Whyalla Workforce

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (14:29): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Can the Deputy Premier update the house on action the government is taking to support the Whyalla workforce?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Minister for Climate, Environment and Water, Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, Minister for Workforce and Population Strategy) (14:29): I am delighted to answer this question, in particular for the member for Giles, who is, of course, in many important ways the member for Whyalla and has always raised consistently his concerns and his interests about the prosperity of that town and that region.

Last week I was in Whyalla, where I saw the member, of course, and spent some time with businesses that have, leading up to the point of administration, been in serious trouble—companies that were owed significant amounts of money by GFG. Some owners put their life savings into their business in order to keep it ticking over, in order to keep employing people, but were going to come to the end of the road, not only because they were owed so much money but also because they weren't being employed in the way that they should have been on the maintenance work and other services that the steelworks required.

What a transformation to be there last week, to be able to have the privilege to see with my own eyes what is now happening under a sensible and well-funded administration. First of all, to be greeted by the news that the administrators are intending to employ around a further 100 people—63 immediately and another 30 in the works—people who are needed to make that steelworks function, who should have always been there, who are now able to be employed and added back into that workforce. But, of course, in doing that work they are also using the contractors and the suppliers who had been waiting and waiting to hear any good news about the steelworks.

What we have been able to do, through the approach taken by the Premier, the Treasurer and, of course, the Minister for Energy and Mining, is to provide funding for those contractors to pay out what they were owed. Most often when a business goes into administration, the creditors will get a few cents in the dollar, but not this time, not for South Australian creditors. For those businesses they are getting their funds paid, up to $5 million, which is effectively all of the money that's owed.

There I was at Avid, standing not only with the manager of Avid but also with the manager of Fabcoat. Both companies have had their debts paid. Both men explained that they would be laying workers off right now had that not happened. What a transformation; what energy for them.

I was also up there because we have established the Upper Spencer Gulf Jobs and Skills Hub and that's for the workers who haven't re-entered the workforce, who have fallen out either directly from the steelworks or through the mines or through the various contractors and creditors who have struggled following the decline in the funding of the steelworks over recent times. That hub is there to pick up people and help them see a bright future.

The day I was there we announced $2 million for the kinds of organisations that are skilled at working with people in those circumstances, to bid for that work, to be able to sit down with people and understand what skills they already have, what licences and certificates they might require, how to approach job hunting and how to be supported to find that work.

It was an exhausting day, inevitably, but it was a day that made me proud that we live in South Australia with a government that actually cares, that recognises the importance of the steelworks, but, even more than that, the people who work with and for it.