State Investment

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:22): I might as well start on a football theme as well, but it will not take up the whole of my grievance debate. As a Port Power supporter, I think I will let this coming weekend go past in silence. Obviously, after last weekend, as a Port Magpies supporter, I am going to have to let that go past in silence as well, but I would have to say that, in my community of Whyalla, I did have a bit more success. Westies took out the championship there—a great team. That was a very good, very long and very enjoyable night celebrating that particular victory.

I always appreciate these breaks from parliament because it gives the opportunity to get around the vast electorates. I was in Roxby Downs, Andamooka, Quorn, Hawker, Kimba and obviously Whyalla, and shortly I will be going up to Coober Pedy, the APY lands and, with a bit of luck, I will get to William Creek, Oodnadatta and Marla as well. I took a bit of a trip outside of the electorate to Wilpena Pound to represent the Minister for Environment at the co-management parks workshop. That was a very worthwhile exercise.

What I want to talk about is the sort of disconnect between what is going on sometimes in Adelaide and the comments made by those opposite when it comes to investment in our great state. The message that is being sent is often a very negative message. One of the great things to happen recently was OZ Minerals giving Carrapateena the green light. Up in the north of the state, we all think that is absolutely fantastic news. That is over a $900 million investment and around about 1,000 jobs made up of construction jobs, mine development jobs and the ongoing employment that is going to be generated.

I was absolutely staggered, in response to that great announcement by OZ Minerals, to hear the member for Bragg—and not even damn it with faint praise—put an incredibly negative light on it: 'They are just here to extract the minerals and it will be fly-in fly-out,' almost implying that there is very little in the way of benefit for not only South Australia but regional communities. OZ Minerals has made it very clear that, in as much as they can, they will be looking for people from the broad region to fill those jobs. They will also be looking to ensure that local contractors get a good look in, so it is an incredibly positive story.

There is a wealth of positive stories at the moment. I will not go into detail about Liberty and SIMEC, and the way SIMEC has got into bed now with ZEN Energy. SIMEC now has majority ownership of ZEN, and I am looking forward to highly innovative energy approaches in Whyalla. I am quite proud of the fact that, when I was at the tail end of my time on council, after working on a concentrating solar thermal project for many years until ARENA pulled the $60 million in funding for probably understandable reasons at the time, I just dusted myself off, approached ZEN and invited them to come and have a look at Whyalla.

We showed them around with the late mayor Jim Pollock, and they have been coming backwards and forwards to the Whyalla community ever since. I hope to see ZEN and SIMEC carry out some worthwhile activity in Whyalla. Then, of course, there is SolarReserve north of Port Augusta with 600 jobs there during construction. There is a $600 million investment at Olympic Dam; there will be over a thousand people on site there very soon.

There is also the SSE solar plant in Whyalla under construction with 90 per cent local contractors. We have Adani making their announcements: a $200 million investment in Whyalla, and hopefully they are going to use local contractors as well. We have pre-pumped hydro studies going on in the immediate region of Whyalla, and there are a raft of other projects, so the future is actually incredibly bright.