Tourism

Ms DIGANCE (Elder) (14:43): My question is to the Minister for Tourism. What is the government doing to bring more Chinese visitors to South Australia?

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) (14:44): I thank the member for Elder for the question. The Premier, the Minister for Investment and Trade, the Minister for Regional Development and I have just returned from a very successful trip to China where, among many other things, we signed a memorandum of understanding with China Southern, one of the biggest airlines in China.

It operates out of Guangzhou, the richest province in China, with a population of 108 million. Truly a modern city is Guangzhou. We are talking with them about having a direct service from Guangzhou into Adelaide, not only to bring tourists from throughout China to South Australia, but they see themselves as an international airline, so also to bring people from Europe through Guangzhou and into Adelaide as well.

Just as importantly, with my agriculture minister's hat on, it is about getting our premium fresh produce out of South Australia and into China. What we know at the moment is that a lot of the lobster from down in the South-East is going across the border, and going out on Vietnam Airlines through Vietnam and the grey channel.

Those export statistics are not actually going on South Australia's tab: they are going on Victoria's tab. Not only do we want those stats, but we also want to make sure that we can preserve the premium quality of the produce that we are sending out. The more people that you have handling it, the more countries it has to go through and the more stops that it has, then the more damage that can be done to our premium produce.

We have a reputation that is second to none anywhere in the world. We are the only mainland state in Australia that is fruit fly free, we are the only mainland state in Australia that is phylloxera free, and we are also the only mainland state in Australia where it is illegal to grow genetically modified crops. That is the important thing from the agricultural point of view.

From a tourism point of view, Chinese visitors spend on average $6,000 per person. The average spend of visitors to South Australia from any other part of the world is $1,500 per person, so a Chinese visitor is worth four times more to our economy than visitors from anywhere else. Our tourism numbers are on the rise. Chinese visits to South Australia rose 4.7 per cent last year and we saw a 33 per cent rise in expenditure. It is a market that is growing.

We have 32,000 visitors coming to South Australia from China each year, and we want to make sure that we can get more and more visitors as well. We are talking to the Chinese not just about putting direct flights into Adelaide, but also about investment in tourism infrastructure here as well.

One of the things we did was talk to the media in Qingdao. We had a luncheon with 25 local media representatives and we served up South Australian wine with dumplings from Shandong. The people of Shandong are famous for their dumplings, and, of course, South Australia is renowned as the capital of the Australian wine industry. We produce 80 per cent of Australia's premium wine, so to match those two together was terrific.

We had a lot of videos going to show them the great experiences that they can have in the Barossa Valley, on Kangaroo Island, in the Flinders Ranges and on Eyre Peninsula. Every one of your electorates was shown off to these wonderful people in Shandong who have huge audiences. We were on a TV show that had three million people tuning in to see the Premier, myself and Richard Gunner, and many other fantastic primary producers—

The SPEAKER: Alas, the minister's time has expired. The leader.