Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you for your attendance here, Minister. As you well know, I represent the seat of Grey in our home state of South Australia, and we watch the expansion of the shipbuilding industry in Adelaide with great interest. You would be well aware that one of my communities, in particular Whyalla, has been to the edge and back in the last couple of years, it must be said. We are very pleased in Whyalla at the moment that we have a new owner of the steelworks, a new owner of the mines, a new owner of what was formerly Arrium Australia-wide, and Mr Sanjeev Gupta is showing an intent to invest in a number of products and projects in Australia. We're very keen to keep working with Mr Gupta on his expansion plans for the Whyalla steelworks. In fact, tomorrow morning I will be in Whyalla meeting with his people again.

One of the most important things for keeping the steel industry in Whyalla working in a profitable mode is to have the blast furnace full. Like many other pieces of fixed infrastructure, blast furnaces don't cost much less to run when they're running at half speed than they do when they're running at full speed. Having that blast furnace full is a very important factor in making Liberty OneSteel operations in Whyalla profitable. That is why I have been very pleased with a number of things the government has done. One of them was bringing forward the Adelaide-Tarcoola re-railing by approximately five years—something that would have to be done, something that will increase the productive capacity of that railway line, lifting axle loads by two tonnes, so eight tonnes a truck. This is a good investment: 80,000 tonnes of rail out of Whyalla. A further 14,000 tonnes has been ordered for the Inland Rail, and this is just the very first small order for that very large build, which will, once again, be coming Whyalla's way. This is the important factor about building up the order books, keeping the blast furnace full, making a profit on the ground. The government has worked hard, and certainly I've worked hard, to get a commitment from Adani, so when their project goes ahead in Queensland it will be using Whyalla steel, produced by people in my electorate, with iron ore coming out of the Middleback Range being made into steel in the Whyalla blast furnace.

These are good things, but in Whyalla and in the rest of the electorate we are very interested in what the prospects are for us to provide steel into the new shipbuilding program in South Australia. I understand there will be a large building of infrastructure there. Minister, my question to you is: could you give us a rundown, firstly, on how that shipbuilding program is going and, secondly, on how we are likely to be able to benefit from that by producing steel?

My second question is around the Naval Shipbuilding College, a $62 million investment. I, for one, was very pleased to hear that that would be going ahead. We will be looking for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people to work on this new project in South Australia. At the time the minister announced it there was a reference to regional pathways—how people right across Australia, including right across Grey, right across the Upper Spencer Gulf, in places like Whyalla, but also in Ceduna, Port Lincoln and Port Pirie, might be able to access that naval shipbuilding college and get the skills to work in this industry, which will be operating in South Australia and in Australia, to benefit for the very long term future.

So I'd be very pleased if you could inform us, firstly, how the establishment of the college is going; and, secondly, how establishing those regional pathways is going, bearing in mind that, as I'm sure you're aware, we've just had a $20 million Regional Jobs and Investment Package announced for the Upper Spencer Gulf, and one of the projects that gained funding of $1 million was the community owned tertiary education campus, or COTEC, that we have in Geraldton. We are in the embryonic stages of putting that project together, and we are taking a particular interest in how we might interact with the Naval Shipbuilding College.

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