South Australian Trade and Investment Office, USA

The Hon. I.K. HUNTER (14:40): Will the minister also advise whether the staff employed in the South Australian office will be solely working for the South Australian office or whether they will also be working for offices provided by other jurisdictions, commonwealth or state?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (14:40): The way it works is—I think the honourable member may have asked me this in the past—they will be working for us, but for people to be working in Austrade with all the clearances they are actually, if you like, Austrade employees but they work for South Australia. They will be solely responsible for supporting South Australian exporters, helping support the South Australian companies wanting to go to the US to export their goods and services and also facilitating direct investment in companies from the US that want to export here, obviously our defence sector and the space sector.

We are going to Houston, which of course is mission control for NASA. There is a massive cluster of some of the small satellite activities around there, so we see the support they will give as being second to none, and they will be based in the Austrade office.