00:01Liberty Bell Bay is one of the main industrials in Tasmania and it plays a critical role in the
00:07steel industry. It's located at Bell Bay in the north of Tasmania, as you said, and it employs
00:14about 200 people directly. Now, it was owned by a company called GFG Alliance, which is owned by
00:23Sanjeev Gupta. But since May last year, it's faced a lot of troubles. It's been in care and maintenance
00:31mode for almost a year now. And at the time of going into limited operations last year, the company
00:37cited both ore supply issues and also global price volatility as the reasons. But it's continued to
00:46face troubles. We've seen the Tasmanian government had loaned it $20 million to purchase some
00:53ore ore, but it wasn't able to resume operations. And then in the past few weeks, we've seen the
00:59corporate regulator, ASIC, has taken the company to the federal court and tried to wind up its
01:05operations because it hasn't provided annual financial statements for the past five years.
01:12And then today, we've seen the very significant development, which is that the company has now
01:18gone into voluntary administration. And EY, Ernst & Young, will be the administrators. And they've
01:26released a statement. And in their statement, they say that they're going to work with stakeholders,
01:31including unions, the state government and the federal government, to explore all avenues of
01:37support for the smelters operations. They say they're meeting with the company's workforce as soon
01:43as possible. And that their primary objective is to secure the restructure or sale of the smelter
01:50and its assets. And they also say that they're in discussions to secure additional funding,
01:58which would be used if secured to go towards operational costs, including the payment of employees' wages.
02:06We've heard from the federal government, the industry minister, Tim Ayres. And in his statement,
02:12he reiterates that it's a commercial decision of the company to go into voluntary administration.
02:17He says the federal government has repeatedly called on GFG to invest in the facility and show a clear
02:25pathway forward. But he says they failed to do that. And he says that the government will work closely
02:35with the administrators and also the Tasmanian government to ensure workers and local suppliers
02:41receive appropriate assistance. Now, there's no clarity yet on what that assistance will be.
02:47The Tasmanian government, for its part, says it will carefully consider all available options with a
02:53clear focus on securing the best possible outcome for workers. And we've also heard from the Australian
03:00Workers Union, which represents many of those workers there. And they have their initial
03:05reaction is that this administration process is certainly better than what would have been a
03:12liquidation process had that eventuated in the federal court.
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