Wine Industry Bushfire Recovery Support

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:47): My question is to the minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development. Can the minister update the house on how the Marshall Liberal government is supporting the South Australian wine industry to recover from bushfires?

The Hon. T.J. WHETSTONE (Chaffey—Minister for Primary Industries and Regional Development) (14:47): Yes, I can. I thank the member for MacKillop for his excellent question. He knows only too well how important the wine industry is to the South Australian economy. Yes, sadly, we saw a number of vineyards within South Australia affected by bushfires. There are about 500 hectares of vineyard that have been affected either by bushfires or have been affected by smoke.

Through the course of that we had a large public meeting in the Adelaide Hills at Hahndorf in the member for Heysen's seat, I believe. What that meeting gave us was a much better understanding of the previous experience of vineyard operators and owners who had been through the Pinery fires, what they had experienced and how they had rebuilt after the fires had gone through.

One of the great scourges of bushfires within vineyards is when we have smoke taint in those vineyards. The government listened to the industry through that public consultation and we put a $335,000 program in place in consultation with the Australian Wine Research Institute. We subsidised those wine grape samples so that we could actually ascertain whether the berries had been impacted and smoke had penetrated the skin, which rendered that fruit unviable to be processed into wine.

What we saw through that consultation was that we would give three subsidised smoke-taint samples to individual growers in the Adelaide Hills and the KI fire scars. We would also give subsidised samples to those areas and those vineyards that were impacted by smoke. As many wine lovers would know, a smoke-tainted wine is undrinkable and also comes at great cost to the industry and the individual grapegrower.

To be able to do those early smoke taint tests gives those wine grapegrowers, those winemakers, a competitive advantage not to have to continue to put inputs into that product. What we saw over that time was we gave 92 vouchers and a total of 577 samples were tested. Along the course of that way, about 50 per cent were in the mid range, so some of that fruit was impacted and some of it was not and went on to make wine.

Further to that, we worked with the Wine Grape Council of South Australia and, again, the Australian wine industry research to undertake surveys of assessed vineyards that had been damaged. They worked with a very well-regarded Clare business, Rural Directions, to undertake mapping and overlay that mapping onto vineyards so that they could assess the damage and understand exactly what the fire meant to their business long term.

Once that data was collected, it was put onto a topographic image and then that image and data was given to those vineyard operators. As an example, in the Adelaide Hills, a pinot noir vineyard was directly impacted by fast-moving fire and smoke and it was given an assessment that that vineyard would be inoperable for the forthcoming vintage. Again, that is more information that those wine grapegrowers and winemakers needed as valuable information.

We are also funding a unique, longer term smoke taint research project, taking samples with green berries. Again, that gives much earlier detection and it gives much earlier indication to those winemakers to stop putting inputs into those vineyards. It is about working with the industry, it is about a government that cares for the industry and it is about a government looking to grow the wine industry.