The South Australia Labor government has joined with its federal counterpart to mount a $2.4 billion rescue scheme for the steel-making plant in Whyalla.

After poor management and inadequate investment by private corporations brought the plant close to dissolution, the move is designed to preserve steel production at the site, settle outstanding debts and prepare the complex for sale to a new set of private owners.

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But even if new private investors can be found, there is little cause to think the crisis will not simply repeat itself.

Meanwhile, there is a crucial environmental question at play.

The steel plant has been at the centre of calls to shift Australia’s iron and steel industry to “green” production — needed on a world scale if climate disaster is to be mitigated.

The only solution is to take the plant into public ownership and, on the basis of adequate financing and integrated planning, to create a world-leading industrial complex that commands premium prices for its environmentally clean product.

Though small by world standards, the Whyalla plant is vital to Australia’s steel manufacturing.

It is the country’s only producer of long girders and rails and has one of only two operating blast furnaces, able to turn iron ore into new metal rather than simply recycling scrap.

Starved of investment by a series of corporate owners, the Whyalla plant was badly run down by 2016. In April of that year, it went into administration, owing a reported $4 billion.

Finding a new owner then proved difficult. It was only after 10 months, and with the deal sweetened when workers agreed to a 10% pay cut, that billionaire British steel magnate Sanjeev Gupta picked up the complex for a bargain price reportedly in the region of $700 million.

As Whyalla’s........

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