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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-02-23 Daily Xml
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Wine Industry

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (15:23): It is true to say that a bottle of wine is like a story: that is the extraordinary complexity that a glass of wine can impart on a consumer. It is the story of taste, of course, but also of soil, of weather, of region and of many other factors that contribute to the finished product in one year's harvest. Being a producer of quality grapes is just as complex as the wine itself, and it is rarely smooth sailing for the wine industry in South Australia.

There are peaks and there are certainly troughs, but the challenge to produce a product that is worthy of some of our great South Australian brands, some of our great Barossa and Adelaide Hills brands, is really just all part of the fun—whether it is getting up at dawn to turn the water on, or pruning for days and days on end, or diligently checking the baumé each and every day, or (if you are as fortunate as me) spending your summers having the fantastic job of rubbing off shoots throughout the vineyard.

In the Barossa, and across the Adelaide Hills, in many ways our wine is our lifeblood. It is grown, it is harvested, and it is enjoyed as a really quality end product. The wine industry, like all primary producing industries, can really be turned on its head overnight through no fault of its own. It is an industry that for decades has really been able to deal with the culminating impacts of changing drinking habits, of freight and labour shortages, and weather events, of course. It builds resolve and many shoulder this and all of these challenges without complaint. It is just part of being in the industry.

Certainly in my community of the Barossa, we have wineries and growers who have been through difficult times and risen again including—and I have seen it firsthand in my own family—my generational farming family. After speaking with quite a few growers around the Barossa recently as we are heading into vintage, it is becoming clearer and clearer that right now we are perhaps living through one of the most challenging times that our wine industry has seen for generations. It is that flow-on impact of China's really devastating trade tariffs imposed in 2019-20 that has led to a wine export glut of 600 million litres. That is 600 million litres worth of wine with nowhere to go, no market to sell it to and, if so, a very small one.

Certainly it is the most challenging time since the vine pull of the seventies and eighties where grapegrowers were paid by the state government to remove vines to overcome a grape glut and ultimately to leave the wine industry. It was Peter Lehmann who was a central figure in all of this, who said, 'Stuff it. I'll look after you. You come with me on a handshake deal and I'll buy your grapes under an arrangement called the futures,' where growers trusted him with their grapes on the understanding that he would pay for them in just two years' time.

This year, decades after the vine pull, many local growers in the Barossa and the northern Adelaide Hills again have no home for their grapes due to this extenuating and super large surplus. Generational grapegrowers may be forced to leave this year's harvest on the vine, left to shrivel in the heat because there are already so many harvests that have built up in storage, built up in the vats, and many of them just will not be sold. The impact that this has on my community is enormous: the impact on livelihoods, lost jobs, lost incomes and getting out of the industry that they love and the industry that has really built our region and put it on the national stage.

That is why the government cannot just throw its hands up in the air and say that it is all too hard. It has been said that Australia's current malaise will ultimately be resolved by the usual forces of supply and demand which drive prices down in times of surplus, but naturally those market truths are little comfort for those who cannot make ends meet. As an industry, with the support of government, we must find new markets so that this does not repeat itself—this huge reliance on one market.

We need to see this Labor government putting wine back on the agenda again and start talking about how important this is to regional South Australia and to our state as a whole. We need government to be prepared to stump up financial support for market access or market acceleration. In the meantime, let's get behind the local industry by enjoying a nice drop, particularly from the Barossa or the northern Adelaide Hills.

We will bounce back. Our industry is one of resilience, but we cannot take it for granted. We cannot take our wine industry for granted, and that is why I want the government to be pushing harder. We need strong friends and strong voices here on North Terrace and, as the proud member for Schubert, the member for the Barossa, I certainly am one of them and I encourage other members to join me as well.

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