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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-10-18 Daily Xml
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Economic Recovery Fund

Mr FULBROOK (Playford) (14:52): My question is to the Treasurer. Can the Treasurer update the house on the Economic Recovery Fund?

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee—Treasurer) (14:52): Indeed I can. It gives me great pleasure to report to the house that today the Deputy Premier and I, as she alluded to in her answer, were present at a breakfast where not only was the Advanced Manufacturing Strategy released but the government was also able to announce that the first rounds of the Economic Recovery Fund are being deployed.

Mr Cowdrey: It took a while. It was meant to be months ago.

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The member for Colton says, 'It took a while. It was meant to be months ago,' and indeed he is correct, and the reason why it has not been done to date is because, when we committed this funding from opposition when we committed that we would need an Economic Recovery Fund to help sectors of the economy recover from the period of COVID, we did not anticipate that the state's economy would perform as strongly as it has over the last 18 months—lowest unemployment rate on record.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN: The lowest unemployment rate on record—958,000 South Australians in work, tens and tens of thousands more than in March last year; an improved participation rate, the highest levels of private new capital expenditure on record, and very strong population growth as well. So, if you are looking at providing supports to facilitate economic growth and recovery you probably do not need to deploy it in the middle of the most substantial economic boost that this state has seen for a very, very long time.

However, as I have said to this place every time I have reported that the state's economy is performing very strongly, we should not assume that these extraordinary economic achievements are going to continue unabated into the future. There are gathering global and national economic headwinds—not only caused, of course, by soaring inflation across our country, and indeed across most economies in the world, and the resultant extraordinary rapid increases in the Reserve Bank's cash rate and the resultant increase in interest rates on South Australian and Australian households and businesses, but we are seeing, of course, not only more localised geopolitical tensions but more global tensions occurring.

All of that creates at the very least headwinds of uncertainty, if not real economic headwinds. We are already starting to see softening of economic data here in Australia, particularly the value of building and construction work done and dwelling approvals and so on. Now is a good time to be deploying supports to South Australian businesses that have a mind to expanding their operations to employing more South Australians into the future.

Our first two rounds, as the Deputy Premier was alluding to before, go to manufacturing and advanced manufacturing, and she has articulated thoroughly why that is a good prospect, but also tourism. While our state has been shooting the lights out in tourism figures particularly over the last 18 months, while we have led the nation in terms of providing major events and attracting more people to South Australia, we have also identified that we want to see more tourism infrastructure established particularly across regional South Australia.

The tourism side of the Economic Recovery Fund we hope will see businesses looking to expand tourism accommodation in regional centres and perhaps infrastructure to support tourism experiences like cellar doors. People can nominate their projects up to December 15, and the information is available on the government website.

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