Nyrstar

The Hon. G.G. BROCK (Stuart—Minister for Local Government, Minister for Regional Roads, Minister for Veterans Affairs) (14:41): My question is to the Minister for Energy. Can the minister update my community and the surrounding areas on the assistance that was recently announced for the future of the Nyrstar Port Pirie smelter and also the Hobart plant by the federal government and state government and also the Tasmanian government? With your leave and that of the house, sir, I will explain further.

Leave granted.

The Hon. G.G. BROCK: There has been some community uncertainty leading up to this announcement for the potential opportunity for Port Pirie to further produce precious metals for the world.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:42): Again, I want to thank the member for Stuart for his advocacy. It's fair to say that the people of Stuart, especially Pirie, have been through a tough couple of times, and each time it has been the same local MP who has stood up and fought for them. He has done a lot for his community and he loves that community; he is from that community, he is of that community. To see his advocacy and the passion he has for Port Pirie and its surrounds is impressive. I just want to pay tribute to the member for Stuart for that because he is a real regional hero.

The tragedy of what is occurring with the smelter at Port Pirie is not a case of a company that is mismanaging or not running its smelter properly. It is the fact that a foreign country is using its resources to deliberately attempt to bankrupt other smelters that produce similar types of multimetals. The truth is a lot of the rare metals, the critical metals—not critical minerals but critical metals—that we get out of lead smelting are very valuable and necessary. For example, the United States has a strategic reserve of antimony. They require to have a 12-month strategic reserve of antimony but that has now withered down to about a month's worth. They have no lead smelters. Smelting is the only way to attract and extract things like antimony and bismuth.

Antimony is very, very important. Antimony is one of those critical metals that countries like ours rely on in extreme circumstances and those extreme circumstances are quite frankly war, when we need to defend ourselves. We cannot allow the coalescence of this one critical metal to be in one country. We can't allow their economic policies to drive the production of those critical metals into their arms at the expense of the Western world having access to them freely in a market-based situation.

The truth is: Port Pirie would be profitable, and would be operating profitably and need no government assistance, had it not been for the actions of Chinese smelters. What they are doing is paying extraordinarily high prices for the raw materials and charging next to nothing for the processing costs. Those losses are being worn by state-owned enterprises and those state-owned enterprises are being underwritten by a foreign country. If we allow that pattern to continue, we will see all manufacturing of critical metals coalesce in one or two countries globally. We cannot allow that to occur.

Most recently, the head of Trafigura was in the United States and, in fact, had just come from the United States when he met with me, the Premier and the member for Stuart in Port Pirie. He said to us that when he was in the United States, as the Trafigura head, the question he was asked most often by everyone on the hill was, 'What's the cost of gasoline going to be around the midterms?', wanting to understand exactly what the cost of petrol would be in and around an election. The question he was getting constantly throughout, from national security meetings right through to congressional meetings and senate meetings, was, 'How do we get our hands on antimony?'

They knew exactly where Port Pirie was. They wanted to know exactly what the Australian government is doing to make sure that we can sustain that level of production in this country so that there is a market-based approach from a country that is part of the Five Eyes, a country that is part of a Western alliance, to make sure that they can get hold of these critical metals when they need to, and Port Pirie is the way to do it.