QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE: TAKE NOTE OF ANSWERS
Senator LAMBIE (Tasmania) (15:45): I move: That the Senate take note of the answer given by the Minister for Industry and Innovation (Senator Ayres) to a question without notice I asked today relating to the manufacturing industry. In February last year, I started asking this government what they were doing about Whyalla Steelworks and the Liberty Bell Bay manganese smelter.
Steel and manganese are critical for Australian sovereign capability. In fact, you can't make hardened steel for things like hulls or rail tracks without manganese. Unfortunately, both critical facilities were bought by Sanjeev Gupta, and Gupta's MO was very simple: buy a struggling industrial facility—a miner, a smelter or a steelworks—promise the world to the locals, hope the commodity prices will stay high and then move on to the next deal using the collateral of other businesses to buy the next one.
Why this Foreign Investment Review Board signed off on Gupta buying these important facilities is beyond me. Tasmanians are always nervous when we hear that the FIRB has approved something. Their track record is atrocious.
By the way, according to Paul Barry's book The Big Steal, Gupta wanted to buy the Portland smelter in Victoria. Apparently Dan Andrews did one thing, as keen as he was. He got his Treasury officials to look at Gupta, and they said, 'No way, Jose.' What do the Treasury officials in Victoria have that the FIRB doesn't up here?
When I started raising this issue, I got the same response the minister gave me today: 'We're watching it closely.' But let's face it: the alarm bells were ringing long before the government acted. The government has intervened in Whyalla, and I am glad about that, but Liberty Bell Bay has gone into administration, taking 200 jobs and the families that rely on those jobs with it.
In March, Ernst and Young was appointed as an administrator and to find a buyer. Six months later, we hear it's being liquidated because there are no viable buyers. The minister told us today that Liberty Bell Bay was efficient and profitable until Gupta ran it into the ground.
The government promised a future made in Australia, but on their watch we've not only lost Whyalla steelworks but also now Liberty Bell Bay. There's a fundamental difference between watching something heading off a cliff and actually stopping it from going over the cliff in the first place. Question agreed to.