Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-03-25 Daily Xml

Contents

Coronavirus

The Hon. K.J. MAHER (Leader of the Opposition) (14:39): Supplementary arising from the answer: can the minister outline which specific areas he was able to inform his colleagues from around Australia that South Australia has specific capabilities in terms of manufacturing goods or equipment that will be needed?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade and Investment) (14:39): We didn't go into a lot of detail. Obviously we have people like Bickfords, which is now focused on making quite a large amount of alcohol for hand sanitiser; in fact, there is an article in one of the Queensland papers about Bickfords and Bundaberg and the Beenleigh distilleries, and we have seen Shane Warne, who will give up making gin and make hand sanitiser. I think that's something we will see the team at Bickfords doing out in northern Adelaide where they have that new manufacturing facility.

We have some capability emerging now for the manufacture of surgical masks. However, it is really for the senior officials to sit around behind the scenes, talk about what the capabilities are, and make sure we don't duplicate our efforts.