Visitor Economy

S.E. ANDREWS (Gibson) (14:47): My question is to the Minister for Tourism. How is the government delivering on our commitment to growing South Australia's visitor economy?

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Tourism, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:48): I thank the member for Gibson for her question. The former Marshall Liberal government changed our marketing focus away from campaigns—they promoted our fantastic regions such as the Barossa and Kangaroo Island. What we got instead was a costly, embarrassing failure of a campaign based around an elderly man wandering Adelaide in tears.

Now, this sounds like a campaign run by the Liberal Party, not a campaign that should be promoting our great state to interstate and overseas visitors. I would like to quote for a submission to the Liberal Party state election review, 'The Marshall government decided to embark—

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: Point of order, sir.

The SPEAKER: Order! Minister, there's a point of order. I will hear the point of order from the member for Morialta under 134.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER: The substance of the minister's response is actually entirely debate, and her commentary about matters in the public domain that she is currently talking about are utterly irrelevant to her performance in her portfolio and the question that was asked.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! I will listen carefully. The minister has the question.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: I'm happy to table the leaked report, if necessary. The Marshall government decided to embark on new advertising for the state. This involved employing an interstate firm. The ads involved a 30-second film clip of an elderly gentleman crying for about 15 seconds of the ad. Apparently, this is supposed to convey his sadness at not visiting South Australia sooner. These ads were not liked by a significant number of people and were mocked interstate. Despite the opposition to the ads, the government insisted they were excellent. This highlighted the Marshall Liberal government's disengagement with public opinion once again.

On coming to government, the Malinauskas Labor government suspended the South Australian Tourism Commission's creative service procurement, and we are now commencing a new procurement process that delivers on our commitment to attract tourists back to South Australia and grow our visitor economy. We have committed an unprecedented $45 million towards marketing South Australia over the next four years. This boost will include investment in new campaigns for South Australia that are distinct, creative and long-term focused and, unlike the previous government, we won't be funding campaigns that are objectively bad and damage our state's reputation.

I would like to touch on the fact that we are already seeing some fantastic results and I particularly want to point to the regional occupancy stats for July. As many of us know, we often have quite a peaky season in tourism. We have Mad March and a beautiful summer, and what we are looking to do is balance that out throughout the year. I am very pleased to announce that in July 2022, we saw an average occupancy for regional accommodation of 57 per cent. This is outstanding. Pre COVID, it was an average of 50 per cent.

What we are seeing is that throughout South Australia people are lingering longer and enjoying our beautiful regions. What we saw on Eyre and Yorke pensinsulas was an average occupancy of about 65 per cent in July of this year, up from 55 per cent. On the Limestone Coast, there was an average occupancy of 57 per cent, up from a pre-COVID level of 42. In our wine regions of the Adelaide Hills, the Barossa and Clare Valley, we saw an average occupancy of 60 per cent in July.

There is still some way to go and there is no doubt at all that the tourism and hospitality industry has been impacted incredibly by COVID. While we have seen people return to travel, particularly within our South Australian regions, we know that we are still behind where we were prior to COVID, but I'm very pleased to say that at $6.1 billion we are getting there, closer and closer. I look forward to the time when we come here and I can announce that we are back there.

To those who are investing and supporting and continuing, we want to help them with an increase back to domestic flights, about 100 per cent, and about 61 per cent for international flights. We are getting there. It's going really well, but I will tell you what—a great tourism ad will make all the difference.

The SPEAKER: Before I call the member for Flinders, I draw the member for Morialta's attention to standing order 96, which does allow questions in relation to public affairs to be put to ministers. Public affairs is a concept, to my mind, broader than ministerial responsibility directly relevant to that portfolio.