Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I appreciate you being here to listen to me. I know that you would much prefer to be listening to the maiden speech of the member for Gellibrand, and it seems from Twitter that it is a very good maiden speech indeed. So we are both missing out while we do this important work for the wine industry.

As the previous member said, the wine industry's future is very, very closely aligned with broader lifestyle economies. By that I mean an alignment with tourism and an alignment with the creative industries. That is where we are going to find great synergies in the wine industry. Only recently I was at Seppeltsfield, which is a great winery in my electorate and has been for many, many years. But now it is a winery in transition, because they are very, very closely aligning themselves with this type of creative economy. With the assistance of grants from the previous government, they have managed to reach an agreement with the JamFactory, a creative arts organisation in South Australia, to sell their products on site and, very shortly, another grant will help them completely transform their cellar-door area. It is an area currently covered in bitumen, built for the old days when you had large bus tours coming in. That area is now going to be opened up, beautified, and of course there will be a restaurant put in as well. So they are really building on what is a very, very beautiful and unique part of the world, and trying to make a unique experience for the people who go to that winery.

And it is not just about buying wine but maybe buying a good set of handcrafted knives—there is a knife-maker who is going to be a visiting artist—or a lovely piece of glass from these wonderful artists from the JamFactory. While they are there, of course, they will be having a meal as well. It is that sort of experience, I think, that is part of the wine industry weathering what is a difficult time in its history.

There are a couple of challenges. Obviously the high dollar is a huge challenge for exporters—and I know that the speaker to come knows something about that in her electorate. There is not a group of people in manufacturing—and wineries are included in that—who are not suffering not just from having a high dollar but also from having import competition from countries with artificially low currencies, often currencies that have been depreciated either because of the state of their economies or by deliberate government action. That is evident, I think, in the government of Japan and other economies around the world.

So we do have a very great challenge with the dollar and that does inhibit our ability to export. It is a bigger problem than is acknowledged by the political debate. I think we have been, to a certain extent, sidetracked away from a debate on the currency because there is no-one to blame. It is a debate and an economic problem where we have to, largely, search for solutions together, rather than blame one another for it. It is the result of many of the economic difficulties that this country and its manufacturers face.

Fortunately, I think the wine industry has a way out of a high dollar—a sticky dollar—and that is to move up the price scale. For too long, our industry was built on very cheap—high quality, but nevertheless cheap—exports to places like the UK and America. We competed on quality, to be sure, but we also competed largely on price. If there is a challenge for the industry, I think it is not just selling a lot of wine but selling wine for a good price, because we know that the consumers, whether they be here or around the world, will pay higher prices for a premium product. That is a critical challenge for the industry. You see many wineries doing that and using that as a way of dealing with what is a difficult set of currency arrangements between us and the rest of the world. We really need to come to grips with the facts of our currency. There is no doubt that it is overvalued, and there is no doubt that some of that is about other currencies, currency traders, reserve banks and the like investing in our currency because it has become a bit of a safe haven in the world.

The wine industry also has to deal with the issue of what is commonly called a glut. Of course the best way to resolve that is through greater sales, but it is continuing to cause some issues. Like I said, that last issue—that last piece of the puzzle—is a greater alignment with our food industries and our creative industries to create great synergies where people do not just come to visit a winery but come for a great meal, a great piece of art, a great bottle of wine and a great experience. That is invaluable, and that is why people are prepared to pay for it.

When I spoke on this bill when it came to the House in June of this year, I went through many of the framework issues of the bill. I do not think I will necessarily repeat all of those, but this was a bill that was the subject of industry and government collaboration. It is supported by both sides of parliament, so it is a happy piece of legislation. It is the sort of work that, I think, all of our constituents long for, even though it does not necessarily create as much attention as those things that we argue about.

The great virtue of this is in the peak bodies of the industry coming together and calling for reform and governments consulting with them—taking their interests into account, creating a proposal for a single new authority that takes on the functions and powers of the two previous authorities and creating a body that is better aligned with the future of the industry and a whole-of-industry strategy. Of course there are great benefits to aligning the strategy: better service delivery mechanisms and administrative efficiency gains. They are an important thing for any industry and, of course, they are an important thing for the wine industry.

The consultation process was pretty deliberate and pretty comprehensive. I have heard of no complaints about it in my electorate. I think it was comprehensive. That is reflected in the reintroduction of this bill by the current government. There are only a few bills that have survived the transition to government but this is one of them, and it is because of the important and noncontroversial functions of this bill.

The previous speaker said that the wine industry was one of Australia's progressive industries, and I actually agree with him. There is a great deal of creativity and earthy know-how in this industry. There are people in it who are really ingenious and have created an industry that combines our rural world with people who grow things and people who manufacture things. You see that in my electorate around the place. We have bottling plants and labelling plants in places like Freeling and Elizabeth. We have, obviously, small and large wineries in the area. They all provide employment and, I think, a great deal of passion and intellectual enjoyment—so not just pay cheques but creative and good jobs—for so many in my electorate.

So I am pleased to see that this bill is back. I look forward to its passage through the Senate and of course to the functions of this single authority for the wine industry being created. I also look forward to them providing a great strategy for the industry: prising open some of those export markets and making sure that high-value export markets are accessed by our wineries so that we might provide better jobs and better export income for Australia, even in what is a very difficult currency situation. I commend the bill to the House.

See this speech in context