Trade Missions

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (14:37): My question is to the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Will the minister confirm when the next trade mission to India will take place? Given we are seven months into the year, why has the 2018 trade mission calendar not been released?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (14:37): I thank the honourable member for her question. In relation to the India trade mission, my understanding is that it is still planned to go ahead, although, because it is during estimates, my understanding is, and I will check, that we are asking the Governor, the Hon. Hieu Van Le, to lead that delegation because of the fact that it is during estimates. Estimates is a very important part of the budget process, so it has been appropriate for—and I am sure it would be highly unlikely that members of the opposition, given we can rarely get pairs for things within Adelaide, I would be very surprised if they gave any minister a pair during estimates.

That is my understanding but I know that requests for expressions of interest were sent out for that trade mission. I am not aware yet how many businesses or groups have actually come back to the department to say, 'Yes, we'd like to be involved in that particular trade mission.' Yes, we are over halfway through 2018. We made it clear that we would release a trade mission schedule when we had one. As members would be aware, we have just had a recent one. Of course, they are much smaller and more targeted now than with the former minister before the last election. I think he was fond of a large trade mission with huge delegations—quite expensive, those particular trade missions. We had a small one last week. It was last week—time flies—in China. There are some more to come later in the year. I think the Premier will be leading one to Europe towards the end of October.

There is likely to be another one, but I will likely have to seek a pair from the Government Whip. In China, there is the CIIE, which is the Chinese International Import Expo, where the Chinese national government are saying they want everybody in the world to come to Shanghai. Austrade have asked all states to join them, and that's in the first week of November, I think somewhere around the 4^th or 5^th until about the 10^th. It is a sitting week.

It is, I think, when the House of Assembly will be examining the Auditor-General's Report. The convention that we have had in this place over many years, when I was on the other side of the chamber, was to seek a pair if the minister was not available or we wanted to perhaps manipulate the timing for examining the Auditor-General's inquiry for when people would be around. I will be seeking a pair for that week because it is an important trade mission. Austrade were hoping at one stage to have a thousand Australian businesses there. I do not think it will be that many, but it will be in the vicinity of 500 or 600; South Australia will have 60 or 70, I hope, businesses and organisations there.

Obviously, the machinery of government changes only took place on 1 July, so the new agency of trade and investment is not even yet one month old. We will publish an advance calendar, and it is more likely to be one that flows into 2019 rather than being an annual calendar. We do intend to publish that. It is just that there is a whole range of factors you have to include and the fact that it is 26 July, so that department has been in place in real-time for only 26 days.