Hydrogen SA chief Sam Crafter under scrutiny by Premier and Cabinet as office staff slashed

Premier Peter Malinauskas has told parliament the Hydrogen SA’s boss on an almost $600,000 salary could be shifted from his office.

Premier Peter Malinauskas has announced the future of the Hydrogen SA office’s chief executive - who is on an almost $600,000 salary - is under scrutiny and he could be shifted to a new role in government.

Mr Malinauskas told parliament today that chief executive Sam Crafter’s future is being assessed along with the future of its 55 staff by the chief executive of the Department of Premier and Cabinet.

“It is absolutely the state government’s intention to retain the service of Sam Crafter because he is a highly capable individual that we recruited out of the private sector, where he himself had established a rather successful enterprise around skills to do with energy transition,” he said.

Sam Crafter, Chief Executive Officer, Office of Hydrogen Power. The Australian's Competitive Advantage Boardroom Series at 2KW, Adelaide. Picture Matt Turner.

The Department of Premier Cabinet’s chief Rick Persse along with the Department of Energy and Mining plus other agencies would now be looking at how best to “assess what that looks like and where the office finally ends up and where we can best deploy Mr Crafter’s service to the state”.

His comments follow the state government announcing that the $593m earmarked for the government’s flagship hydrogen jobs plan would now be spent on the Whyalla rescue plan.

GFG Alliance’s subsidiary OneSteel Manufacturing was pushed into administration over unpaid bills to SA Water and royalties for its mines, and the Opposition has called for taxpayers’ dollars to be withdrawn from the hydrogen office.

“Given the policy decisions that we have had to make in respect to curtailing and quite substantially and dramatically, the office of hydrogen power,” he said, the office’s future is being reassessed.

But he believed “the calibre of the people that work within the Office of Hydrogen Power lends itself to almost all of those people being deployed in other roles within the government”.

When asked if Mr Crafter’s salary would be reduced, Mr Malinauskas said he claimed ultimate responsibility for all department chief executives salaries.

“The salary and remuneration packages that are formulated for key executives I principally assume responsibility for and we make assessments of all public sector executive salaries on a periodic basis,” he said.

Premier Peter Malinauskas in Whyalla. Picture: Brett Hartwig

Mr Malinauskas stressed that scrutiny and changes to Hydrogen SA “does not mean that we are not continuing work in the area of hydrogen”.

“We still believe that hydrogen will play a role in the future,” he said.

Opposition Energy spokesman Stephen Patterson was highly critical of the state government switching funds for its long-promised plans to build a hydrogen power plant in Whyalla and lower electricity prices.

“South Australians are expected to believe another hoax and that the almost $600m budgeted for this hydrogen hoax is not only going to be recovered but transferred to the Whyalla,” Mr Patterson said.

He said the state was on the hook for many millions of dollars for a “hydrogen fantasy” that despite time and money invested over three years had few results.

Originally published as Hydrogen SA chief Sam Crafter under scrutiny by Premier and Cabinet as office staff slashed