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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-03-06 Daily Xml
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SAVOUR AUSTRALIA 2013

Mrs GERAGHTY (Torrens) (14:40): My question is to the Minister for Tourism. Can the minister provide an update to the house on new events happening in South Australia?

Mr Venning: Barossa Wine Train.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport) (14:40): Close. It's about wine. I would like to thank the member for Torrens for her question and her contribution to the wine industry, too, as a consumer. Today it gave me great pleasure to join with the Premier, the Minister for Agriculture and representatives from Wine Australia to announce to the public that Wine Australia has chosen South Australia to hold a very significant wine conference here in September.

Adelaide has been chosen to host the first global Australian wine forum from 15 to 18 September. Eight hundred delegates will be coming to South Australia for this; 40 per cent of the delegates will come from North America, about 30 per cent from Asia (predominately from China) and 25 per cent from the UK and Europe, and then the remainder from Australia (about 5 per cent). It will be a great place to help promote South Australia's clean green food and wine culture of which we are all so proud. It will also enable us to dovetail tourism in there. We will have 100 of the world's leading wine people in terms of sommeliers, wine journalists, lifestyle journalists, distributors and winemakers, and of course the captains of industry, from around the world.

It will be a four-day, three-night conference here in Adelaide. They are looking at hosting one big function for all 800 people and then having lots of breakout groups as well in iconic buildings—

Mr Venning interjecting:

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: —including the State Library and perhaps even here in Parliament House. The member for Schubert is yelling out, 'Get them up to the Barossa'; that is exactly what we intend to do, member for Schubert. After the four days are over we want people to get out into the regions because there is no place better to taste the food and drink the wine of our great state than in situ. We have fantastic backdrops. If we can get people over to Kangaroo Island, get them up to the Riverland, to Coonawarra, Padthaway—

Mr van Holst Pellekaan: The Flinders Ranges.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: Flinders Ranges—the southern Flinders Ranges wine region; Bundaleer has fantastic wines—and of course, Langhorne Creek, Port Lincoln. Let's get them over to Port Lincoln, where we have some great little wineries popping up over there and making really good wines. It is interesting that I was in Port Lincoln last week and I gave them a bit of a heads up that this might be happening and if we can get them on the Seafood Trail, that is one of the best gourmet travel and food trails anywhere in Australia.

There are people flying in by the plane load to do gourmet travel weekends. They start drinking the champagne in Sydney or Melbourne when they take off and they land and they are taken around. Not only do they get to eat the abalone, kingfish and the tuna, but they are shown how it is caught, how it is cut and everything else.

The member for Finniss, there is also a growing wine industry on Kangaroo Island with some of the best and freshest food you will find anywhere in the world. These are the attributes, not just the physical but also the food and wine, that we really want to show off to these delegates. It will cost the government about half a million dollars to host this event but, in terms of the return just for those four days, the economic input from the delegates will be about $3 million.

That figure will increase obviously for the regional trips that they will undertake, but the great benefit will be in the long term as South Australia and Adelaide are recognised as Australia's wine and food capital. I should also mention that we will be taking people to McLaren Vale. It is an area close to my heart. I did not want to leave out McLaren Vale after naming all those wine regions; that would have been an error.

Mr Venning interjecting:

The SPEAKER: I call the member for Schubert to order and I warn the member for Kavel for the first time. He was particularly rowdy during the early part of that answer.

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