China Trade Sanctions

The Hon. H.M. GIROLAMO (15:12): My question is to the Treasurer. Can the Treasurer please update the house on the relative impact of China's trade restrictions on the value of overseas exports from South Australia?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (15:12): Excellent question. The issue of China trade sanctions on all states and territories in Australia as a nation is obviously a critical one, but particularly important for South Australia, given the relative importance of wine in terms of our overseas goods exports. I am pleased to be able to report that on the most recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics through to July 2021, South Australia's overseas goods exports were up 19 per cent on the previous 12 months, a moving annual total, and the national comparative figure was up 9 per cent. It is pleasing to see the national figure is up 9 per cent but more pleasing to see that South Australia, in relative terms, was up 19 per cent, a much stronger performance.

As the honourable member's question alludes to, however, there are significant differential impacts. For example, in relation to our major export markets, China was down 7.3 per cent as an indicator of the potential impact of some of their transactions on our trade markets. But, importantly, our trade exports in that same period to the Philippines were up 285 per cent, India up 54 per cent, Indonesia up 86 per cent, Thailand up 55 per cent and Saudi Arabia up 369 per cent in terms of diversifying our state's export markets.

When one looks at the export commodities, the impact—in particular on wine, for example, and others—is indicative for all of us. Wine exports for that same period were down 14 per cent, clearly an indicator of the initial impact of trade sanctions from China. But, importantly, wheat was up 77 per cent, iron ore was up 80 per cent, barley was up 207 per cent, copper was up 19 per cent and lead was up 35 per cent. Our agricultural products and our resources and mining products are long-term staples of our state economy: resources is obviously growing and agriculture remains a critical part of our state's export future and they are all indicative of important areas of growth.

The final point I would like to make—and I congratulate the Premier, Minister Ridgway and now Minister Patterson, because I think one of the least publicised but most damaging policy decisions taken by the former government was the mass closure of overseas trade offices all over the world. There was a narrow focus on all things China; everything else almost was closed down, and the focus remained solely on China.

Premier (then opposition leader) Marshall identified this problem. As someone with a business background and who had been involved in export, this just wasn't the way for a small state like South Australia to set itself up for growth, so one of the very earliest decisions—again, probably least publicised but one of the most valuable—was to reverse that policy decision of the former government and to open up new trade offices all over the world, and actually to appoint people who were going to add value to those trade offices in terms of trying to generate export markets and export contracts for us.

We can no longer rely, given the decision of a global giant like China, to be the sole saviour in terms of overseas trade for South Australia. We have to diversify and the fact that in many of those other jurisdictions, and in some of the newer areas where we are continuing to work and work hard—the United States, for example, with trade offices there, and Japan. We have seen some pleasing publicity from Japan in relation to fish product and also the ambassador, I think, when he visited Adelaide said that if China doesn't want to drink quality South Australian wine there are plenty of Japanese who are looking forward to the prospect. These are the sorts of markets we have to look forward to if we are going to grow our overseas trade exports.