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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-09-03 Daily Xml
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Wine Industry

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (15:26): I rise today to speak about the concerns that the South Australian wine industry is facing at the moment. The uncertain future of the commercial wine sector has never been more apparent.

Today a bill to amend the Wine Grapes Industry Act 1991 will be introduced to the Legislative Council. It is about an indicative price. This indicative price amendment bill raises many questions with very few answers at the moment. We have a politician, an Independent, who is going to present this bill to the Legislative Council with little to no consultation with the industry.

What I am worried about is that we have government spruiking that the wine industry is in great shape. We have the minister telling everyone that we are seeing record amounts of wine hitting our global markets. But the premium end of the wine industry is going okay; 80 per cent of premium wine into China is Penfolds. So what about the smaller players? What about the other sectors of the wine industry? None is more important that the engine room of the wine industry, the Riverland. We know that the commercial wine grapegrowers have been doing it extremely tough for the last three to four years. Many of them have not returned the cost of production, many of them are now on Farm Household Allowance.

Many of them are facing a very uncertain future, yet this amendment to the Wine Grapes Industry Act also paints a very uncertain picture. Many of the wine industry representative bodies that I have spoken to over the last couple of days have no idea what this bill means. What does it mean to the Riverland? But what does it mean to the cooler areas? What does it mean to the overall wine industry here in South Australia? So I am very concerned that we have one politician, we have a small group of wine grapegrowers who are supporting this amendment, but the rest of the industry have not been consulted, not at all. I fear it will create division between wine grape growing regions. It will create division between winemakers, as it will with wineries.

We have seen the government come out today banging their chests about the wine bottle container deposit scheme. That, again, is another burden on an industry that is on its knees. If you do your sums—450,000 tonnes out of the Riverland multiplied by 850 bottles per tonne—that is a lot of bottles, and it is a lot of cost that will be passed on to the consumer. Maybe it will be absorbed by the grower, maybe it will be absorbed by the winery but, again, this is just painting another uncertain picture to a sector that is critically important to South Australia's economy.

South Australia has long been the champion of winemaking, and here in South Australia we have a number of sectors that contribute to the overall picture of the wine industry. Yes, the premium industry is a beautiful part of the wine world, but the critical and essential part of the wine industry is the engine room. It is the commercial sector, it is the sector that provides affordable drinking wine to middle class, aspirant people. We see there is a global decline in demand for that sector and that is really hurting the Riverland, so to see today that there will be an amendment to the Wine Grapes Industry Act again paints a more uncertain future.

Will the indicative price be a valuable tool in the toolbox? Potentially yes, it will, but for a politician, driven by a small group of growers, to go out there with no wide consultation with industry to bring industry with it to actually help support a sector that is on its knees? As I said, the commercial wine sector, the warm, inland growing regions of South Australia, produces the lion's share of the volume of wine here in South Australia; they produce the lion's share of wine nationally. However, what we are seeing today is that we have an amendment to the wine grape act that potentially paints a more uncertain picture than what everyone within the industry needs.

It is unfortunate that the Independent Sarah Game has moved the way she has. Not even a phone call. As I said, I have spoken to industry, I have spoken to many, many grapegrowers who are very concerned about the level of uncertainty the introduction of this bill will mean to their business.

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