International Visitors

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (14:55): My question is to the Minister for Tourism. Can the minister inform the house about recent international visitor statistics?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport, Minister for Racing) (14:55): I thank the member for the question and for his strong interest in the tourism sector. Some great news was released today by the federal government on international tourism figures, showing that once again we have had huge growth: a 7.8 per cent increase on the previous 12 months for international visitors coming into South Australia. That follows on from the December quarter, when we had a 13.1 per cent increase. Quarter after quarter we are getting very good increases in the number of tourists coming into South Australia from overseas.

Of course, there is no better money for our economy in South Australia than the money that comes out of the wallets of people from interstate or overseas. One of the big increases we saw was a 68 per cent jump in visitors coming from Malaysia, no doubt off the back of AirAsia X flying directly into Adelaide since October last year. The government went out hard to get that airline here, the first low-cost international carrier to come into Adelaide. It is making a real difference with all the connections that they have throughout Asia via Kuala Lumpur and into Adelaide.

Of course, we attracted Emirates on 1 November 2012, and then they went daily from 1 February last year. They are having a huge impact on bringing people in not just from the Middle East but throughout their wider connections in Europe. In fact, the UK market is up 27.5 per cent in the figures to March—another big jump. We welcome all those visitors who are arriving. Many from the UK market come to visit friends and relatives, so for anyone who has got friends and relatives over there, make sure you encourage them to come here. They might want to check out our new Adelaide Oval and the great Riverbank Precinct in South Australia.

Canada led the North American recharge. We have had a 7.7 per cent increase from North America. We put a lot of that down to Greg Snell, who has done a wonderful job as our Best Jobs in the World winner. He has been blogging from Kangaroo Island and Eyre Peninsula and right round South Australia after winning the job as animal carer. He has been cuddling koalas, swimming with sharks, tuna and sea lions, and everything else. There is no doubt that, in the youth market that he has been blogging to, we are seeing a fantastic turnaround. Greg finishes his six-month appointment in South Australia this weekend. I would like to thank him on behalf of all our tourism regions for the way that he has spread the word about South Australia right around the world. Social media is a very important tool to use right across all the demographics, and he has done a tremendous job with that 18 to 40 age group.

We do hear a lot of negative talk about how things are going with the economy in South Australia, and it is mainly from the opposition benches. However, we should get behind our tourism operators. We have 18,000 tourism business across the state. They employ 31,000 people right across this state. There is not an area in the million square kilometres of this state in which we cannot be running tourism operations. Whether it is Eyre Peninsula, Yorke Peninsula, the Riverland, the Flinders, the Limestone Coast, Kangaroo Island, the Fleurieu—I'm going to leave someone out-—the Barossa, it is really important that we get behind our tourism operators.

The government wants to work shoulder to shoulder and hand-in-hand with tourism operators to make sure that we are marketing our great state right around Australia and the world. It is worth $5 billion a year to our economy. We want to grow that to $8 billion a year by 2020. We are not going to do it on our own. The individual private sector is not going to do it on its own either, but we need to work together to attract more airlines into South Australia, like we have. Adelaide Airport is the fastest-growing international airport in the country for the second year running. These things do not happen by accident. It is about getting in and talking to people from the airline industry.

We are also seeing record cruise ship numbers this year. Up to 29 cruise ships will arrive this year, and we have got 37 coming in next year. They are going to ports like Penneshaw and Port Lincoln. We know that every time a cruise ship arrives in Kangaroo Island it drops $200,000 into the local economy. That is fantastic for tourism operators there. We tried to get one into Robe this year. Unfortunately there were big swells, but we will be back having another go next season, because I know the people of Coonawarra and the people of Robe, Millicent and Kingston did a lot of work preparing to host the visitors who could not quite get there.