Trade Missions

The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (14:42): Supplementary arising from the original question: besides missions to India, what other strategies has the minister undertaken from commercial outcomes in India?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (14:42): I'm not quite sure I understand the honourable member's question. We have made it very clear—and she is talking about commercial outcomes—to participants on last week's trip to China that we do expect outcomes, we do expect actions from them. The figure I have been told is some 300 MOUs were signed by the former government. I am trying to get a list of those we got an action out of and some benefit from. There may be some very good ones, I don't know, but it is interesting. I have heard the figure of 300; I even heard the figure of 400, but I think 400 is a bit excessive.

I made it very clear in China last week, when I spoke to everybody, that an MOU is an important part of engaging, especially in some Asian countries, but there has to be a plan to implement that MOU. What are the actions in three months, six months, 12 months? If it requires a budget, is there a budget to implement it? Often, I think we've seen these MOU signed, where it requires a budget, but nobody has ever gone through that part of the process, so it just withers on the vine. I did take the opportunity to speak to the new mayor of Jinan, who is a bit like me in the sense that he has just started in his role. I say he's a bit like me: he is a good bloke and liked by everybody. He just started in his role, and I said we have had this sister state relationship for 32 years. We trust each other, we have been friends for 32 years and we are not going away, but nothing has ever happened.

There is an initiative called 'sponge city', which is basically harvesting and reusing stormwater—something I think South Australia is a world leader at. China, like most other countries in the world, is concerned about water supplies. Clearly, in some parts of China it rains a lot. They actually want to capture their stormwater and do exactly what we have done. This is an initiative that I think has been spoken about. I think the Hon. Karlene Maywald was employed by the previous government to go up and spruik water projects, but nothing ever happened. We had lots of spruiking but no actual action.

So I put the challenge to the mayor: you are a brand-new mayor and I am a relatively new minister. His term is four years and my term is four years—hopefully the Premier sees fit to keep me in this role for four years. Let's see if we can actually get the pilot project on sponge city up and working. So that's where I have started in relation to that. I can assure the honourable member opposite that this is about making sure that we get rubber on the road.

We are looking at where we can drive exports. That's why we want to open the trade office in Shanghai, which I hope will happen towards the end of the year. Maybe we can open it in the CIAE time. That will be a landing pad for businesses. There will be a couple of hot desks, and it will be a landing pad for businesses to get there and actually do business, because it is important. You can have these offices, you can have all these trade missions and you can have all these MOUs, but in the end, to the honourable member's point, we actually want economic benefits for South Australia. We want to create jobs and we want to grow our economy, and this government is focused on doing that.