House of Assembly Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1) 55 1 Parliament of South Australia House of Assembly published Grievance Debate Whyalla Airport Whyalla Airport Mr HUGHES House of Assembly Giles Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:32): I rise to speak about a couple of issues: the upgrade of the Whyalla Airport and hopefully, time permitting, the steelworks. On Tuesday there was a visit to Whyalla. I was very grateful for that because it got me out of chairing estimates for a whole day, so I got to move around and I got to see people other than the people in this chamber. The reason for the visit to Whyalla—the Premier went, the Minister for Energy and Mining attended, and Tim Ayres, the federal industry minister, also attended—was to do the official opening of the runway in Whyalla after what was a very significant $30 million-plus investment in the runway in order to make the runway capable of landing Q400s, a bigger plane. They are 75-seaters, as opposed to the 50-seaters that were and are landing there at the moment. The South Australian government contributed $13.8 million to the project, the federal government $16.2 million, and the council $2.4 million, so it was a very big project and a very good partnership between the three levels of government. This was an essential upgrade. If this upgrade had not happened, there would be no commercial airline in all probability servicing Whyalla. That would have had real implications, not just for the community of Whyalla but also for Port Augusta and for the surrounding smaller communities. A whole range of businesses use the airport. Importantly, medical services, visiting specialists, allied health services and a range of other people who are not of a mind to live in your community need efficient air transport. Certainly, the capacity to be able to fly from Adelaide to Whyalla in half an hour is a real plus for those people. This was an essential upgrade, and the federal government and state government came to the party. The council owned the airport, and there was no way that the council could fund the upgrade that was needed. Indeed, there are some real issues with the airport. I think there is a maximum of about 70,000 passenger movements a year. That reduced to in the 40s around COVID and post COVID. It has now got up to just a bit over 50,000 passenger movements a year. The council finds itself, even with the current expenditure when it comes to the airport, in a very difficult position. In fact, the Essential Services Commission, when it looked at the Whyalla City Council, indicated that the airport itself and the operation of the airport was the thing that was potentially pushing the council into financial unsustainability. It is a lesson. It is a lesson about local government taking over major infrastructure. This happened many years ago, of course. The federal government offloaded regional airports around the country. Councils often picked them up, and councils often found themselves in a difficult position as a result, if the passenger numbers were not high enough. Even with high passenger numbers to cover recurrent costs, they were never going to be able to cover the capital upgrades necessary every now and again at airports. That partnership between the federal government and the state government in order to help out the council was very welcome indeed. The other thing that we did when we were in Whyalla on Tuesday was, of course, go to the steelworks and meet with a whole bunch of workers. My son was not on a shift, so I did not get to see him. I have not seen him for while. It was, once again, a very positive day. We had one of the contractors there, Avid Engineering, headed up by Tony Angel, telling an incredibly good story. That was one contractor that was looking at facing the wall, getting down to four employees, but is now employing in excess of 25 employees, getting work and, importantly, getting paid for the work. This is the story now across the board in Whyalla because of the unprecedented intervention. It is only a Labor federal government and only a Labor state government that would have put together the sovereign steel package and made that commitment to ensuring we have an integrated steelworks in Australia that continues to produce rail and structural steel.