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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-04-03 Daily Xml
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Trade Mission Calendar

The Hon. C.M. SCRIVEN (16:26): I move:

That this council—

1. Condemns the government for not publicly releasing a 2019 forward calendar for trade missions;

2. Notes that the government failed to provide any adequate notice for potential exporters to participate; and

3. Calls on the government to release a forward trade mission calendar by the end of every financial year.

I rise today to highlight the importance of trade and investment to our local economy. One-fifth of the Australian workforce works in trade-related activities. Research has consistently shown that the more export opportunities we can create the more jobs will follow. That is why it is appalling that the Marshall Liberal government has scrapped a proactive trade mission policy.

What this means is that our local exporters or potential exporters have no idea what to expect. How can a local business plan to join a business mission if there is no notice to participate? Participation in an overseas trade mission needs planning to be effective—in most cases, at least more than three months of planning, so at least three months' notice in advance. In fact, smaller businesses and businesses in regional areas tell me they need more than that due to the extra complexities involved in being absent from their operations.

I note that the government has recently updated the Department for Trade, Tourism and Investment website that has trade missions listed up to mid-April this year. Even the government's commissioned report into trade, the Joyce review, recommended to have a forward calendar so that businesses can plan. Trade opportunities do not come to us; we need to be proactive and do the hard yards in selling our state to the world.

Instead, the Liberals have gone the route of small-scale trade offices. This is effectively a 'build it and they will come' strategy, but they fund these offices to a small scale with a skeleton-staffed team. It is a strategy also built around duplicating the role and function of the federally funded Austrade service. Austrade currently has 11 offices in China, including an office in Shanghai. South Australian businesses already have representation, information and consultancy support available in Shanghai without the extra cost burden to the state. This strategy is hit and miss.

I acknowledge that good staff based overseas can have merit but, equally, it can end as an expensive folly. The government should either do this policy properly, with the appropriate amount of resources, or not do it at all. The minister has adopted a strategy in overseas trade offices that locks the taxpayers of South Australia into extended costs for years and years ahead, but he cannot articulate the performance measures on which those trade offices will be judged a success. So we have a long-term financial commitment but no performance measures to know whether it is a worthwhile investment.

Port Power has a more coherent trade policy than the Liberal government. Port Power is effectively on a South Australian business mission when they play their next game in Shanghai, China, on 2 June this year. That is because they know how influential a predictable and repeated trade mission calendar is to businesses and sponsors.

Research has shown that trade missions work. In a 2017 Swinburne University study, it was found that attending a trade mission increased exports of a business, on average, by 172 per cent within 12 months—172 per cent. The same study also found that attending an overseas trade mission increased the probability of a new business becoming an exporter within 12 months by 26 per cent.

It is not rocket science. One of the minister's key roles is to ensure the department has a forward plan of outgoing overseas trade missions—trade missions that bring value back to South Australia. The minister has failed in that duty. There is no transparent, publicly available schedule of planned trade missions with which South Australian businesses can seek to become involved. He cannot articulate a trade mission plan. There is no plan. In fact, one of the first things this government did was scrap our regional trade strategies.

As we can see, there are no significant outgoing missions, nor planning for incoming missions. Businesses of South Australia thought that Liberals were their friends. Well, I am sorry to break it to them, but the minister is too busy going to his own functions and taking his own trips. In contrast, under Labor, more than 300 businesses participated in outbound trade missions to 21 countries in 2017 and 60 South Australian businesses became exporters as a result. If minister Ridgway likes his travel so much, I suggest he perhaps opens the opportunity for local businesses to go with him on those trips.

Debate adjourned on motion of Hon. D.G.E. Hood.

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