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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2021-05-26 Daily Xml
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Zou, Ms S.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS (West Torrens) (14:18): My question is to the Minister for Trade and Investment. Did the minister discuss the local rock lobster industry with Sally Zou and how the government could assist her company, Aus Food Alliance, with export opportunities when he met with her last week in Robe?

The Hon. S.J.R. PATTERSON (Morphett—Minister for Trade and Investment) (14:19): I thank the member for the question. At the meeting, of course, I had the opportunity as the Minister for Trade and Investment to talk to all the business owners there about how important the food and agricultural sector is to the state's economy.

I said that it was a $15 billion sector here in this state, and we have an ambition over the next 10 years to grow the economic impact to the state to the tune of $23 billion. That's an ambitious target. That's going to rely on working with the existing industry, listening to what they say is the way forward, and also introducing value-add processes. A topical question that I basically discussed was around market access issues.

We are having market access issues with some important sectors of our economy, whether that be wine, whether that be timber or whether that be rock lobster. I was able to take them through the $5.4 million Wine Export Recovery and Expansion Program and how that can play out with wineries in the Coonawarra, in the Limestone Coast.

Of course, that relies on expanding into other markets because there are customers in many markets for our wine, whether that be in some of our established markets—the US—or whether that be in the UK where there is certainly an appetite for our wine. These are sophisticated markets and will require a lot of work. We are not saying this is easy, but we are there to work alongside industry, to work alongside the federal government, and to help them expand.

There are also the emerging countries where wine is a great opportunity. We know that they have an appetite for our South Australian wine, whether that be in Japan, for example, or South Korea, where they show that they have that appetite. Those wineries want to grow more, and so it's about again assisting them to grow into those markets as well. Then there are the developing countries as well. India is an example.

We see great opportunity in India. It has a massive population equivalent to China. However, access into India is quite challenging. They are different to other countries and, of course, they are at the start of the journey in terms of appreciating South Australian wine. Our hope is that they will see South Australian wine as a premium product, so we can expand into there.

So you can see there are a lot of different markets that our wine exporters can go into. When you compare it to rock lobster, the challenge there is that the bulk of our rock lobster exports go into China, so effectively one market. At the moment, there are no tariffs involved in rock lobsters. The issue is around potential contamination. As a government, we are working with our rock lobster industry to get to the bottom of that to give them the best chance to prove that in fact our product coming out of South Australian waters—the cool waters of South Australia—is clean and it's a premium produce.

Of course, we will be working through those issues trying to help our rock lobster industry get access to China again, where possible. While the Chinese government and customs officials are looking at our rock lobster, if they are on the tarmac for too long in the customs ports, the live lobsters cannot survive because of the heat involved, and they wither and die and so no longer can be sold into market to customers. So that is a concerning issue, of course, and we talked through that. It was really about listening to them. It wasn't telling them, 'This is what we think you should do as a government.' It was about listening to industry so they could provide input and we as a government could assist them.

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