Question Time

REGIONAL VISITOR GUIDES

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Leader of the Opposition) (14:25): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Minister for Tourism a question about regional tourism guides.

Leave granted.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: A ministerial bungle means that South Australian tourism operators are paying to advertise high profile events a full year after they were held. If minister Gago had walked down Rundle Mall to the information booth, or could even find the visitor and travel information centre in Grenfell Street or if, like me, she had been at the caravan and camping show at Wayville on the weekend she would have been able to pick up last year's regional guides.

The Yorke Peninsula guide advertises the Cornish Festival of 10 months ago, the Eyre Peninsula guide advertises the Port Lincoln Festival that has been and gone for 13 months, the Kangaroo Island guide has a feature on Tourism for Tomorrow written a year before yesterday, the Barossa guide advertises the tourism award winners for 2010, the Adelaide Hills guide advertises the dates of last year's Tour Down Under, and the River Murray guide entices people to a music festival held on 8 January 2011. Every guide is a year out of date.

Last April the government called for tenders to produce a series of annual regional tourism guides. The government's brilliant idea was that a private contractor should sell the advertising and print the guides, keep some of the profits and pay the government up to $500,000 for the privilege. Previously the guides would have appeared regionally and the profits ploughed back into the local tourism industry, but the government thought it would be simply marvellous to centralise production in Adelaide, even though that would break a long held, successful group of local connections.

Tenders closed in May. There was no mandatory requirement for tenderers to comply with the draft contract agreement, to have mandatory business capability or capacity or even mandatory experience in producing consumer publications containing industry advertising. In fact, it was not even mandatory for the winning tenderer to be experienced in advertising sales.

The advertising layout and graphic design for all guides had to be finished in October/November last year, and all guides were due to be launched at the beginning of January 2012. However, in September 2011 the government was still negotiating and no tender had yet been signed. The booklets had not been distributed in December for a January launch; they were not ready, and they are still not ready. My questions to the minister are:

1. Why are these guides a year out of date?

2. Will the advertisers who took out display advertisements on the assumption that they would get 12 months' exposure (which is now clearly impossible) have a claim against the government and therefore the taxpayer?

The PRESIDENT: The honourable minister should disregard the opinion in the question.

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Regional Development, Minister for Tourism, Minister for the Status of Women) (14:27): That is about the whole question; I would have to sit down, Mr President.

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway: Just answer for a change.

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. G.E. GAGO: That is the calibre, the level of questions that come into this place. The South Australian Tourism Commission is an independent statutory authority that manages its own business, including the publication of brochures. As the minister, I know I am responsible for a lot of things, and I am very happy to stand up in this place and be absolutely accountable for those things that are my responsibility, but the publication of pamphlets from an independent statutory authority is an operational matter and a matter that I can hardly be held responsible for. It is outrageous. This is the best question the honourable member can come up with after a week's break—

The Hon. D.W. Ridgway interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order!

The Hon. G.E. GAGO: I can certainly express my disappointment that the visitor guides have been delayed but, as I said, the South Australian Tourism Commission is an independent statutory authority that is responsible for its own operational matters. That includes the publication of pamphlets. Nevertheless, I do have some advice, and the advice I have received is that the regional visitor guides are a very important part of the SATC's marketing campaign. It views the brochures very highly, and certainly consumers and tourism operators view them very highly as well.

In the past the regional tourism committees and the SATC have individually contracted suppliers to produce various components of the annual regional visitor guides. For this year SATC tendered for a supplier to produce collectively all the visitor guides, as well as the Shorts brochure, I have been advised. That was in an effort to enable efficiencies of scale, to ensure consistencies across all regional visitor guides. This partner was HWR Media. My understanding was that that was a position that the regions were looking forward to in an attempt to produce efficiencies. I understand there was a close relationship there.

I have also been advised that advertising rates were kept at the previous year's rates, despite increased production costs, and where regions provided discounted advertising rates to their members they were also honoured, which the regions were also pleased about. The delivery of the new guides was always going to be rolled out over a series of months, as the 11 visitor guides I have been advised were not planned to be printed and delivered in the same month under these new arrangements, so that was an understanding.

I have also been advised that an extended contract negotiation with HWR Media delayed the commencement of the visitor guide production, which I have been advised has resulted in a delay in the delivery of the 2012 visitor guides for most of the regions by up to two to five months from when they were historically launched, with the exception of the KI guide, which will be in the same month it normally is. This means that maybe the shelf life of the existing guides is required to be extended beyond the normal 12 months on which print runs are based.

Due to delays in the production, visitor guide stocks are obviously running low for five of the regions, I am advised, and would have run out in January without restrictions being imposed on reprints undertaken. The restrictions were a temporary measure and the SATC has reprinted enough guides to lift those restrictions in December for accredited visitor centres across South Australia, allowing them to order stock of any regional guide they require at their allocation levels.

It is extremely disappointing that SATC was not able to advance those new contractual arrangements, but like a lot of new arrangements there are often teething problems, which is not excusing them, but clearly they were attempting to create economies of scale and efficiencies. The prospect of improving efficiencies was embraced by the region. The printing of brochures is a matter for the SATC, which is an independent statutory authority, and is responsible for all operational matters, which includes the printing of brochures.