Upper Spencer Gulf Common Purpose Group

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:26): I rise today to talk about the recent meeting of the Upper Spencer Gulf Common Purpose Group. We met in Port Pirie on 21July and present at the meeting were the mayors of Port Pirie, Port Augusta and Whyalla, in addition to the member for Frome and me. There were apologies from Rowan Ramsey, the member for Grey, and from the member for Stuart. We all have very busy timetables so we cannot make it to all the meetings.

It was really good to have the meeting at Port Pirie because I have not popped in to Port Pirie for a while. It was good to feel the buzz that seems to exist in the community on the back of the major smelter redevelopment. As members know, that is a half a billion dollar redevelopment and I am proud of the initiative of our government in helping to underwrite that redevelopment with a facility that amounts to $291 million, so a considerable underwriting of that project and something that was pivotal in getting the project off the ground.

It is good to see Port Pirie go ahead and have its future secured, but it is interesting to reflect upon what is happening in the whole of Upper Spencer Gulf and the broader region. There is very significant investment occurring; there is probably in excess of $3 billion worth of investment happening now, or about to happen, in Upper Spencer Gulf. In Port Augusta, we see the $57 million investment into the expansion of the prison, and that is both a good thing and a bad thing. It is obviously a good thing for Port Augusta because it generates jobs.

At the conclusion of the expansion, there will be somewhere between 330 and 350 jobs in the Port Augusta community, acknowledging that some of those people also come from Whyalla, Port Pirie and elsewhere in the region to work at the prison. It was good to hear the minister talk about the need for rehabilitation and the need to reduce the reoffending rate and to move away from the old philosophy of the previous minister of rack 'em, pack 'em and stack 'em to a new regime that I think is a far more sensible regime.

Of course, we have Sundrop Farms at Port Augusta as well. They have a few challenges, but it is really great to see a company and a private equity investor willing to commit over $50 million to that state-of-the-art development. Not only is there that particular project in Port Augusta but there has been development approval for DP Energy's 375-megawatt combination wind and photovoltaic facility, and a raft of other projects are on the drawing board for Port Augusta.

Of course, Whyalla is turning the corner. On 21 June in this house, I indicated that it looked like the Koreans were going to be the winners out of that process—how things change. A big welcome to Sanjeev Gupta and the GFG Alliance. They have indicated the potential for $1 billion worth of investment commitment in Whyalla, which will be transformative. If only half of what has been discussed comes to the fore, it will be a real step forward for the community of Whyalla. It is great to see an investor like that talk about green steel, talk about pumped hydro, talk about wind and talk about solar. They know where the future lies.

BHP is currently investing $350 million at Olympic Dam to refurbish the smelters there. It will be rebuilding the smelter flash furnace and demolishing and building a new electric slag furnace in addition to work on the precipitator, so a lot of investment is going on. We have Carrapateena's mine development with 400 jobs at its conclusion, 400 jobs during construction and also the potential for a copper concentrate plant. The story in Upper Spencer Gulf in my part of the world is actually a really positive story.

Time expired.