Wayne hanson whyalla

Followed categories will be added to My News. After a tour of OneSteel's steelworks at Whyalla this morning, the federal Opposition Leader said the operation was only "marginally profitable" and that a carbon tax would have a "dramatic" effect on the business and the town.

While Whyalla Deputy Mayor and local businessman Colin Carter has labelled the comments an "emotional statement", Mr Abbott said the threat to the town, and other steelmaking cities such as Newcastle, was very real. The carbon tax will threaten its long term viability and obviously it will damage the job prospects of the nearly people who are directly or indirectly dependant upon this plant.

While a carbon price for the new tax has not yet been set, Prime Minister Julia Gillard aims to pass legislation regarding the new tax by October this year, with a view to the regime being implemented from July 1, The new tax has come under heavy fire from industries such as mining and manufacturing and is even facing opposition from within Labor's ranks.

At a national level the AWU has called on the Prime Minister to ensure that not a single job would be lost because of it. That argument appears to be straight out of Tony Abbott's anti-carbon tax playbook after he called for a people's revolt on the tax on the grounds it would destroy jobs and send investment off-shore. I'm confident that we'll be able to make some sort of arrangement that will satisfy everyone," she said before acknowledging: "without the steel making operations at OneSteel, the town Whyalla would not have a future.

To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout. After three weeks off, Aussie Marc Leishman hit the ground running in Houston and now the pack is chasing him. Read Today's Paper Tributes. Mark Kenny and Catherine Hockley, Canberra. After the shameful point-scoring and reckless scare-mongering, politicians, business leaders, unions and workers are as one.

And what's uniting them is a horrible, probably unstoppable truth. The notorious words of then Australian Workers Union state secretary Wayne Hanson, seized on that bit too gleefully by a rampaging Tony Abbott five years ago, look to be coming true anyway. The proud steel producing city that makes up the western point of South Australia's once lucrative "iron triangle", appears to be entering the economic twilight zone, the pre-curser stage to being "wiped off the map".

Whyalla's narrow economy is teetering, slave to the possible collapse of its major employer, the steelmaker, Arrium. The town's narrow economy is teetering, slave to the possible collapse of its major employer, the steelmaker, Arrium. Yet Arrium's descent into the hands of voluntary administrators has nothing whatsoever to do with the long-defunct carbon tax, and nothing to do with Julia Gillard either.

It doesn't even have much to do with the trade and procurement policies of Canberra, although an international glut of cheap steel has certainly taken its toll.