Paul Barry

He keeps on paying the workers for a bit and then eventually it all falls apart and it all goes bust.

Absolutely.

I mean, there is a question about can Australia produce steel competitively?

Koreans, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, they invest much more money, have invested much more money.

They produce on a much larger scale.

We probably can't compete with them.

But do you let your steelworks go bust and take a town down with it with 22,000 people?

What do you do with them in terms of relocating them or putting them on the dole or finding jobs for them?

So

It may be that you can't make steel as cheaply as some of these competitors, but there's a cost in giving it up as well.

And unless you can find other jobs to go into Wyala, you're looking at a town that is doomed.

So I think there are very strong arguments for trying to save the steelworks.

And it's not in terms of patching up an old one.

It is in terms of building a new one that is powered by renewable energy.

Look, I'm no expert, but the experts tell me that it is because that's the way that steel around the world is moving.

All these steel companies are being forced basically to cut their emissions.

And so you've got governments around the world which are stepping in in Britain or in Europe to fund that transition to green steel.

They say that Wyala has a lot of natural advantages.

It's got iron ore called magnetite, which is very, very high ferrous content in absolute abundance in the hills nearby.

So that's a very important thing.