Container Deposit Scheme

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (15:42): Our wine industry needs support, not another cost burden, yet that is exactly what this state Labor government has delivered by deciding to expand the container deposit scheme to include wine bottles.

We all appreciate how the CDS works. You pay a little bit extra when you are buying a drink, you return the container and then you get 10¢ back. It has been around since 1977 and I am sure most of us in this place would remember collecting soft drink cans and taking them to the depot. I certainly remember doing so in Angaston. It is a great scheme but it is not one that should include wine bottles here in South Australia.

Labor's decision is simply not supported by the evidence either. If the problem that we are trying to fix is litter—which is why this scheme was first implemented all those decades ago—then wine bottles account for just 0.07 per cent of all litter, so essentially Labor has a solution to a problem that does not even exist. No-one is guzzling bottles of shiraz and throwing them out of their car window, and I am sure that no-one is tripping over riesling bottles as they are trotting down Hindley Street.

We see a lot of litter in South Australia. I had a look at the facts, and around 30 to 40 per cent of litter is cigarette butts, paper and cardboard is around 5 per cent, plastic bags is around 5 per cent and random other items like toy parts, fishing lines, etc., is 2 per cent. Wine bottles are 0.07 per cent. Wine bottles have never been included in the CDS because the litter is so low—in fact, it is basically non-existent—and that is because wine is primarily consumed at home or in a restaurant and that is generally when you put the bottle straight into the recycling bin. If that process needs to be improved to ensure that more glass comes back into the system, then that is something that the government should be focusing on.

But the timing could not be worse for this imposition. As the Australian Grape and Wine CEO has said over the last 24 hours, this is an industry that is already grappling with global oversupply and rising production costs, not to mention we have a market that is very sensitive to price increases. Adding more costs now only threatens jobs, and it also threatens the long-term sustainability of an industry which really is the cornerstone to regional South Australia. It is the cornerstone to my local community, not to mention our overall state economy.

In the last 24 hours, I have heard directly from a number of producers in the Barossa Valley who are absolutely seething at the government's decision to implement this, and so I thought that I would quote the reality from some of them:

The impact of wineries levying a 13.9 cent charge on their wholesale price could translate to a $1 increase in the retail price of wine and up to $4 at the restaurant table.

That's a handsome premium to pay to get 10 cents back in your pocket.

At the cellar door, it's probably a matter of either increasing prices by $1 or sucking up the $1.60 a dozen in new costs.

Either the consumer pays more for a 10 cent gain, or the producer starts to look at cutting costs elsewhere in their business.

The Government [is] hell-bent on positioning itself as a winner for the consumer and the environment yet ironically delivering neither with this new tax.

This will hurt everyone connected to the State's wine and grape sector. A dark day at a dark time for wine.

I see this as an additional tax, when we are already paying 39% on wine.

And the human cost is real. One winemaker told me that they are asking themselves:

Do I absorb the cost? By absorbing the cost, I now lose $50,000 in profit—or I may need to review staffing and put yet another person into unemployment.

As far as I could see, yesterday there was not one single grapegrower, not one single winemaker and not one single industry rep who came out to support the Labor government's move, which I think speaks volumes to how this has gone down. I do not think that anyone is raising a glass to this move, particularly in the Barossa Valley and the northern part of the Adelaide Hills, which I am so proud to represent.

The unfortunate reality is that this is a government that is completely blind to the struggles of the wine industry, introducing a tax that is dressed up as reform, that will deliver more pain to producers, higher prices for consumers and no real gain for the environment. I have to ask the question: what sort of government would want to hurt our most famous and most celebrated wine industry? This is not something which is supported by winemakers or anyone in the wine industry in the Barossa or the Adelaide Hills.