Inside story of Premier Peter Malinauskas’s plot to oust Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance from Whyalla steelworks

Just before launching the Whyalla steelworks takeover, Premier Peter Malinauskas’s bungle stunned a top-level briefing.

The colour suddenly drained from Premier Peter Malinauskas’s face. He looked crestfallen and shocked at a top-level briefing, a few hours before the ambush on Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance was due to launch.

A sudden chill rippled through the February 19 meeting, which included Energy and Mining Minister Tom Koutsantonis and his department chief Paul Martyn.

The Premier appeared stunned by an unexpected call on his iPhone, at about 8.45am. Perhaps months of planning had unravelled and Mr Gupta had evaded the strike before it even started. The plan to eject GFG Alliance as Whyalla steelworks owner might already have been torpedoed. Everyone was watching Mr Malinauskas, waiting …

Then the Premier broke the silence with the surprise news – he’d bungled care arrangements for his 15-month-old son. “I just dropped George at childcare instead of at his grandmother’s. I wondered why they asked me at childcare why he was having an extra day this week,” Mr Malinauskas said, somewhat casually given the moment.

Collectively, participants breathed a sigh of relief and slightly nervous laughter rippled around the room. Even the Premier could be forgiven a slip-up – but they hoped it was not an ominous portent of the next few hours.

Premier Peter Malinauskas with his wife Annabel West and son George on February 5. Picture: RoyVPhotography

The state cabinet meeting on the morning of Tuesday, February 18 to finalise and approve the Whyalla steelworks rescue plan. Picture: Supplies

GFG Gupta Whyalla -Steel Task Force meeting of Friday, February 14. The person on the screen in the blue shirt is Stewart Howe, Managing Director Fenix Risk - Strategic Risk Assessment & Triage and the person in the yellow tie is Brendon Roberts KC. Picture: Supplied

Secrecy had been maintained for months, despite the ever-deepening crisis engulfing the steelworks. There was intense apprehension that Mr Gupta and his allies would discover the operation, then somehow unearth the tens of millions owed to the state government. Any payment would spike the state’s legal guns as a first-ranking creditor, sinking the entire plan.

The series of lightning legal strikes had been carefully calibrated and meticulously timed.

Simultaneously, Mr Malinauskas had gradually escalated public pressure on Mr Gupta, culminating in a blunt personal demand to pay creditors and debts ahead of a final meeting at Adelaide’s Eos by SkyCity hotel on February 16 – just three days beforehand.

Legal blitzkrieg

The surgical operation to excise GFG started about 90 minutes after the Premier’s childcare bungle, in a plot worthy of a spy thriller.

Legislation was rushed through both Houses of Parliament, giving the government legal teeth to act on its debts related to GFG.

Governor Frances Adamson was on standby to greet the Premier at Government House, then provide her crucial assent to the freshly passed laws.

Lawyers were stationed at GFG offices across the nation, waiting for confirmation that the extraordinary parliamentary manoeuvring was complete.

Given the green light, the phalanx of lawyers representing the state government delivered the final strike of the legal blitzkrieg, serving notices on GFG.

The team was spearheaded by Brendon Roberts KC, of Carrington St’s Bar Chambers, who has been ranked by Doyles Guide as a pre-eminent SA barrister in insolvency and restructuring. Another was Fenix Risk managing director Stewart Howe, whose LinkedIn profile says his firm provides “strategic risk assessment and triage”.

Premier Peter Malinauskas announces the Whyalla steelworks administration, watched by Energy and Mining Minister Tom Koutsantonis. Picture: Dean Martin

Malinauskas’ plot revealed

At 12.56pm, Mr Malinauskas strode into the ground-floor State Administration Centre media room, flanked by Mr Koutsantonis and Steel Task Force chairman Bruce Carter, to announce the legal execution of GFG’s Whyalla steelworks ownership and the appointment of KordaMentha as administrators.

“It has been a herculean effort,” the Premier said in his fourth sentence, describing the clandestine operation.

Events had unfolded rapidly. The day before, the operation had been locked in at a marathon three-hour cabinet meeting, where the move was finalised and approved.

Sources described the meeting as applying scrutiny to the complex and detailed plan, rather than being gripped by dissent.

On the previous Sunday, Mr Malinauskas had been pointedly pictured at the LIV Golf event with steelmaker BlueScope’s chief executive officer, Mark Vassella – just hours after he met with Mr Gupta.

BlueScope chief executive officer Mark Vassella with Premier Peter Malinauskas at LIV Golf. Picture: The Advertiser

It can now be revealed the Premier and Mr Vassella, along with other BlueScope executives, had met on January 27, the Australia Day public holiday, at the firm’s corporate headquarters in William St, Melbourne.

Details of the discussion are not known but their timing will only fuel speculation about BlueScope’s favouritism to take over as the steelworks private owner.

Instant coffee meeting

In another revelation, the $2.4bn Whyalla rescue plan unveiled last Thursday at the steelworks by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Mr Malinauskas was finalised at a three-hour meeting at federal Industry and Science Minister Ed Husic’s Canberra Parliament House office on Saturday, February 8.

“The place was a ghost town, the lights in the corridors were all off and even Aussies was closed (the internal staff cafe),” said one source close to the participants.

Instant coffee was served – the Premier has confessed this is his “shameful addiction” that requires up to seven cups a day to satisfy.

Mr Malinauskas had flown to Canberra with Mr Koutsantonis for the meeting, which also included public servants from the departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and Industry.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Premier Peter Malinauskas at the Whyalla steelworks on February 20. Picture: NewsWire / Tim Joy

Trigger point

The momentous events had been triggered by striking advice handed to the Premier just before Christmas by the state’s Steel Task Force.

Put simply, this urged decisive intervention to prevent the steelworks decay into irretrievable ruin. The cash-strapped GFG was running the plant into the ground and, soon enough, no private buyer would even consider investment.

The Steel Task Force met at 3pm on Christmas Eve via a Microsoft Teams video conference to further hatch the plan, just a day after the state’s first contact with KordaMentha administrator Mark Mentha.

Ultimately, the government's patience had expired last September, when the steelworks blast furnace went offline for the second time that year.

Publicly, Mr Malinauskas and his team held open the prospect of GFG finally keeping grand promises, paying creditors and running a thriving operation.

Privately, they were waging a clandestine operation of their own, plotting GFG’s ousting to, it was believed, safeguard the future of the steelworks and Whyalla itself.

Originally published as Inside story of Premier Peter Malinauskas’s plot to oust Sanjeev Gupta’s GFG Alliance from Whyalla steelworks