KordaMentha

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (14:48): My question is to the Premier. Will the government be providing additional funding to the administrators of OneSteel before the state budget and, if so, how much and when? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr PATTERSON: The administrators KordaMentha have advised that they may run out of money this month.

The Hon. P.B. MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Premier) (14:48): The shadow minister has made inquiries of this nature in this forum, amongst others presumably, and nothing has changed since the shadow minister last did that. It appears as though the shadow minister is looking for evidence that somehow the government's actions in respect of the Whyalla Steelworks aren't planned for, aren't accounted for or are ill thought through. Of course, what we have in government is a very considered and comprehensive strategy. We have been very transparent about the fact that we anticipate the administration process to go somewhere in the order of 18 months. We would love it to go sooner. It's hard to know exactly how long it will go for and, of course, we cannot even guarantee what the outcome is at the end.

What we are certain of is that the plan and the strategy that we have developed, in conjunction with our partners in the federal Albanese government, is the one that gives steelmaking in this country the best chance of success. Just to step through that again: what we have done is we have funded for the first tranche of administration, which we have always anticipated, and it increasingly looks like it will be true that the first six months will be more expensive than the second by virtue of the fact that there was so much unexecuted or unfulfilled basic maintenance and investment in the plant.

The person in this chamber who probably knows about this most is the member for Giles, who is there on the ground talking to steelworkers themselves, himself a former steelworker, just as the member for Stuart, the man who saved Pirie, knows how the smelter works. But what the member for Giles would be able to tell you is that the place was being run into the ground. Money wasn't being spent on basic care and maintenance, let alone on investment that is necessary to keep the place safe. What the administrator has been able to do, as a result of the investments that have been delivered through the administration process, fifty-fifty funding between us and the commonwealth, is to bring a lot of that back up in train.

We anticipate that the second six months will be less expensive than the first. We anticipate that the run rate, so to speak, of using the funds that were provided through the administration process will slow down as the process continues. Yes, there will be a second tranche of funding that we will allocate to this exercise to fund the administration. We have made that very, very clear. Of course, it is true that if we do not do that, the funding will run out because money does not grow on trees, as the shadow minister himself well knows.

So there was always going to be a second tranche of funding, and then there may well be a third, depending on the timeline we see around the administration process. That will be negotiated with the commonwealth as our fifty-fifty funding partner. We look forward to that engagement post the outcome on the weekend. I am pleased to say that the Albanese government has demonstrated bona fides when it comes to making sure that we have sovereign steelmaking this country. As best as I understand it, there is bipartisan support for the funding of the administration process, which I am grateful for.

But we are very, very keen to make sure that what happens in the long term isn't just a process of administration, but a process to get it out of administration. To that end, the Albanese government is on the same page as this government that the future for steelmaking in Whyalla is iron making, done in a form that is increasingly decarbonized. We are very grateful for the federal government's partnership in that regard.