We have just wasted $2bn

on attempting to save a failing steelworks in this state - or we will have if the money is actually forthcoming.

I am wondering if the money to "save" the steelworks will actually come at all.  Yes, I understand that a town whose survival depends on the survival of the steelworks may believe that the enormous sum of money is a right and proper expense...but is it?

I remember the place. I remember it very clearly. It was the place that marked the point between what we considered civilisation and elsewhere. Going back to the city you could see it ahead of you for some distance. It was the place where they built ships. It was a thriving place. It seemed very busy to small kittens who lived in a place where there were just seventeen houses. It was where we always stopped for petrol. Mum saw to the buying of milkshakes and handed out the sandwiches she had made for us to eat on the journey. The milkshakes were a huge treat. We kittens looked forward to them. We looked forward to the journey becoming more interesting as places became much closer together. 

Going the other way was always much more depressing. We would know we were going onto an unsealed road and mile upon mile of scrubby saltbush, spindly gums, ti-tree, the occasional wattle or quandong tree.  The tiny "towns" were much further apart. You hoped not to get a flat tyre or windscreen broken by a stone flung up by the rare passing car. The cars themselves were an event. People hooted and waved.  "That was X...." we might say if we knew them. Yes, it was that remote and that sparsely populated.

And the steelworks town was there like a beacon. It was a "union" town of course. Perhaps that is why it failed in the end. It simply became too expensive. There were ever increasing demands for higher wages and "better conditions" that simply could not compete with the much cheaper labour in Asia.  The steel that was being made was good but there was also a downturn in the ship building industry. Higher wages had something to do with that too but that was not the only problem. The place is in the wrong place. It is almost at the top of the wrong side of the gulf. It is on the southern side of the smallest continent or the largest island on the planet. It is out of the way. Transporting steel from there is expensive...much more expensive than transporting it from Asian ports to Asian destinations. 

We need steel here of course. It is an essential part of any modern economy but the cost of producing it here has become too high. There was talk of "green hydrogen" to power it but that has apparently been put on hold. It is hardly surprising. Like the steelworks themselves it is not an economic proposition. The proposal was made more with votes from the climate change crowd in mind. 

When the news broke yesterday I heard one of my new neighbours saying to someone else, "Perhaps they could revive the place by getting them to build the components for nuclear power plants." Perhaps they could.