Hydrogen Power Plant

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (14:53): My question is to the Premier. When has delivery of the hydrogen power plant been deferred until?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:53): There are a couple of things in that. I think the member is confused. Electric arc furnaces don't cost $3 billion; I am not quite sure what he is buying. A direct iron reduction facility might cost billions of dollars—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I would like to see the reference to the document that says an electric furnace costs $3 billion.

The Hon. V.A. Tarzia: It's there in the public domain.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Google?

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Right, okay. Direct iron reduction facilities are in the billions of dollars; electric arc furnaces are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not less. But, then again, I'm sure the experts in the question time committee—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: No, no, no. So, the electric arc furnace—quite frankly, Mr Speaker, the question that the member asked I think doesn't make a lot of sense.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: It's just true. Direct iron reduction facilities do cost a lot. When you've got engineering to be done, you've got business cases to be built by the potential proponent, what is going to occur now is the voluntary administrator will stabilise operations in Whyalla. There will be a maintenance fund that hasn't been done for a long time. There will be regular shifts put in place. The operations will operate in a more orderly way. We heard stories today of workers bringing their own toilet paper to work because toilet paper had stopped being bought by GFG. We have seen a lot of services stopped there.

The first order is to immediately maintain the services, maintain the property that's there and, of course, get the rolling wheels operational again, start using the billet to make long products and rail lines to try to get more revenue into the system. As the process goes on in voluntary administration the administrator will look at trying to recoup costs for creditors through a sale process. At the end of that sale process you've got a big pile of government money, which is mainly from the commonwealth and the state, which is made up from the Hydrogen Jobs Plan money and, of course, a big injection of cash from the commonwealth government.

That money there is for an investment into an electric arc furnace and direct iron reduction facility. That pile of money that we have at the end is not to pay for it in its totality. It is a contribution towards that. It depends on, one, who is successful in any process outside of the voluntary administration to purchase the plant, their detailed business case, and how long it will take them to invest and build a direct iron reduction facility and electric arc furnace—because, if the opposition's plan is just an electric arc furnace, that is job losses in Whyalla. There needs be direct iron reduction in place of a blast furnace. The blast furnace has to be maintained until direct iron reduction can be replaced. There need to be gas solutions for direct iron reduction and then hydrogen as well. What we are doing is this in an orderly way.

We had a partner who was meant to be doing this stuff now. Of course, that wasn't occurring. To give some context to the house: since 2018 Mr Gupta has sold $7.8 billion worth of iron ore internationally—$7.8 billion worth of revenue—$4.7 billion of steel has been sold since 2018, and $800 million has been moved offshore. The money in there would have been more than adequate to invest in direct iron reduction, electric arc furnaces. Of course, there are federal government and state government programs in place. In fact, the electric arc furnace, which cost—I've run out of time. Ask the question again and I will continue.