Trade, Tourism and Investment Ministers Meeting

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (14:53): Thank you, Mr President. My question is to the Minister for—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! I cannot hear the Hon. Mr Hood.

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD: Thank you, sir. My question is to the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Can the minister inform the council about recent discussions with other state and federal ministers at the Trade, Tourism and Investment Ministers' Meeting in Melbourne?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (14:53): I thank the honourable member for his ongoing interest in the trade and tourism ministers' meeting I attended earlier this month in Melbourne. I have sat next to the Victorian minister at the last two meetings and he said how pleased he was that there had been a change of trade ministers. He'd obviously had some interactions. It's strange—he's a Labor guy but we share a common dislike, probably, of the previous member. We hosted—

The Hon. K.J. Maher interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Leader of the Opposition, I cannot hear the minister.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Thank you, Mr President. As you may recall, we hosted the last meeting in Adelaide, and it was great to meet all of these people again. Discussions in relation to trade and investment included the 'team Australia' approach to international markets. There's a much more collaborative approach and we work closely. While it was sad to see all the upheavals for my federal colleagues in Canberra, one of the great things to come out of it was that a local senator, Senator the Hon. Simon Birmingham, is now the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Having a South Australian, and a person I regard as a friend, actually means there's some really good camaraderie and collaboration that goes on.

The 'team Australia' approach for international markets will be important. In a couple of weeks' time, we will have the CIIE, which is the China International Import Expo, which I will be attending on behalf of the government on 5 and 6 November this year. This is the first time the Chinese government have thrown their doors open and said to the whole world, 'Come in and give us your best shot.' Austrade have quite a large presentation. We only had about 11 or 12 exhibitors early in the piece; that has now grown to well over 20 and some have taken some quite large positions. I am looking forward to actually being part of that because there are some great opportunities.

Beston Global—you saw the Premier last week opening the mozzarella plant in Murray Bridge—will certainly be having a presence there. I think they have a 12-month presence in the supermarket. We are doing, if you like, an Australian supermarket that will showcase South Australian and other Australian products. That will be a particularly exciting opportunity. It is something that the Chinese government, if it is supported well, are going to do every November, so I think we need to make sure we have a strong presence there. If we happen not to be sitting, maybe some of the members opposite might like to jump on a plane—you can get direct flights up to China these days—and come along and participate.

We also did some collaboration on major events, especially on the incentive visits. Tourism Australia and Trade are now starting to sort of come together and work with us on that. We had some very good discussions around the free trade agreements and the likely timing of some more announcements that will continue to benefit South Australia.

We also had a presentation on international students. Obviously, we have quite a large number of our students coming from China, Malaysia and some of those areas. The international team are now looking at marketing into Mexico, Brazil and one other country that eludes me at the moment, but there are some really good opportunities to diversify our market for international students.

Broadly, the ministers agreed on a framework and guiding principles to collaborate and the need to share our sectoral priorities more with each other to grow our international trade pie by emphasising our common strengths. We also agreed that at major international trade events the states should work together in that vein as well.

An example of the collaborative spirit came on the day when the Hon. Michael Gunner MLA, Chief Minister of the Northern Territory and a Labor member up there, raised the importance of South Australia and the Northern Territory collaborating and putting aside all of our political differences. Clearly, they don't make very much wine, if any, in the Northern Territory. We don't have much barramundi. They have crocodiles. There is a range of things that we can do together.

I recall my very good friend the Hon. Caroline Schaefer talking about collaboration between the two states on supplying products over a longer period of time because we had such a wide range of climatic zones. Michael Gunner is very keen to pursue that. I am certainly going to pursue that from a trade point of view, and I am very keen to see my colleague the Hon. Tim Whetstone talk to them about shared goals when it comes to production as well.

In the afternoon, we moved to the tourism ministers' meeting. Items there discussed the International Visitor Survey, and the data that comes out of that is always important. Beyond Tourism 2020 is the target that the Hon. Mr Hanson doesn't seem to really grasp. Our share of that $130 billion target is $8 billion by 2020. We had an update on the other states. I expect over time we will see, as we get closer to 2020, there will be some talk about what targets at 2025 and 2030 might be but, certainly, it was particularly good.

Tourism demand for infrastructure was a key on the agenda and also regional tourism. I think something that came out of my 19 meet the minister meetings around South Australia was the need to make sure we keep pushing people to the regions. So there has been a lot of work done to keep underpinning our tourism in the regions and we will continue to do it. It was invaluable for the Chief Executive of the SATC and I to understand the national picture because we are looking at how we fit into whatever the new strategy in the nation may be.

It was interesting. One of the things that we took to the last election was a bike trail between Adelaide and Melbourne. The Victorian minister reiterated his strong support for that. Tourism Australia are very interested in getting on board and supporting it, and the new tourism minister is also interested in seeing that work sort of come together so we can see it. We have committed some resources to looking at what the gaps are and coming up with a plan to fill those gaps, but clearly there are some really good opportunities to collaborate across state borders.

I think that is something that hasn't been done in the past. We have sort of gone to war with the other states. There are some areas we need to collaborate on, and tourism is one of those. We should not be precious and, if we can share people across the border, we should. In this case with cycling we have a wonderful opportunity to develop one of the world's iconic cycling touring routes to join two capital cities—one big international city and one boutique international city—and all the wonderful tourism assets of food, wine and scenery and opportunities that lie between the two. I am looking forward to that. I thank Senator Birmingham for chairing his first meeting, and I look forward to being at many more meetings where Senator Birmingham is the chair of that meeting.