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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-06-16 Daily Xml
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Limestone Coast Tourism

S.E. ANDREWS (Gibson) (14:57): My question is to the Minister for Tourism. How is the government working with tourism operators in the Limestone Coast to grow jobs and the state's visitor economy?

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Tourism, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:58): I thank the member for Gibson for her interest in this area. Along with the members of the Malinauskas Labor government, I was delighted to spend time in the Limestone Coast last week. It is one of the most beautiful places in South Australia. I have been down there fairly regularly, and I am delighted to meet again and again with the people involved in tourism.

There are more than 800 businesses involved in tourism in the Limestone Coast. I suggested that we get together for a round table, and I would like to thank the member for Mount Gambier, who is listening, I am sure, and his office for assisting me to get that group together, as well as Biddie Shearing, who has been a Limestone Coast tourism lead for quite some time. She shared with me that she is moving on to get a job with the Mount Gambier council. Tourism will still be part of her focus, but we wish her well in that new form.

There were more than 20 people who joined me for that round table, and it was a really diverse group of people from all areas of the Limestone Coast. Some were involved in wine tourism, experiences and accommodation, the arts community and agritourism as well.

While it has been an incredibly challenging time, and I have spoken in this house many times of the uncertainty that tourism operators have felt in the past two years, I have to say there was incredible optimism. People who are involved in tourism love what they do. They love talking to South Australians and people from interstate, and eventually, more and more, people from overseas will come back, and they love showing them what we have to offer here.

There is great optimism but, no doubt at all, there are some challenges as well, and skill shortages are something—I don't need to tell people here that tourism and hospitality, but also agriculture have had some challenges around getting people. This has been particularly hard in tourism, where the uncertainty meant people exited the industry and found other jobs in other industries. Therefore, we are very keen to get them back.

That's why in the budget there was additional money for TIC SA (Tourism Industry Council of South Australia). We have put another $400,000 per year with two areas of focus; the first is business capacity and capability building. They do some fantastic work building on what they did before, but during COVID, of providing training, often online, from people all over South Australia, just in time training, particularly when it came to keeping people safe during COVID, but about increasing their bookability and their accessibility as well.

While we were down in the Limestone Coast, we had the opportunity, not just at the community cabinet, which I think more than 300 people attended—it was a magnificent event—to go out, and I went to the Kilsby Sinkhole. For those of you who have been there before, it's an amazing natural sinkhole in a bit of farmland. Graham and Jo spent time to talk to me about the asset they have.

There are very serious cave divers who go down there, and our police train down there every year as well. While cave diving is not for most of us, anyone can snorkel and so they have incredible attractions to do there. They are looking forward to increasing their accommodation. I had a great time talking to them and I highly recommend their Sinkhole gin.

The SPEAKER: The member for Frome.

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