ADJOURNMENT
Senator LIDDLE (South Australia—Deputy Opposition Whip in the Senate) (20:42): Well, there was devastating news from my home state of South Australia this week: 500 Whyalla steelworkers will lose their jobs, and there are so many more contemplating what that also means for them. It's been a huge week for them. The timing could not be worse—in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis and when there are higher mortgages, falling house prices and business costs going through the roof everywhere across Australia.
Our first thoughts, though, must be with those impacted workers and their families who are processing this latest development. I encourage all of those impacted by what is happening to reach out for help early and not hesitate to do what you need to do to seek out crisis help for mental health or for financial help and advice. That's really critical.
We've got no less than four Labor cabinet ministers representing South Australia, and this is what workers and locals are left with—nothing. There are no real assurances; there's just a redundancy letter telling them their jobs are gone. You wonder how we got here.
Well, let me explain that. In February 2025, state and federal Labor announced a $2.4 billion package. Six months later, taxpayers have a right to know what happened.
Where's it gone? The blast furnace that turns base material into metal is Australia's only sovereign structural steelmaking capability. From Canberra, Minister Bowen peddled the fantasy that Australia will be 'leading the global green hydrogen revolution'.
But, these days, he says he 'never quite bought all the hype on green hydrogen'. Make no mistake; it is Labor's business, energy and economic policies that are contributing to industry and businesses doing it really tough. Only Labor could come up with a business plan like this: tax a business to death, complicate just about everything, add a dash of uncertainty too and then use taxpayer funding to bail that same business out only to then let it fail.
Labor's mismanagement is reaching new heights. In 2016, steelworks owner Arrium was placed into administration, with KordaMentha appointed as administrators. In 2017, just a year later, KordaMentha named a Korean consortium backed by POSCO as the preferred bidder.
But the state Labor government intervened at the last minute to collapse the POSCO deal. We still haven't had a proper explanation. Under the new GFG Alliance owners, the Whyalla steelworks suffered years of underinvestment, financial problems and mounting debt.
There is no way Labor provided a solution then, and it's not providing one now. In February 2025, Whyalla steelworks went into administration under GFG. Throughout this decline, the government's flagship climate safeguard mechanism complicated operations, delivering more red and green tape, pushing operations to unviable choices, requiring enormous investment in new technology to reduce emissions and requiring the purchase of emissions credits at substantial cost.
It's not just the story of Whyalla; it's the story right across Australia. Simultaneously with this collapse, the state Labor government committed $593 million to the Hydrogen Jobs Plan hoax in 2022, which was sold as the centrepiece of South Australia's green industrial revolution. This was at a time when private investment in large-scale green hydrogen was being abandoned and delayed worldwide, yet both levels of Labor government were still selling its story until the very last day.
In fact, let me tell you about that very same last day: Whyalla steelworks went into administration on the same day that the government quietly shelved the $600 million hydrogen plant. It's no wonder South Australia is in real trouble. The state Labor government has repeatedly asked South Australians to trust the plan, but South Australians can now see the result of that trust.
The devastating impact on jobs doesn't end with a redundancy, and it isn't contained to the steelworks gate. It flows through local shops, cafes, schools, hospitals, contractors and small businesses. While Labor remains blinded by ideology, it won't do what is needed for Whyalla or for the struggling local industries.
Axe net zero and end the devastation of industry and business, and axe those terrible new taxes—the whole lot! Don't just tinker with them. That's not enough.
It's also not enough to prioritise car races and golf courses when the health system is failing, the ambulances keep ramping, the aged-care lines are getting longer and there are record levels of business insolvency. There needs to be more than a tinker. It needs an axe to current policies, and it needs people in charge who understand what it takes to build businesses' prosperity, not ones who are insistent on bankrupting and breaking them.
I now turn to something else from earlier this week. Senator Hanson's falsehoods about Indigenous Australians not only are just ignorant but ignore history. South Australia is perfectly positioned to call it out.
The podcast comments are not new, where Senator Hanson asks, 'What the hell have they done in this country?' Well, Senator Hanson, let me tell you, based on South Australia. Think of the late governor Sir Doug Nicholls KCVO OBE, community leader Gladys Elphick MBE, the artistic duo Ruby Hunter and Archie Roach AC AM and Aboriginal tracker Jimmy James OAM. In more recent times, there have been notable contributions from sports stars: former Australian of the Year Adam Goodes, Andrew McLeod, Shaun Burgoyne and national household names—Freeman, Barty, Thurston and Goolagong Cawley.
Look no further than one of the Australia's most renowned inventors, immortalised on our Australian $50 note: Ngarrindjeri inventor the late David Unaipon, who made provisional patents for no less than 19 separate inventions. From his home in the mighty Coorong, Unaipon made game-changing contributions from the action of shearer's clippers to centrifugal motors, mechanical propulsion and other technologies.
Senator Hanson's comments are especially problematic because they are just plain wrong. Referencing Indigenous Australians as 'primitive' because 'they'd never invented the wheel' is particularly ironic, given one such patent of David Unaipon's was for a multiradial wheel. It seems that Senator Hanson's appalling, arbitrary benchmark for Indigenous contribution does not even pass her own test.
Across 65,000 years of survival, what continues is the management of fire risk and ecology through traditional burning practices and bush survival skills shared with our diggers, who are renowned as some of the best in the world. Hanson degradingly belittles rock art as having no value. Yet it is cultural art and the handing down of knowledge over thousands of generations that is the reason the work of renowned late artists Emily Kngwarreye and Clifford Possum today sells for many millions and millions of dollars.
The Indigenous arts industry represents more than $250 million in sales in any year. When Unaipon was alive, he talked of respect for individuals despite their differences and irrespective of nationality, language and religion. This wisdom is relevant to today because our focus should be on building our nation by focusing on what unites us not looking and behaving in ways that seek to divide.
The simple truth is that Senator Hanson overreacted. That is why what could have and should have been a respectful and important discussion of curriculum content based on evidence not ideology descended into ignorant tirade. The coalition seek to protect our way of life because we value the historic strengths of Australian culture and institutions.
Where there is ignorance, there must also be education—education of the integral contribution to our country that Indigenous Australians have made across our rich history. The school curriculum must reflect truth and that includes on Indigenous Australians, multicultural communities and their contribution to the building of country and community since 1788, while respecting the scientifically proven 65,000 year history that came before that.
Ultimately, the load on teachers must be more on reading, writing and maths. Issues of culture and language, I believe, are the responsibility of parents, families and the relevant community not, as we increasingly see, the job of those in taxpayer funded organisations. Instead of making a reasonable informed argument, Senator Hanson went low to unfair, unnecessary and unacceptable insult.
It was offensive to condemn an entire race and culture, and it ignores the truth entirely. Let's hope we don't see it again. We don't need people who seek to divide us, we need people who seek to unite us, and we need people that leave no-one behind, because they're focused on them in their entirety.