Paul Barry

He has to lay people off.

They go back to Adelaide.

He won't be able to get them back.

He's now laid more people off.

What happens to him if the steelworks goes down?

It's not a good outlook.

In the middle of the crisis last year, when all his creditors in Wyala are sort of jumping up and down and not being paid,

Gupta is in Sydney buying a $12.5 million apartment on the waterfront from broadcaster John Laws.

He's at the same time, just up the road from there, he's got a $34 million house that he's got plans to renovate at a cost of at least $10 million.

And so here's a guy who's bought up a whole bunch of ailing steelworks.

promising in all of these places that he's going to transform them.

And in each of these places, the story is the same.

Basically, the steelworks is now on the brink of bankruptcy.

Some of them actually have gone bankrupt.

He's being chased by people who are trying to wind up all these companies.

So it's an absolute hot mess.

And as the crisis is hitting all these poor people who work at the plant or who are contractors to the plant or who have supplied stuff to the plant who aren't getting paid, he is out there spending like a drunken sailor.

So Wyala is in a way one of the better ones.

It's not quite so far down the tube as the ones in Europe are.

But what's happened in Europe gives you a very strong clue of what's going to happen here, which is that promises aren't kept.