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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-07-03 Daily Xml
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Overseas Trade Offices

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (16:00): My question is to the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment. Will the minister detail the key performance indicators or performance targets of overseas trade offices and the key performance indicators and performance targets they will be expected to reach and maintain as a measure of their worth and economic gain that they will bring to the state of South Australia?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (16:00): I thank the honourable member for his keen interest in overseas trade offices. He has always been interested, I suspect, in things that happen overseas. In relation to the overseas trade offices, the targets and KPIs (key performance indicators) he talked about, as I mentioned, it is only 3 July today, so it is three days that the new agency has been in place. I have not yet had a formal meeting with the chief executive in relation to that, but I assure the honourable member that we will be an outcome-focused government.

I think we saw last time that the trade minister was probably more input focused, rather than output focused. We had the large trade missions—200-plus people on these trade missions. I am advised that there is a figure of some 300 MOUs signed by the last government—maybe not all attributable to the former trade minister. Very few of those have delivered any outcomes. But, it would be seen at the time that we had signed 10 MOUs on this particular trade mission and we had done a great job, but they have not amounted to very much at all, although one or two have.

It was interesting: I remember the Hon. Gail Gago signed one to establish two clean food centres in Fushun. I asked questions, sitting where the Hon. Kyam Maher is, as opposition leader about that and was hauled over the coals by the minister the next day, met the chief executive and was told that I was damaging business and damaging China. Well, these things never, ever happened. However, I will add that there were two young gentlemen from, I think, the Hon. Vincent Tarzia's electorate who have a winery and have just opened a cellar door in Fushun as a result of that, so it took about seven years and one business was able to open a cellar door there.

So we will be focused on outcomes; we will have some clear goals, but we want to grow the economy and grow the number of international students, grow the number of immigrants to grow the population, grow exports and grow tourism numbers. So there is a whole range of targets and KPIs that we will set, but none have been set at this point.

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