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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-10-27 Daily Xml
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Grievance Debate

Giles Electorate

Mr HUGHES (Giles) (15:43): I rise today to talk about Liberty Primary Metals Australia and its debt restructure, or at least partly talk about that. Earlier in October, it was announced that it was a relatively straightforward debt restructure for Liberty Primary Metals Australia. That was good news for the community of Whyalla because under the umbrella of Liberty Primary Metals sit the Whyalla Steelworks and also the Tahmoor metallurgical coalmine in the Eastern States, in New South Wales.

To see the debt restructured was seen by my community, and seen rightly, as a positive. Some people were gushing about this. I was not one of the people gushing about this. Given that it was a step in the right direction, we have yet to see a whole range of other steps that need to take place to ultimately sustain the future of steelmaking in our state. Irrespective of ownership, it has been my consistent message in my community that we have the potential to make steel in Whyalla for generations to come.

We are more than aware in my community that in the Middleback Ranges there is a vast resource when it comes to magnetite, which is the raw material for steelmaking in Whyalla. Even though it is not a JORC reserve, we know that there is at least 600 million tonnes of magnetite in the Middleback Ranges—potentially up to a billion tonnes on our doorstep—with infrastructure in place which enables us to make steel for generations to come and also to potentially have an export industry based on magnetite.

The community has a strong future, but we all know that there needs to be investment in modernising the steelworks, just as there was investment at Nyrstar in Port Pirie to modernise the plant. Something similar needs to happen in Whyalla. It makes sense to have not just the magnetite resource but the incredibly abundant energy resources in my part of the world.

It was good to see BHP just the other day sign up to an offtake arrangement with the wind and solar farm that is close to being completed at the Port Augusta Renewable Energy Park. I noticed that the minister waxed lyrical about this project the other day, now that he has stepped in. Once again, it is one of those projects that started under a Labor government; in fact, nearly all of the 60 per cent, that we are rightly proud of when it comes to renewables in this state, had its genesis during the term of a Labor government and our visionary approach to the use of renewables.

One of the things about Whyalla, though, is that we do make steel but we need to diversify our economy. The comparative advantages in Whyalla and near Whyalla, when it comes to hydrogen production, green hydrogen production and green ammonia production, stand right out. I notice at the moment that when the federal government talk about hydrogen in South Australia they refer to Eyre Peninsula. They should not dilute the effort. There is nothing at Cape Hardy. Cape Hardy has been spoken about for years now. Let's concentrate, let's get the critical mass, let's get the resource sharing happening in Whyalla.

The long-term future of the steelworks could be dependent upon producing commercial scale hydrogen. We have an export facility already there, at Whyalla, when it comes probably not the export of hydrogen in the near future but certainly taking the production of hydrogen one step further to the production of green ammonia that can be readily exported from Whyalla, at the moment, to Port Bonython.

There are two harbours at Whyalla: outer harbour and inner harbour. That is a prime location for the expansion of import and export in our state and region. Whyalla is the largest regional community based on mining and resource processing and it has enormous opportunities if the vision, the Playfordesque-type vision, is there.

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