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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-09-25 Daily Xml
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WINE FORUM

Mr SIBBONS (Mitchell) (14:53): My question is to the Minister for Tourism. Can the minister inform the house about the recent Savour Australia global wine forum?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport) (14:53): I thank the member for Mitchell for the question. The inaugural Savour wine forum, which brought 800 delegates to South Australia last week, has been declared an absolute success by those who came from all parts of the world, and also by local wine industry people, who say it exceeded all of their expectations. I want to thank the Premier for his involvement, and the Minister for Agriculture.

There were several events put on by the South Australian government; we were one of the sponsors, and we bid to hold the very first Savour here in South Australia because it is the right place to hold Australia's biggest ever global wine forum. We produce more than 50 per cent of Australia's premium wine and, of course, we have been doing food and wine tourism here, better than any other state, for decades.

One of the interesting things that happened during the Savour event was that Tourism Australia and Wine Australia came together to launch a new global push to attract people to come to Australia. Through Restaurant and Catering Australia, we want to get rid of that image of throwing a shrimp on the barbie and having a can of VB. We have premium food, we have premium wine, and it comes from one of the cleanest sources of food anywhere in the world.

Apart from having a fantastic set-up here at the Convention Centre, we also made sure that we got people out and about into other areas. I was at the welcoming function, along with the Minister for Agriculture, which was held in the Adelaide Central Market—a produce market that has been serving up great South Australian produce for over 140 years. The delegates were really impressed that we had the southern hemisphere's largest covered produce market, and they thought it was an ideal place to welcome all of them from around the world to our part of the world here in South Australia.

We also got people out into the regions—that's a very important thing to do. We don't want to just have people in Adelaide so, while the main structure of the conference was here in Adelaide for three days, we had them down in the member for MacKillop's area for a few days beforehand. They had a bonfire barbecue on the beach at Robe, and they spent a day at the Coonawarra.

The interesting thing about the Robe trip, member for MacKillop, was that at 8.30 on the Friday night they had an optional excursion to the Caledonian Hotel to have a cleansing ale. I am not sure how many people knocked that back, but they would have been mad if they did. They went up to the Riverland to Wilkadene Brewery, too, and they spent time on a houseboat. They were down in McLaren Vale, and I was there Sunday morning with them.

We put out in little dinghies, skippered by Mike Brown from Gemtree and Jock Harvey from Chalk Hill, and they went squidding. So, here we had people from Scandinavia, from the UK and from Dubai out squidding. They came back with seven squid—they were pretty happy with that—then they had a wine tasting, then they had a nice lunch in a cave down at Maxwell's and then they got on this big catapult and flung watermelons with Sam Temme at Wirra Wirra about 200 metres to see who could fling the watermelon the farthest.

So, all these events, they said, actually meant more than just sort of going into a wine hall and tasting wine. They forge great relationships with people here in South Australia. The economic benefit was well over $2 million for the few days that they spent in South Australia, but the ongoing economic benefit is immeasurable. This week that they had in South Australia will be worth millions and millions of dollars to our wine industry, our tourism industry and our food industry, as people continue to talk highly of the great food, wine and tourism activities that we have here in South Australia.

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