Overseas Trade

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (15:23): I rise today to speak about South Australia's approach to exports under the Labor government and to put a few facts on the table following the Minister for Trade's glass-jaw speech yesterday in this place. First of all, in my role as shadow minister for trade, I would like to put on the record my support for the bipartisan approach when it comes to trade and the importance of this approach with our export partners.

The state Liberal Party is a strong supporter of the need for the government to educate and then take businesses on trade missions to foster relationships with our key trading partners. The minister mentioned the Hartley review, commissioned by the state government in 2012. It certainly highlighted several inefficiencies within South Australia's export industry under this Labor government and stated that the current model of overseas trade offices was not working.

At the time, South Australia had eight trade offices with 20 FTEs. It seems pretty obvious to me that paying rent and associated costs for an office and allocating one FTE to a trade office is not what you would refer to as properly resourcing a trade office. In fact, South Australia managed to budget $220,000 per year for an office in Chile with no FTEs. I understand that this also occurred in Vietnam before that office was also closed. I believe that South Australia cannot afford to solely rely on the embedded officer model in the main, and that means for our overseas representation.

What our Labor government did following the Hartley review was to immediately shut SA's trade offices, with the exception of Jinan in China. These offices were clearly understaffed and under resourced, with the exception of two offices in China and India which had 11 of the 20 FTEs between them. Instead of reviewing that model, our overseas offices were shut and our overseas presence was diminished as a result. The costs of this decision are still being paid for today. In fact, the member for Waite himself once called on the state government to 'properly resource our state trade offices in China by enhancing and upgrading their capabilities to support and promote South Australian exporters'.

In 2012, then trade minister Koutsantonis said of our closures, 'This is by no means a withdrawal from our overseas markets…In fact, it's probably a larger investment with the same amount of money because we can do more with more people.' That statement clearly proved that he did not know what he was talking about. Today, South Australia only has embedded officers in overseas Austrade offices in Shanghai, Mumbai, Hong Kong and, of course, the Agent-General in London. The state government saved $2.7 million by closing these offices, so why was that money not redirected back into the trade portfolio as promised?

The operating spend on South Australian overseas trade offices went from $1.9 million in 2011-12 to $437,000 in 2013-14, and the latter figure was mostly due to office closure costs. That money certainly did not go to TradeStart and it certainly did not go to the only program to support businesses to export, the Gateway Business Program, which saw less than $950,000 distributed over four years awarded to businesses, despite offering an annual support allocation of $1 million. That funding was substantially reduced to $492,000 and that remains the current amount available under the rebadged Export Partnership Program. Since the 2011-12 budget, Labor has cut the total funding of the main state government program aimed at stimulating exports from $30 million to $19 million in 2014-15.

South Australia is competing on a global export market, and permanent on-the-ground presence is critical in our key trade countries today. Yes, South Australian exports have grown from a small base, but look closely at South Australian export markets in the 12 months to March 2015 and the list is in decline. The list shows China down $354 million, the ASEAN region down $178 million, the Middle East down $107 million and Japan down $72 million.

The future of the South Australian economy is reliant upon the export and trade success of our companies and we must ensure that we provide the necessary tools to help South Australian businesses to succeed in the global market. To do this adequately, the state government must invest in our export program instead of reducing it. I was recently in Japan and there were no South Australians there representing this state.