Export Recovery Taskforce

The Hon. D.G.E. HOOD (14:47): My question is to the Minister for Trade and Investment. Can the minister update the council about the Export Recovery Taskforce and what role the government is playing in supporting exporters?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade and Investment) (14:47): I thank the honourable member for his question and his ongoing interest in some of the really big challenges that face South Australian exporters. As I discussed last sitting week, we were going to establish an Export Recovery Taskforce. It met for the first time on 27 March and it was a chance to hear from, especially, exporters that have been dealt the toughest blow, shall we say, with the cessation of international airfreight. Depending on the time of year, about 48 to 52 international flights a week leave Adelaide Airport and nearly all of them have some fresh produce: seafood, fresh meat, fruit and veg and a whole range of things.

It was good to get the industry representatives together, and there was some good advice. Some of the markets were starting to open up again. There was some demand for lobsters back in China and there were still some orders coming from some of the markets. However, the lack of airfreight capacity out of Adelaide had caused some very understandable delays and disruptions to supply chains. Clearly, road freight and sea freight are pretty much unaffected and some of the airfreight that could go by sea has now gone by sea.

We asked the task force to come together and have a look at the volume they might have so that we could possibly look at the potential for consolidating freight. I think the most important thing, at this time, is that everybody across the industry, whether government, exporters or freight forwarders, will need to work together to keep all parts of the supply chain working smoothly.

This morning we had a second meeting. As members would be well aware, last week the federal government and the federal Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment, the Hon. Simon Birmingham, announced a $110 million initiative to help Australian exporters. At today's meeting we had some collation of the actual freight task that we were looking down the barrel at, and it was great to have some advice from Mr Michael Byrne, the National Transportation Coordinator, who is heading up the International Freight Assistance Mechanism.

That was good because Mr Byrne was chief executive of Toll Holdings for 20 years, was on the board of Australia Post and had worked in the horticultural sector as well, so he has a particularly good understanding of logistics. As he said, he was not looking to get a perfect system but a system that would get freight moving as quickly as possible.

The model the federal government has been talking about is a hub-and-spoke approach with four major departure hubs: Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. South Australian exporters can register their interest through the commonwealth Department of Agriculture's haveyoursay.agriculture.gov.au site because the main focus is supporting our markets in China, Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, and to a lesser extent the UAE, Europe and the US.

As I said, this morning we had a further briefing from Mr Byrne. One of the big take-outs from that meeting is that there would be opportunities to hub and spoke out of Melbourne. There would be an opportunity, if we could get sufficient volume together, for a plane to originate from South Australia and fly direct to a market. After today's meeting, the sector has gone away. We know roughly the tonnages they can expect over the next three to six months to see whether there is some common interest in trying to charter or get planes to go to various markets, so hopefully the sector will be able to report back to me sometime next week.

It is great to have Mr Byrne in this role because having this national coordination role is particularly important. He also expressed that they have gone out to tender for a national freight forwarder, which I think will close tomorrow or the next day and they should have that freight forwarder in place by the end of the week. Then they will have a panel of five people who will be there for exporters to lodge their applications to get support, whether it is a state government to support a flight on its own with 30-odd tonnes of freight or whether it is individual exporters saying, 'I need to freight it to Melbourne,' they will actually pay this part of the spread differently. They won't pay all of the cost but it will certainly make access a little easier.

I also wanted to say that in these difficult times, I keep shadow minister Zoe Bettison well briefed on what is going on. Also to the members here who aren't part of the opposition, my office remains open and my phone is always on. If you want more information, please don't hesitate to give me a call.