Months in the making Premier Peter Malinauskas took the risk and now claims the reward

The surgical operation to remove GFG as steelworks owner unfolded on Wednesday in carefully co-ordinated lightning strikes and it was months in the making for the premier who took on the risk and now he claims the reward.

A lawyer was waiting in Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance Sydney office tower lift well, poised to serve a legal notice ousting the firm as Whyalla steelworks operator.

The surgical operation to remove GFG as steelworks owner unfolded on Wednesday in carefully co-ordinated lightning strikes, that had been meticulously planned over months.

The legal blitzkrieg was laden with the drama of a spy thriller, because of the subterfuge required to mount a successful ambush.

Upper Spencer Gulf. Whyalla Steelworks Presser. Picture: Ben Clark

Lawyers were stationed at GFG offices across the nation. Laws were rammed through parliament in an extraordinary morning session. Even Governor Frances Adamson was on standby to greet the Premier and provide all-important assent to the freshly passed laws.

This legal assent was the trigger for the phalanx of lawyers representing the state government to strike and deliver the notices of legal execution for GFG’s Whyalla steelworks ownership.

Effectively, the state government called in SA Water and mining royalty debts to plunge GFG subsidiary OneSteel Manufacturing into administration.

It might sound simple but there were numerous potential fatal hurdles as the events rapidly unfolded.

Not least was Mr Gupta, who has remained a step ahead of critics and creditors for some years, would react rapidly to extinguish his debts to the government.

This would have spiked the administration move before the legal notices were served.

But the lawyers had been crawling all over Mr Malinauskas’s Victoria Square office for weeks for a reason.

Mr Malinauskas in the Whyalla Steelworks. Picture: Ben Clark

They were advising on the multistage plan in a bid to make it legally watertight. The Premier spearheaded the political calculations, thus assuming the risk and any reward.

This revealed the Premier’s steely, ruthless and calculating side – rarely displayed publicly – but clinically deployed as a young union boss in 2011 when he helped knife the-then premier Mike Rann.

The first catalyst for the legal strike was Mr Gupta’s move last May to delay getting the steelworks’ new electric arc furnace online until at least 2027 – two years later than forecast.

It is understood Energy and Mining Minister Tom Koutsantonis found out only when he travelled that May to Buttrio, in Italy’s northeast, that May to eyeball Danelli, the firm developing the $500m furnace.

The state government had earmarked $50m to help fund the furnace, contingent on the plant being commissioned.

Following the electric arc furnace delay, Mr Malinauskas started to move. There were some public signs of the marathon planning operation being waged out of his office.

Late last September, Mr Malinauskas listed five steel firms he had personally held talks with as he declares Whyalla steelworks’ ownership “second” to his long-term green iron plan.

He named BlueScope, Nippon Steel Corporation, POSCO, Thyssenkrupp and Tata Steel.

As late as last Friday, Mr Malinauskas maintained the subterfuge by continuing to insist publicly that he wanted Mr Gupta to succeed, even while pointedly refusing to express trust in his firm’s ongoing ownership of the crucial national asset.

On Sunday at LIV Golf, Mr Malinauskas courted BlueScope Steel chief executive Mark Vassella, hours after meeting Mr Gupta, who had jetted in to Adelaide.

It was the most public sign of the next step in the plan – recruiting a new owner to take over the steelworks.

Originally published as Months in the making Premier Peter Malinauskas took the risk and now claims the reward