It’s time for action, rather than talk, from the owner of Whyalla’s Steelworks, premier Peter Malinauskas has declared. The state’s cabinet ministers have travelled to the Upper Spencer Gulf town, meeting with locals, worker and unions amid growing concerns about the plant’s future. Meanwhile, the opposition has taken aim at the government’s plans to build a hydrogen plane near the steelworks.
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00:00After months of rising tensions over the fate of wireless steelworks, workers and union
00:07leaders met with government ministers today to detail their concerns.
00:12Obviously everyone's been quite stressed and felt like they're not heard, so today
00:16it's pretty good that the workers are able to be heard and for them to actually sit and
00:21listen to us.
00:22The Cabinet was also given an update on the steelworks by its owner, GFG Alliance Chairman
00:27Sanjeev Gupta, who in a statement reaffirmed his company's long-term commitment to transitioning
00:33to producing green steel, a more than $1 billion commitment at a time his global empire is
00:39facing increasing financial pressure and local contractors have at times struggled to get
00:45paid.
00:46We want GFG to succeed.
00:48We want GFG to realise the transformation of the steelworks as they have committed to,
00:54but it's really the time for action.
00:56The government is planning to build a hydrogen power plant at Wayala that will, in part,
01:00assist GFG in transitioning to making green steel.
01:04But the opposition says a state government tender to supply natural gas to the site to
01:08support its operations in the first two years undermines the project's green credentials.
01:14There will be 50, 100 B-double trucks trucking in gas every day to power this hydrogen gas
01:23power station.
01:24In a statement, Tom Coutts and Toner says the opposition's figures are invented and
01:29on most days there will be no trucks required whatsoever.
01:32And in Wayala, the Energy Minister remained bullish on the government's ambitions for
01:36the Upper Spencer Gulf.
01:38What you're seeing created here is a province for green iron and that green iron is very,
01:42very attractive to a lot of international companies.
01:46The future, though, depends on keeping an ageing coal-fired blast furnace going and
01:50right now it's offline and has been for around two months.