns and other documents.
Mary Trump's book is the second tell-all in as many months to present a withering portrait of the President -- and like former national security adviser John Bolton, her book sparked an unsuccessful legal campaign to stop its publication. Mary Trump's book doesn't include explosive accusations about Trump's actions in the Oval Office like Bolton's, but it adds rich details to the portrait of how Trump became the self-styled real estate tycoon and media celebrity which he parlayed into the presidency, largely through the financial backing and support of his father.
White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews said in a statement that the book "is clearly in the author's own financial self-interest."
"President Trump has been in office for over three years working on behalf of the American people -- why speak out now? The President describes the relationship he had with his father as warm and said his father was very good to him. He said his father was loving and not at all hard on him as a child," Matthews said.
The book comes at a challenging time in Trump's presidency as he struggles to contain the coronavirus pandemic and presides over a country reckoning with systemic racism. He also trails his 2020 Democratic rival Joe Biden in recent polling.
Mary Trump, a licensed clinical psychologist, offers both her take on Trump's actions in the White House -- charging he's shown "a blatant display of sociopathic disregard for human life" over the coronavirus pandemic -- as well as episodes throughout Trump's business career, Trump's handling of her father's struggle with alcoholism and dysfunction and infighting within the family. She writes that Trump's father, Fred Trump, "dismantled his oldest son," Freddy Trump, Mary's father and Trump's brother.
"The only reason Donald escaped the same fate is that his personality served his father's purpose. That's what sociopaths do: they co-opt others and use them toward their own ends--ruthlessly and efficiently, with no tolerance for dissent or resistance," Mary Trump writes.
She writes at length about how she sees Trump, comparing him to a three-year-old, saying he "knows he has never been loved" and arguing that Trump's "ego is a fragile thing that must be bolstered every moment because he knows deep down that he is nothing of what he claims to be."
She even claimed that Trump even paid someone to take the SAT tests for him to help him get into the University of Pennsylvania. Trump was "worried that his grade point average, which put him far from the top of his class, would scuttle his efforts to get accepted."
She writes that he enlisted "a smart kid with a reputation for being a good test taker, to take his SATs for him," adding the test-taker was compensated for the effort.
"Donald, who never...

It's only right that the man who sauntered out of hotel quarantine for a wander around Auckland and a bit of shopping will be facing charges.
At worst, the 32-year-old could end up in prison, quite a switch from the Stamford Plaza.
More likely he'll get a fine, at most that would be $4000.
I suspect the deep clean and the unscheduled shutdown he's responsible for will cost Countdown a heck of a lot more than that.
Look, I believe it's important we see this in the context of the numbers who've been through this quarantine or managed isolation procedure.
Since lockdown...March 26th...more than 26,000 people have been through the system, official health department stats.
There have been a few who've done a runner, dopey Thelma and Louise of course, a bunch who went off to a funeral and never came back, the woman who slipped out the other day, the people who gave dud phone numbers or wouldn't pick up when the tracers called.
We've been really quite forgiving about all that, and each time we've been told how disappointed officials are, and how they'll do everything they can to make sure it never happens again.
Yada yada yada.
Now, I don't want to be a scaremonger, but the World Health Organisation is now saying there's more evidence emerging that covid can be an airborne virus, that is scary
You could catch it from droplets hanging in the air, never mind someone else coughing or sneezing near you.
The time has come to make an example of people like this moron, and throw the bloody book at them.
Citizen, permanent resident, whatever.
You came back here because we're a safe place to be.
And we're only safe because the people now paying for your accommodation, your food and your health care went through a lockdown.
We stayed home, we lost jobs, we lost friends and couldn't mourn them, we lost money, some of us nearly lost our minds.
If you're coming back to enjoy New Zealand's benefits and our functioning health system, all we ask is that you mind your manners for two weeks.
So suck it up.
We did.

Political parties and Parliament are being criticised for failing to mentor new Members of Parliament.
Hamish Walker has only been an MP for two and a half years but won't be going for re-election, after sharing Covid-19 patients' personal details with the media.
Former United Future leader Peter Dunne told Tim Dower new MPs are put on a pedestal and think they're bullet-proof.
He says there's a lot of individual egos, but parties and the parliamentary system aren't good at making sure new MPs are making the right calls.
"Both in terms of their local activities and the people they employ. It’s only when a crisis occurs, that someone says how did that happen?"
Dunne says political parties and the parliamentary system aren't good at mentoring new people to make sure they're making the right judgement calls.
"The way they deal with these things is to cut off the diseased limb and say it's your problem, go away.”
Dunne says it might be useful politically but puts the problem on hold until the next Hamish Walker situation occurs.

There has been a public outcry over changes made to Mt Ruapehu parking
Ruapehu Alpine Lifts has introduced a new online booking system, available from July 22.
The new changes come after frustration over congestion at the ski fields during peak season.
But customers who had already bought seasonal passes in advance are outraged they now have to book car parking as well.
An online petition calling for Ruapehu Alpine Lifts to axe the change has already garnered more than four thousand signatures.
Chief executive Jono Dean joined Tim Dower to talk about the changes.
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Ten weeks is a long time in politics and by September 19th we may well have forgotten about this covid privacy scandal.
But is ten weeks long enough for the National Party to repair the damage?
Bad enough that Hamish Walker sent this information to the media, we can only read that he was trying to fix things up after what he said a week ago.
Maybe...just maybe...you can put that down to inexperience.
Or maybe I'm being too charitable.
In the Herald today, Audrey Young isn't so gentle.
She calls his mea culpa 'an apology for an apology', saying it smacks of self-righteous post fact justification, and downright deception.
The gall of it.
The so-called leak itself, the actual disclosing of privileged confidential information to a person who shouldn't have it, now that's down to Michelle Boag.
To say she should know better would be the understatement of the year, I really couldn't believe it when I first heard that last night.
So, where to from here?
National's leader has said he'd have sacked David Clark for his covid stuff-ups and he has in effect sacked Hamish Walker, by taking away his portfolios.
Should he go further, should Walker even be standing again in that plumb Clutha seat. I guess that's for the local Party Committee.
And what of Michelle Boag?
Someone with such a glittering reputation...until this.
Disappointed is a word we hear so often these days it's really lost all meaning.
Gutted and appalled are closer to what I feel.

It's unclear whether Hamish Walker broke the law when he shared the personal details of Covid-19 patients with the media.
The Clutha-Southland MP was given the information by former National Party president Michelle Boag, who received them in her capacity as former CEO of the Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust.
Walker's been stripped of his portfolios by National Party leader Todd Muller.
Lawyer and political commentator Liam Hehir told Tim Dower this is a moral invasion of privacy of quite epic proportions.
"Whether it's a criminal offence is beside the point, it's an act of appalling judgment."
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