VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
The working-class community of Whyalla, led by over 1,000 steel workers have won a significant short-term victory. For months steel works workers and workers employed by contractors dependent on the steel works for their very existence, endured reductions in working hours, layoffs, weeks of work without being paid any wages in an economic climate of ever-increasing costs of living.
The steel workers and their Whyalla community affected allies repeatedly demanded action by the SA Government and GFG Alliance CEO, Sanjeev Gupta. Many promises were made by Gupta about the GFG Alliance commitment to the workers and to the SA Government that payment of lost wages, payment to GFG Alliance's many contractor feeder companies was just around the corner. However, the " corner" remained over the horizon!
The SA Premier Malinauskas read the mood of the town and the emptiness of Gupta's promises well. As well as the possible situation of GFG Alliance going belly-up and the steelworks grinding to a halt, he needed a fully functioning Whyalla Steelworks to be the main customer of his pre-election promise in 2022 to build a liquid hydrogen fuel plant at Whyalla.
By January 2025, the Labor Prime Minister Albanese could see disaster ahead if Australia's only producer of high-grade steel essential for the construction industry and rail transport stopped producing steel. It would cost him the loss of Seats in the federal election that he would call to be held one Saturday before mid-May 2025.
In mid-February Premier Malinauskas pushes through SA Parliament an amendment to the 1958 Whyalla Steelworks Act to enable the GFG Alliance Whyalla Steelworks arm of its global economic "empire" to be put into administration.
The next day, Thursday 19 February, Premier Malinauskas and Prime Minister Albanese visited Whyalla and announced the much broadcast $2.4 billion "rescue package" to pay lost wages and pay contractors owed money by GFG Alliance, to keep the steelworks operating while it is under administration and to partly fund a modernization of the steelworks with a hoped-for new owner of the steelworks.
This announcement received a big sigh of temporary relief from workers and the whole Whyalla community.
The appointed administrator Korda Mentha was also the administrator in 2017 which led to the previous owner of the steelworks, Arrium, being taken over by GFG Alliance. Korda Mentha is reported by the Adelaide Advertiser newspaper on Friday 20 February 2025 to charge $795 per hour per senior partner for administering the steelworks and sorting through GFG Alliance finances. Korda Mentha will also be making a recommendation to the SA and federal governments on which company should take over and own the steel works
The underlying cause of the current situation has been the large corporate owners of the steelworks, British-based GFG Alliance and those before it - Arrium, One Steel and its parent BHP have always put profits before the interests of the workers, Whyalla community and the Australian steel industry as a whole.
These large corporations have not only made profits from the steelworks itself, but also from the nearby Middleback Ranges where they owned and mined some of the highest grade iron ore in the world. The iron ore from Iron Knob and Iron Monarch in these Ranges has purity of ore of over 60%. In the 1920s and 1930s before the steelworks at Whyalla was constructed, the high grade ore was shipped to Newcastle and Port Kembla steelworks. In 1939, the UK declared the ore to be the highest grade deposit of iron ore known in the world.
In the turmoil of the last few days, it was reported in mainstream media that GFG Alliance was propping up its European steelwork interests from profits made from the iron ore mines and the steel produced in the Whyalla steelworks
NATIONALISE THE STEEL INDUSTRY
Albanese in his announcement on Thursday 19 February rightly made the comment that the steel industry is part of Australia's national sovereignty. Malinauskas made the same point.
If they really believe this, rather than just sounding good before a federal election, they should take the first step towards a nationalised steel industry by placing the steelworks and iron ore mines at Whyalla into public hands.
Workers in Australia, led by the courageous people of Whyalla have the ability to operate the steelworks and the iron ore mines for the benefit of their community and the needs of Australian construction and expanding rail network construction.
Albanese and Malinauskas may say the steelworks need the "expertise" of a foreign owned multinational corporation or a nominally Australian owned company like Bluescope who operate Port Kembla steelworks.
Or they may say Australia has not got the money to modernise our own steelworks.
Where then did the Albanese Government find the money to send to the USA to part-finance the building of more nuclear-powered submarines? Where do they miraculously find $368 billion to fund nuclear-powered submarines in coming decades?
DEMAND NATIONALISATION OF THE AUSTRALIAN STEEL INDUSTRY NOW!