Gillard Admits - Carbon Tax to end Australian Steel Industry

17-March-2011

If Julia Gillard thinks that sending steelworks offshore and retraining some steel workers to maintain solar plants is going to improve either the environment or jobs in Australia, she continues to be deluded.

At the end of the last sitting period in the Parliament in response to a question regarding the impending struggles of Australian manufacturers under the looming carbon tax, Ms Gillard said: “they are smart, they are agile, they will keep up, they will innovate and they will prosper for the future.”

However last night in her speech in Adelaide, Ms Gillard admitted that Australia’s steel manufacturing industry would disappear under her tax and workers would need to be retrained. She said: “Welders and steelworkers will build and maintain large scale solar power plants. Plumbers and electricians will be reskilled to install solar hot water systems and solar panels.”

Where does Ms Gillard think the steel to build solar power plants will come from?

Last year Australia produced 7.3 million tonnes of steel, compared to China’s 627 million tonnes. The 72,000 Australian jobs in the steel industry* should not be exported to China, Indonesia and Brazil. Not only is Australia more efficient in its energy use in making steel, however about 80% of the carbon created at a steel plant is as a result of the chemical process of making steel from iron ore. The steel creation process involves adding oxygen to Iron ore, a by-product of which is CO2 production.  The creation of carbon emissions is unavoidable in the creation of steel, which itself is absolutely essential for modern living.

“Either Ms Gillard does not understand how steel is made or she doesn’t care about the fallout from her political fix of a carbon tax,” she concluded.

*(Australian Steel Institute)