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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-11-27 Daily Xml
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Trade, Tourism and Investment Department

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:03): I seek leave to make brief explanation before asking the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment a question regarding contracting arrangements with DTTI.

Leave granted.

The Hon. J.E. HANSON: According to the DTTI annual report, the department is engaged in more than $120,000 of consultancy work with TBWA. Three separate projects were identified: immersion, research and analysis, strategy, identity and naming project; the DTTI production material; and activation of services regarding the Tokyo office opening in March 2019.

TBWA is the Victorian firm that the SATC has contracted for marketing creative—the Victorian firm that is also responsible, of course, for the disastrous 'old mate' campaign and providing advice on how to sell SA to the world. My questions to the minister are:

1. What exactly are the nature of these projects and what was the procurement process for them?

2. Is the work provided by TBWA for these projects finished or completed or are they still ongoing?

3. Has TBWA been given any other work by DTTI in this financial year?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (15:05): I thank the honourable member for his question. It's interesting, Mr President: TBWA of course is a company that has set up an office in South Australia, employing South Australians and doing work in South Australia, so it's interesting there is always this sort of, if you like, negative undertone about attracting a company to come to South Australia to set up here and employ South Australians. Nonetheless, the members opposite are entitled to their opinion. I am also intrigued, Mr President, that the member opposite talks in his question about the disastrous 'old mate' campaign, which actually provided record—and I repeat, record—hits on the website. The current data shows—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: It is interesting the members opposite laugh when things are going really well. That's their only response. It is $7.6 billion to the visitor economy, and the members opposite laugh. They are a joke, Mr President, an absolute joke. In relation to—

Members interjecting:

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Mr President, I know it's out of order to respond to interjections, but I'm going to just respond to one—

The PRESIDENT: No, you just said it's out of order, right? Don't declare it's out of order and then say, 'I'm going to do it,' because you know what happens.

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY: Mr President—okay, I will take your advice. I'm sure a proper procurement process would have been followed. When he talked about the three projects, I am not aware of all of the details on two of them, but the Tokyo office launch was an important event that we needed to have some quality branding to make a splashback in the market. We had the Governor, the Hon. Hieu Van Le, up there. We had our ambassador. We had a very high-powered group of Tokyo and Japanese business people together, so we wanted to make sure we had an excellent offering for South Australia when we were up there. I know that was particularly good.

The other two projects—I will bring some advice back on exactly those two projects. I don't know whether the work is complete and whether some work is ongoing. Of course, we had a new agency form after a change of machinery, changes of government, last year on 1 July. There is a process that you need to go through of rebranding and re-establishing and repositioning that particular department, so there was always going to be some expenses around that, and I expect some of that work will still be carried on.

I'm not sure whether TBWA will be having that work or whether there's another agency, but of course we have our new growth state, our growth agenda, that members will be seeing a lot more of over the next couple of years. There will be some work done by a range of government agencies and non-government agencies as we tell the story about the great economic opportunities that lie ahead for South Australia.

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