GFG Alliance

Mr TELFER (Flinders) (14:27): My question is to the Premier. Has the Premier received any advice as to whether all creditors of OneSteel Manufacturing Pty Ltd will have their debts paid in full and, if not, what percentage of the creditors' debt is expected to be received?

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:27): I am happy to furnish the honourable member with the press releases that have explained all of this detail. The South Australian government has stepped in with a support package for South Australian creditors, which I didn't even think they dreamed of it's fair to say, and that feedback was coming through loud and clear on the ground on Monday.

South Australian creditors of GFG are receiving payments of up to $5 million for any moneys they were owed by GFG. Some of that money has already been transacted, as I referred to yesterday, in a way that's making a material difference on the ground. In exchange for those grants from the state government—not loans, grants—those businesses are consigning over to the state their rights to a dividend through the administration process, so we are assuming that burden for them.

For creditors outside of South Australia, or for creditors who are owed more than $5 million, they are a small number, but naturally their debts are very substantial. Lots of those companies are publicly listed, and the ones that are talked about on the public record, of course, are NRW Holdings—their trading operation at Whyalla being Golding's, principally around the mine—and also Aurizon and CSL.

These are companies that are owed a lot of money, but they are publicly listed companies. It is not the responsibility of the state to assume their position. They are publicly listed companies that have made conscious and presumably, you would hope, sophisticated decisions about allowing GFG to rack up the debts that they did. That is for them to contemplate. The administration process will determine whether or not they receive any of those debts, where their ranking is, what their relative position is and, of course, what happens to the transaction of the business itself. It requires someone to pay something for it.

We certainly hope that is the case. The more of those debts that can be recovered by creditors—including the South Australian government, which is a first-ranking creditor, included because of the legislation that was passed through the parliament—the better. Again, I acknowledge the bipartisan support for that, for which we are grateful.

That puts our position quite high, and also as the funder of the administrator, in any administration the funder of the administrator becomes the automatic first-ranking creditor for the amount owed through the administration. The South Australian government's position is protected as best as we possibly can and, again, all of that information was actively considered as the government made the decisions we did over the course of recent weeks and months.