Regional Tourism

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (14:11): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier please update the house on how the Marshall Liberal government is supporting our regions, in particular regional tourism?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:11): I thank the member for Chaffey for his excellent question. I've got to say that it was a great pleasure to visit Chaffey recently. It is a beautiful part of our state. It is a very productive part of our state.

We are working with our horticulture sector right across South Australia at the moment in extraordinary situations with regard to the recent fruit fly outbreak in our state, but it was great to visit the many businesses in that area, some of which are doing extraordinarily well. I thank the member for the excellent program that he put together for me and for all our colleagues who travelled up to this great part of our state.

We are working very hard for Chaffey, for regional South Australia, and, in fact, for our entire state, especially this year to focus on jobs. In fact, my mantra this year is: jobs, jobs and more jobs. I think that is exactly and precisely what we need here in South Australia. Can I just say that we on this side of the house were very buoyed yesterday when we saw those ABS statistics that came out. The Australian Bureau of Statistics put out its numbers on job creation, and in the most recent stats South Australia surged in terms of jobs another 2.4 per cent—almost double the national jobs growth as reported yesterday.

There is a lot that is happening and moving us in the right direction, but, sir, as you would be more than aware, there is still a lot to be done, especially in regional South Australia. We are creating more jobs by investing in our regions, whether it be in hospital infrastructure, in road infrastructure and in infrastructure for our schools.

We are upgrading schools, whether it be Clare High School, whether it be the massive expansion of Glossop High School, which I think is going to be renamed, and we are also investing very significantly in Mount Gambier High School. In fact, there are a huge number of projects in our education system right across regional South Australia, as well as in metropolitan Adelaide.

Our health infrastructure is also being upgraded. We know that there is going to be a significant investment in the ambulance station in Port Augusta. Of course, I was very pleased to be in Murray Bridge, in fact, just before Christmas, I think on 19 December, with the hardworking member for Hammond, and we had a look at the new emergency department. There were a lot of smiles on people's faces. Even the patients had a smile on their face because they knew that upgrade was well overdue. They were very happy to be in there.

The member for Chaffey quite rightly asks about tourism and regional tourism. Whilst this has been a very, very tough 12 months for tourism operators right across our state, there have been some great pockets of I think very good news in regional South Australia. I will tell you the reason why—because the people of South Australia are backing South Australia; they are backing our regions. I constantly hear about people who are going out seeing parts of our state they have never visited before.

I have spoken to people in the main street of Port Lincoln with the member for Flinders who were so happy to have visited Port Lincoln that they were already booking for next year. Of course, we are backing our regional tourism operators with the Great State Vouchers; our tourism development industry fund—$10 million this financial year, $10 million next financial year—and also a massive expansion of the money that is going in to create regional tourism events.

Our regions are vitally important. They were neglected for a very long period of time. They will not be neglected in the future. They will be a powerhouse for our economic transformation in South Australia, and I thank the member for Chaffey for his question today.