Business and Export Initiatives

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:50): My question is to the Minister for Trade and Investment. Can the minister please update the house about how the Marshall Liberal government's budget is supporting business investment and exporters. With the leave of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr McBRIDE: With the bushfires earlier this year, followed by the impact of the global COVID-19 pandemic, conditions for South Australian businesses and exporters have been very difficult.

The Hon. S.J.R. PATTERSON (Morphett—Member of the Executive Council, Minister for Trade and Investment) (14:51): I thank the member for MacKillop for his question. MacKillop is a key export region for the state and very important, so working through these challenging global economic conditions that we face is really important not only to the member for MacKillop but I think to everyone here in this house.

As I said, we are faced with challenging global times, so the state budget that was brought down only last week really is one of those very important budgets in the state's history. Even this week, of course, we were reminded that we need to be ever vigilant in how we go about our health response so that we can overcome that and have positive economic conditions here in South Australia.

The state budget really looks to address those key issues in our economy. Some of those include a second round of grants to our small business sector. Those $10,000 grants were so important initially. There was over $186 million in the first stage and this budget looks to provide another $82 million to small businesses and also, importantly, look at expanding that to sole traders operating out of commercial premises. It's very important. I commend the Treasurer for looking into that.

Another thing we need to help reinforce and help our business community here is to try to lower costs where we can. There has been significant work in this budget around payroll tax—$233 million of payroll tax relief for those businesses here in South Australia. That is money that they can then invest employing people and creating jobs.

Land tax is another important element here. Of course, there were significant land tax changes brought in by this government, taking that top tax rate from 3.7 per cent down to 2.4 per cent, and what effect has that had? That attracts investment. Only in October, Mr Speaker, you would be interested, the Aspen Group announced they are purchasing a significant land parcel here—over 11 hectares—and spending $4 million of their money in our state. We have competitive prices here—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.J.R. PATTERSON: —in South Australia, but removing that handbrake of land tax brings investment into the state. That is very important. We will continue on in that vein. But it's not just me, of course, that could tell you—

The Hon. S.C. Mullighan interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Lee!

The Hon. S.J.R. PATTERSON: —that business confidence across the board has increased. Just last week, Business SA brought down their survey into business expectations here in South Australia for the September quarter. It was a record jump, the biggest jump they have had over the last 20 years, really supporting what we have done. That is before the work we have done in the budget. The NAB have also done business confidence surveys. Their small business sector, again, shows us in positive territory, so this is all good and helping business here in South Australia.

In terms of helping exporters, which of course the member for MacKillop is very interested in, one of the initiatives in this year's budget is a virtual business matching program. There is $1 million to be put towards setting up what will be a digital website to help connect our exporters to global markets.

I have spoken before in the chamber about our trade offices. We have key on-the-ground market intelligence based out of these trade offices co-located with Austrade, whether it is in China, Japan, Dubai, Malaysia, the US or the UK. They are significant markets for our produce and fresh food exporters to be able to have access to. This will bring it together by having a digital, modern approach so that our businesses reach a global market. That is just one of the ways this budget is helping our businesses here in South Australia, because we know that is going to create jobs.