House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-11-27 Daily Xml

Contents

TOURISM

Mr MARSHALL (Norwood—Leader of the Opposition) (14:40): I have a supplementary question on that. Can the minister tell the house about the impact to the tourism sector in his electorate of the state government's decision to remove the cellar door rebate?

The Hon. I.F. EVANS: A point of order, Mr Speaker. They have four minutes to answer the question, not four minutes to decide who is going to answer the question.

The SPEAKER: The member for Davenport is warned for the second time.

The Hon. M.F. O'BRIEN (Napier—Minister for Finance, Minister for Police, Minister for Correctional Services, Minister for Emergency Services, Minister for Road Safety) (14:40): An analysis was done and it concluded that the impact would be minimal. What we were finding was that there were a large number of direct mail operations, not all based in South Australia, that were receiving the cellar door subsidy when the reality was they were not operating cellar doors. The major recipients, from memory, were direct mail operators.

We thought it was financially prudent to remove that, because the intent of the cellar door subsidy is to encourage tourists, in particular, to go to cellar doors. South Australian Treasury is not a bottomless pit, although from the tone or inference of the question one would assume so. It was a financially prudent move. Our modelling showed minimal impact, and I have not received any advice that the outcome has been any different from what the modelling led us to.