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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-12-03 Daily Xml
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Wine Exports

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (15:22): We have sat in parliament for three days and not once has the Minister for Trade and Investment acknowledged the devastating news we heard on Friday 27 November. On that day, we heard that China had announced the tariffs against our wine. There is complete shock in the industry and disbelief about the severity of these tariffs, from 107 per cent to 212 per cent.

We saw Treasury Wine Estates going to a sudden trading halt because of this news, yet there is absolutely no sense of urgency from the Marshall Liberal government. Three days we have sat in parliament and we have had two Dorothy Dixers about things that were announced back in September about programs that currently operate. The Labor leader and myself on Friday called for an immediate task force to be called for wine exporters in South Australia, to bring them together, to understand what we could do as a state to support them.

We know that they are making decisions already. We know that people are having to cut staff. They are going to have to reduce contracts in regard to grapes for the wine industry. We know they are going to have to cancel the bottle runs as well. These are immediate impacts. But what do we have from the government? Silence. Absolute silence about what they are doing for our wine exporters. Let's remind ourselves how important this is to South Australia because South Australia is more exposed than any other state to this tariff hike.

Currently, South Australia exports more than $700 million worth of wine a year to China. We make up the majority of the Australian wine exports, which is at $1.2 billion. In fact, 30 per cent of all of South Australia's exports is wine to China. This is a provisional response to the anti-dumping measures until August next year, then they may well become permanent.

The reality is that it is going to be unviable, as declared by Brian Smedley, Chief Executive of the South Australian Wine Industry Association, for our exporters to send our wine to China. So what can we do? What should we be doing? We know that we have to diversify the markets we send our wine to, but you cannot diversify your market overnight.

The reality is we are not ready for this. While there is no doubt at all that the tariff was at an extreme amount—much higher than everyone expected—there is no plan in place here. There is no preparation for what we were going to do when this happened, and this is simply not good enough. We saw what happened to the US market from 2016 when their tariffs went up and it is just unforgivable that here in South Australia, where we are more exposed than any other state because of what we export to China, we were not prepared.

We do not have a support package for this industry. We did not have plans in place of how we were going to support these producers. I say to the Minister for Trade and Investment: step up. Show leadership. This is why you have this role. This is why you have this position. There are 8,400 people employed in the grape and wine industry and their jobs are stake. You must act now.

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