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

South Australia is the smallest state on the mainland by population. South Australians are sick of that becoming, in relative terms, worse. We are losing population in comparison with the rest of Australia. It is a great place to live. There are many good things about South Australia. The thing that is really suffering is our economy. Unfortunately, like here in Canberra, it is due largely to local mismanagement by the government—the South Australian Labor government. The three biggest projects they have invested in in recent times are a $2 billion desalination plant, which we now find we do not need, a $2.5 billion hospital, which will cost the South Australian taxpayers $1 million a day for the next 20 years to service the contract, and $375 million on the Adelaide Oval. All of the projects have reasons and some good points about them but, unfortunately, none of them produce any real new income for the state.

The big thing that was supposed to rescue South Australia was the expansion at Roxby Downs. When that fell over the government had no plan B. Unfortunately, it was sunk by rising costs, carbon taxes and low uranium prices in particular in the wake of Fukushima. It is not likely to come back on stream in the near term.

We have had a few wins. There has been the establishment of a few mining projects—Iluka's Jacinth-Ambrosia project out near Ceduna, Prominent Hill and Southern Iron—but many more are stalled and stopped. What we need is governments, both federal and state, to take a proactive stance and get some of these projects on the slate. South Australia is blessed with great mineral resources. We are looking to get into the game and make some real strides.

Tonight I am speaking particularly about the possibility of expanding the iron ore industry in South Australia. Iron and steel making in Australia started in my electorate at Iron Knob. That deposit is still mined. In fact, only a few years ago we were mining around two million tonnes a year and now there are about seven million tonnes coming out of that deposit, with six million tonnes going in direct export. The operators—Arrium—have opened up a new prospect near Woomera. They will be exporting six million tonnes a year from that directly out of Whyalla. But there are other undeveloped fields on the Eyre Peninsula. There are billions of tonnes of magnetite in the Woomera region, where there are a number of other prospects, and the Braemar deposits stretch between roughly Peterborough and the New South Wales border. Unfortunately, they were all stopped because there is no major port in South Australia. The iron ore that now goes out through Whyalla goes out through a barging process.

At the moment there are six different port proposals on the books around the Spencer Gulf in South Australia: two down on the lower Eyre Peninsula; one near Whyalla; one at Port Pirie, which would be another barging process; one at Cowell, which would be another barging process; and a proposal for a slurry pipeline to deliver slurry onto a vessel offshore. We have a chicken and egg situation here. A lot of junior explorers need to find a path to export their ore for them to get their financial backers to get their mines off the ground. We have a number of people who would like to build ports, but they need the certainty that some of the iron ore producers are going to come on stream.

I think the proposal to build five or six ports is ridiculous and clearly will not happen. What we need is for the government to take a proactive stance and pick a winner. We need one superport in South Australia. The six proposals I have spoken about are separated by around 200 kilometres as the crow flies. No-one would think we are going to have that number of ports in that area. We need governments to get the players all in one room to make some concrete decisions and say, 'This is the path forward.' For my mind we build one superport and then we build the transport links so that iron ore can efficiently be delivered to the port.

I am relaxed about where this port might be, but I tend to think that one of the ports on the southern Eyre Peninsula will get up before the rest. It will be either the Centrex proposal or the proposal by Iron Road. Two hundred kilometres of rail would largely fix the problem and allow these new projects to get off the ground.