Office of Hydrogen Power

The Hon. V.A. TARZIA (Hartley—Leader of the Opposition) (14:19): My question is to the Premier. How many other employees were terminated from the Office of Hydrogen Power and what was the total cost of their payouts?

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens—Treasurer, Minister for Energy and Mining) (14:19): My understanding is no others were terminated. Either contracts ended and people left or almost everyone else was redeployed back to the public sector, which shows you the calibre of the people who were working on the Hydrogen Jobs Plan program. They were exceptional public servants who worked very, very hard for the state. They were bitterly disappointed that the project could not proceed, as was the government, but Whyalla is too important to fail—far too important to fail.

When you are looking at Whyalla and thinking about the interventions the government has made into Whyalla, think of the counterfactual. Let's say we pressed ahead and let Sanjeev Gupta run that blast furnace into the ground, send it cold and have hundreds if not thousands of jobs in Whyalla on the scrap heap, where would Whyalla be today? And what would the questions be from members opposite? What would the questions of members opposite be today? They would be: why proceed with a Hydrogen Jobs Plan and let Whyalla fail?

But because we did the orthodox thing, we did the right thing, we did the moral thing, we moved the money appropriately to where it should be to protect sovereign steelmaking, because the idea of a Hydrogen Jobs Plan in Whyalla was always about sovereign steelmaking and it was always about decarbonising steel.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: And members opposite yelling and interjecting in an incoherent way again describes the policy paralysis by members opposite. What is their policy on Whyalla? What is their policy on sovereign steelmaking? We have nothing from them. I have to say, when we made the decision to defer this project the public servants who were working on it were bitterly disappointed, and they were exceptional public servants who did exceptional work.

I won't have their name tarnished by members opposite, because they are public servants who served the previous government as well and served them loyally, including the former chief executive, Sam Crafter, who members opposite have been crossing the street to try to disparage and make accusations about him that are completely unfair and unfounded. Let me give you an example of the high regard in which this young man was held by members opposite.

When the change of government occurred in 2018, I was convinced that they were going to get rid of Sam because of his close cooperation with the government, but of course they realised that he was a good public servant.

Members interjecting:

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Yes, I will keep going. And still what did they do? They kept him on. They kept him on because he worked closely with the government and he worked closely with the new government. He was a loyal public servant. He served the government of the day regardless of his political persuasion. That is what we want from our public servants. We want fearless advice regardless of political prejudice, and that is what happened. They got good service out of Sam Crafter and they kept him on. They did not ask him to leave. In fact, they asked him to stay.

But don't believe me, ask the former Deputy Premier Dan van Holst Pellekaan what he says about Sam Crafter and the devotion he had to the public sector and to the Marshall government's aspirations in the energy sector.

The Hon. P.B. Malinauskas: Including on hydrogen.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: Including on hydrogen. But to turn around and now disparage him is dishonest and unbecoming, and it says a lot about members opposite and how they treat employees, how they treat public servants and how they treat people who can't fight back.