Legislative Council: Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Contents

Rewards Wonder Campaign

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (15:06): Supplementary: is the minister concerned that the underpayment of only $150 for the local musicians brought significant levels of negative publicity to the campaign that could have been avoided with better procurement policies?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (15:06): I thank the honourable member for her further supplementary. My understanding is the Tourism Commission worked very closely with Music SA and came up with the figure of $150 that was paid to the local musicians. I think—and I will doublecheck these figures—it was 51 local musicians got an opportunity to have their work and their talent showcased through this particular piece of work.

The honourable member talks about negative campaigns. We have had record numbers. I have just said in my answer to the Hon. Mr Hood's very important question, we have had record activity, record traffic to the website, record data capture. On every measure, it has been a particularly strong and solid start to a campaign. I understand there were a few people who felt maybe the $150 was not enough, but Music SA and SATC worked with them. They wanted to make sure that the peak body of the music industry was happy, which they were.

I know there are some isolated cases of disappointment and I know the honourable member said you can google the campaign and find some negative comments online, but really, when you look at the figures, they speak for themselves. We have had a record start to the campaign and we are on target and will continue to drive towards that target of $8 billion of visitor expenditure by 2020.