Arrium

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:21): I rise today to talk about the situation in Whyalla with Arrium. Before touching on that, I would like to respond to some of the things that were said during question time. An interjection across the chamber indicated that, at the time of the Pelican Point proposal, the Labor opposition opposed the establishment of Pelican Point. That is not entirely true. I know that it is not entirely true because at the time I was heavily involved in one way in the desire to secure the gas-fired power station in Whyalla. The company that put in the bid to build the gas-fired power station was, from memory, National Power.

At the time, I was a member of the Whyalla city council, and I think I might have been at that stage the deputy chair of the Whyalla Economic Development Board. Using both those roles, I led a campaign to lobby National Power to establish the power station at Whyalla. This is a bit of a repeat of history, except this time it is an existential threat, but at that time we were towards the end of over a decade of job losses in my community.

People would be aware that from 1985 onwards there was a major restructure of the steel industry. Over that decade to 15 years, approximately 4,000 direct jobs were lost out of the steel industry in Whyalla. Had those jobs not been lost, if that downsizing had not occurred, we would not have a steel industry in Whyalla today. But they were incredibly tough times, and we were keen to capture whatever economic development was around, and the National Power proposal seemed to fit well with an industrial city like Whyalla—an industrial city that was fed by a gas pipeline.

In those days of leading that campaign, we took a busload of people to Adelaide, and to Port Adelaide, to join in those protests, and that was the first time I met Kevin Foley. As we all know, Kevin Foley was a strong advocate for economic development, but he was also a strong advocate for the electorate he represented. At that stage, that electorate quite strongly opposed the establishment of a gas-fired power station at Pelican Point, and we were more than willing to add our weight to that, to put in the argument that the gas-fired power station should actually go to Whyalla.

We came down, we joined in the protest and I went over to Sydney with the CEO of the Economic Development Board at the time, Phil Tyler, who used to be a member in this chamber, to speak to National Power to see if we had any realistic possibility of establishing a gas-fired power station in Whyalla. I have to say that National Power took the proposal we made seriously, had a very serious look at sites in Whyalla and concluded that Whyalla would be a good location.

There is always a whole range of factors that come into play in these decision-making processes, so at the end of the day National Power decided on putting the gas-fired power station at Pelican Point. That is all history. It is interesting that we are back here with this six-point energy plan and that once again a gas-fired power station is part of the overall proposal. Pelican Point was in its day and is still today a modern and efficient plant.

I suspect that with the expressions of interest that are going to come in to the state government from companies like Siemens, General Electric and others, we are going to see an incredibly contemporary gas-fired power station built in this state and one that will be government controlled so that we will never get into that load-shedding situation we just had back in February.

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Deputy leader!

Ms Chapman interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Deputy leader, not necessary. Member for Mitchell.