PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS

Mr VENNING (Grey) (11:52): I find this motion baffling; I really do. I cannot sit here and listen to this Albanese Labor government congratulate itself on its Future Made in Australia agenda when the reality on the ground tells a very different story. The irony of this motion is that Mr Holzberger, who grew up in Broken Hill and should understand this, is self-congratulating his government for a future made in Australia while at the very same time there is a live press conference in Whyalla announcing hundreds of redundancies in the steelworks.

The Whyalla blast furnace has officially been turned off for good today. I want to take everyone back through the last 10 years of the Whyalla steelworks, and I want everyone from Labor and the Greens to listen. Eventually, reality catches up with ideology.

In 2016, Arrium, the owner of the steelworks, was placed into administration. KordaMentha were appointed administrators. A sale process followed, and in June 2017 KordaMentha announced a preferred bidder—a Korean consortium backed by POSCO.

At the eleventh hour, the state Labor government and then treasurer Tom Koutsantonis intervened. The deal with POSCO fell over, and GFG Alliance, led by Sanjeev Gupta, ultimately acquired the steelworks. Given where we are today, I think it's entirely reasonable to ask: what would Whyalla look like if POSCO had completed that transaction?

GFG Alliance, led by Sanjeev Gupta, buy the steelworks, and we all know what happens next. Years of underinvestment, alleged corruption, financial problems and mounting debt follow. Eventually, in February 2025, the state Labor government pushed special legislation that put the steelworks into administration.

Nobody should defend GFG's record. While the steelworks was struggling, the South Australian Labor government was pursuing another vision: hydrogen. In 2022, the Labor government committed $593 million to its Hydrogen Jobs Plan, but there was a problem: the economics didn't stack up, and they never did.

Private investments in large-scale green hydrogen projects were being abandoned around the world, but not by the South Australian Labor government who were left carrying the baby. Then came the great cover up. In February 2025, the government announced it was putting GFG steelworks into administration and, at the very same time, the government quietly shelved its $600 million hydrogen plan.

This is all smoke and mirrors. The Premier's explanation was essentially this question: why build a hydrogen plant if there is nobody to buy the hydrogen? Perhaps it should have been asked before hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money was committed.

For years, the government sold a vision of green hydrogen, green steel—a world-leading industrial transformation. But when, the economics caught up, the project was shelved. That is the problem I have with the approach to Whyalla.

There is too much focus on crafting the narrative and not enough focus on fixing the fundamentals. Eventually reality catches up with ideology. The Commonwealth and state governments have now committed billions more to support the steelworks, but government support alone cannot make an uncompetitive business competitive.

What if last year we had spent $593 million not on the Hydrogen Jobs Plan—which didn't deliver one electron, by the way—but on the fundamentals? What if, instead of betting so heavily on a hydrogen future that the private sector wasn't prepared to finance, we'd invested in reliable energy infrastructure? What if we'd put downward pressure on the cost of gas and electricity?

Where would Whyalla be today? We will never know, but we do know South Australia has the highest industrial energy cost in the developed world, and energy is one of the biggest costs facing the steelworks. My objective is straightforward.

I want Whyalla to make steel for the next 50 years. I want good, well-paid jobs in Whyalla. I want a sovereign steel-making capability in South Australia.

I want taxpayer money used to build a sustainable business not continually prop up an unsustainable one. The lesson for the next 10 years is clear: stop chasing the next announcement, stop trying to win the next headline and get the fundamentals right: reliable energy, competitive energy, investment, productivity and a commercially viable steelworks. Eventually reality catches up with ideology, and the people of Whyalla deserve a government that deals with reality.