Regional Promotion Grants

Mrs VLAHOS (Taylor) (15:02): My question is to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries. Can the minister inform the house about the new funding the state government will be providing to help promote South Australia's regions?

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) (15:02): I thank the member for Taylor for the question. I am pleased to announce to the house today $400,000 of funding to help regions promote the food, wine and tourism offerings that they have. It is a grant program that will be open until 13 March and I encourage all members who come from the regions to talk to people in their local areas about how they may work together to promote their regions. Grants of up $40,000 are available. It follows on from the work that we have done with the Barossa brand mark and also the Eyre Peninsula seafood—

Mr Knoll: Trust mark.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Sorry, trust mark—thank you, member for Schubert—and also for the Eyre Peninsula's Australia's Seafood Frontier, also brand Kangaroo Island and brand McLaren Vale. Last week we conducted a forum with about 70 people attending from Adelaide Hills, Langhorne Creek, Barossa, Fleurieu Peninsula, McLaren Vale, Kangaroo Island, Limestone Coast, Murraylands, Riverland, Yorke Peninsula, Mid North, Far North, Clare Valley and Eyre Peninsula. It all fits in perfectly with our economic priority of premium food and wine from our clean environment to export to the world.

We should not lose sight of the fact that, while we quite often brand things under the South Australian banner, there is great added value to be had by promoting the local region that it comes from as well. Just having come back from the US, one of the complaints they had about Australian wine was that they know the regions of France and they know the regions of Italy, and when they think of wine coming from Australia they just think of one whole region, and that is the country. So we need to be doing more in working with the wine industry to sell the Barossa, sell McLaren Vale, sell Adelaide Hills, sell Clare, Coonawarra—all our different wine regions—because it is those things that will add the premium to the price that people are going to be getting for their wine.

We had a number of the peak food and wine industry associations at last week's forum, including Food SA, the South Australian Wine Industry Association and Primary Producers SA. The forum was facilitated by Paul Henry and PIRSA. Brand SA and the South Australian Tourism Commission presented on regional branding and resources to help inform successful regional marketing initiatives. The feedback that we got was that it was a very informative session and we are hoping to get some really good proposals put forward by regions throughout the state to help market the great food and wine offerings that we know South Australia has to offer.

When you look at other parts of Australia, we think we do it much better than anywhere else. We are one of the few jurisdictions in the world that is phylloxera free, fruit fly free, and where it is illegal to grow GM crops, so they are the sort of messages that we drive home nationally and internationally, and the feedback that we are getting is very good. Now, if we can just bring that down to the regional level as well and help all the people in our regions employ more people, create more jobs and bring more money into the local economy, then that is a terrific thing for the state as a whole, but also for local communities right throughout this state.