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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-03-06 Daily Xml
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Wine Industry

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (15:21): I rise to talk about the state of the wine industry in South Australia and no more so than the industry up in the Riverland, which is in crisis at the moment. To give you a bit of an overview of what the Riverland wine industry represents nationally, it is an industry that is currently exporting to 70 countries. The vintages have been in decline since 2021, when we had record vintages of almost 560,000 tonnes, going down to 500,000 tonnes in 2022 and 400,000 tonnes in 2023. The vintage this year is expected to be one of the all-time lows. That is down $134 million or the equivalent of 32 per cent of the industry.

The area planted is about 20,500 hectares. That is a significant investment by family farms and some corporates, but the crisis that the industry is now facing has been borne by the Riverland at front and centre. Just recently, I attended a town meeting at Barmera, at the Barmera Club. It was set up by Riverland Wine. There were about 175 growers that are on the cusp of collapse. Many were not there; they were not able to come out and face exactly what they are about to encounter over the next couple of years.

The industry in the Riverland represents about 62 per cent of all of South Australia's wine and 34 per cent of the total Australian crush. That represents about 930 enterprises. Currently, some of the headwinds that we are facing have been very well documented. The issue with China, the tariffs put on wine products, has been only a part of it. Obviously, we have been through COVID, and that has seen a disconnect of consumers with mainstream markets. It has seen a disconnect with logistics companies, sea freight and air freight.

What that has meant is a continuing impact on the wine industry. They are a tough breed in the Riverland industry, a tough bunch, but it is an industry that is back on its knees. As a wine grapegrower through the late nineties into the 2000s and beyond, I have been through the good and I have been through the bad. I understand the complexities of the downturn and the opportunities that the wine industry presents.

But at the moment the growers are returning something which is a pittance of the cost of production, somewhere in the vicinity of between $120 and $150 per tonne. The majority of those stressed assets are red wine grapes. What we saw at that Barmera meeting were, I guess, ideas put to industry, put to some government representatives, and it was very disappointing not to see any or very few government representatives who were actually there to help make decisions for an industry that is facing such a crisis.

If I look around South Australia, in some way, shape or form anyone who is a grapegrower, a processor or a marketer is under severe stress at the moment, no more so than those in the Riverland. What we have done as a collective group, and myself as the representative, is we have put ideas to government, to industry, and there are short-term ideas, there are long-term ideas.

I would like to see local government step up with rate relief as a short-term measure. The state government must make sure that they fund Rural Business Support, they must fund the FaB Scout program. They are organisations that are looking after the mental health of our growers. They are organisations that are able to give advice on financial planning, and their funding is under question by this current state government at the moment, so I urge the Premier and his ministers to support them.

The state government have more to do on that. We need more trade missions, inbound and outbound, so that we can bolster our traditional markets but also create new markets. The federal government also have a role to play. Structural adjustment for the long term is an issue that needs to be addressed. We need to either sell more wine or we need to reduce the number of plantings. They need to represent the industry as one and we need to see a code of conduct. We know that the duopoly supermarkets are reaping the benefits, reaping the rewards, of the very vulnerable wine industry at the moment.

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