Whyalla Steelworks

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:08): My question is to the Premier. Has the Premier received any advice on the likely length and cost of the administration of OneSteel Manufacturing Pty Ltd?

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:08): There is no specific timeline, and actually that is something we have turned our mind to in great detail. What we have said publicly to all and sundry—and I'm happy to furnish the Leader of the Opposition with the remarks that are already well and truly on the public record—is that we anticipate this to be a lengthy process. We know that the last time the business was in administration it took 17 months to get out of it. We have no reason to believe that this process will be any shorter. In fact, there is reason to believe that it might even be longer.

We know that the business is in a very different state to what was the case back in 2016 when Arrium went into administration. In fact, the more information that we get out of the administration process, which has a whole range of transparency associated with it, which was one of the reasons why we pursued the course of action that we did—that information that is now being entered into the public realm, for which we are grateful, I think demonstrates that this will be a long process.

We are up-front, and we are honest about this. No-one from the Treasury benches in this place or in the media or, most importantly, on the ground in Whyalla has been suggesting that it won't be a lengthy process. Of course it will be. A new owner will have to do an awful lot of work to be able to assess what they think the business is worth and their capacity to partner with government to deliver the transformation we know is necessary.

They will want to get in. They will want to look at the state of the business. They will want to understand the operations of the plant. They will want to understand the value of the business in terms of its order book. They will want to understand its capacity to ramp up production. They will want to understand what investment needs to be made in the physical capital of the building, everything from the blast furnace's operations to the BOS, the mines and all of the mill—all the associated works. All of that will have to be done and then of course, concurrently, beyond that, there will be a huge amount of due diligence—something I dare say the Leader of the Opposition will appreciate.

We would have loved to see the circumstances that would have allowed us to put the business in administration last week and have a new owner the following day, but of course no new owner buys a business without understanding it in all of its detail. So that will be undertaken, and we will be doing that in collaboration with the private sector. The administrator has made it known publicly that there are already 10 parties that have expressed interest. There are certainly other parties that have come to government as well to talk about how we can engage. We very much welcome that.

Early interest, of course, is very distinct from going through that process I spoke to and finalising a transaction, but the only way that we are able to draw out interest in the business is for the business to be up for sale, and Mr Gupta was never doing that. It was only able to be achieved by a process that would facilitate the business changing hands, which is exactly what this government has been able to facilitate through the actions that we have taken.

If there is a theme out of this in terms of what the South Australian public and broader Australian community should appreciate, it is that this is a state that is on an exceptionally positive trajectory in comparison to other parts of the country economically. We are not going to allow people to hold us back, and we are not going to allow anyone to get in the way of us achieving our agenda and our ambitions for the state, which is why we are willing to take necessary action—difficult but necessary action. We are not going to observe the problem. We have learnt the lessons of governments past. We are getting on with the task and delivering action, and that is exactly what the people of Whyalla want.