Question Time

Whyalla Steelworks

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS (Black—Leader of the Opposition) (14:13): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier update the house on the developments at the Whyalla Steelworks? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.J. SPEIRS: It has been reported that, and I quote:

The problem occurred when a two-day scheduled stoppage of the blast furnace for regular maintenance work in March resulted in the furnace cooling down much more than anticipated. It has been further reported by a number of media outlets that the impact of the shutdown may prevent the steelworks from making steel for the next seven months.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:14): I have been meeting with GFG and I met with their operations manager today, and at 3 o'clock today the Steel Task Force executive will be meeting with the plant managers, as we do weekly. We are confident that steelmaking will resume soon, not in the time frame outlined by the leader. There is a blast furnace community in Australia working together like good comrades to make sure that the blast furnace in Whyalla does not go cold. That is the government's worst fear and we will work tirelessly with GFG to make sure it does not go cold.

During the administration, when Arrium went into administration, the then government with me as mining and energy minister and the local member, the member for Giles, worked tirelessly to keep that steelworks open and operating, and nothing has changed since that date. Our resolve is resolute. The technical aspects of this are that the smelter is being brought back up to temperature slowly but surely. The government has offered its assistance. We are confident that things are working well. Shifts obviously have been set aside in agreement with the union until steelmaking returns. I am confident that steel will be being poured relatively soon as our discussions with GFG continue. It is something we are monitoring daily.

I am confident that they will overcome this. I am advised that this is a common occurrence that can happen with regular maintenance. The government has been aware of this for a while. We are not concerned to the point of the blast furnace going completely cold. We are obviously monitoring it, hence my regular meetings with GFG personally and the Steel Task Force meeting with the operations manager. As I said earlier, the government offered its full support to GFG if there was anything we needed to do, any resources we needed to bring in, any experts we needed to bring in. We have done all that work. We have assured ourselves that the work is going to plan and I expect steelmaking to resume relatively soon.