Question:
The steel mill will be part of Austeel's $5 billion integrated iron and
steel project, in which iron ore will be processed from a new mine in
Western Australia's Pilbara and then turned into steel products in NSW.
At least 2,500 new permanent jobs will created as a result of the steel
mill's construction, in addition to an estimated 20,000 new spin-off
jobs created by the new entrant to Australia's steel export industry.
Answer:
My concern with projects like this is the amount of taxpayer money
involved. To secure the project, massive amounts of public money were
required, similar to the tax breaks and subsidies given to
foreign-owned car makers in Adelaide and Melbourne. I don't have a
problem with governments contributing for jobs to be secured, but
there is more than a little bit of hypocrisy involved. We are being
told constantly that government shouldn't be involved, we should leave
it to the market. And now, we are finding that projects which create
huge amounts of jobs are not possible unless the government
contributes massive amounts of taxpayers money. We have seen it in
Brisbane with Virgin Airlines, in Melbourne and Adelaide with car
plants, and now in Newcastle with AusSteel.
The real question is - why the lies? Why are we constantly told that
the government shouldn't be involved in competition, that the market
should decide, when in reality it is becoming more common that if the
government is not involved, the jobs go elsewhere? So this is a
possible 20000 jobs, a great result for newcastle and NSW, but how
much are the rest of the resident of NSW (outside Newcastle) funding
this with subsidies? How many other state governments did AusSteel go
to before selecting NSW and Newcastle? Why do we have an auction where
companies play governments off against each other? The jobs end up
costing every citizen a huge amount of money. And that effects other
infrastructure.
Labor in Western Australia also made a claimed like that about the
petrochemical plant they were building. But in the end no one got a job, not
one. al we got for our 1 thousand five hundred million dollars was a tin
shed no bigger the a garage, and im not joking. the money all went to
people like Alan Bond for advice on the tin shed, every cent.
