Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of previous speakers on this motion. It is not every day that an opportunity comes along to talk about beer in this place—and in the week of the second State of Origin game as well! What an opportunity to be a euphoric Queenslander! I am happy to report to the Chamber that the beer drinkers of Brisbane are well served. There are now 10 craft breweries in my electorate of Brisbane and counting. We obviously also have the longstanding and iconic XXXX Brewery at Milton. It has been fascinating to watch the craft brewing industry grow so quickly in the past few years. It has been especially interesting when you consider the overall trends, as the member for Hunter just described, of how Australian drinkers, particularly younger drinkers, are drinking less in total. They are clearly seeking out quality products and different brands.

Brisbane seems a natural fit for many of the new craft brewers to set up, given our great nightlife scene and the new offerings we have for clubs, pubs, live music, food, drinks and entertainment. I am very, very pleased to say how true that remains now after we won the fight earlier this year to put a stop to Labor's lock-out laws coming into force in Brisbane. Locally, we have some great and emerging new craft brewers in Brisbane—the Newstead Brewing Company, the Green Beacon Brewing Company, Aether Brewing, Fritzenberger, the Brisbane Brewing Company and Brewhouse Brisbane, amongst many others.

I have a couple of statistics, just in passing, on this very important sector. I am informed that nationally there were only about 30 craft brewers 10 years ago. That has risen to about 420 around the nation today, with a direct workforce of, I believe, over 2,000 full-time jobs. The $650 million-odd size of the economic activity of this sector contributes, I understand, $66 million in excise tax through excise duty to the federal government.

I mentioned before how fascinating it is that these craft brewers have been able to carve out a share in the domestic beer market in times when the overall volume of beer consumption is trending down. I also want to pick up on the member for Grayndler's point that there is this huge opportunity that exists for Australian craft brewers to grow their sales by considering exports to big overseas markets. This is a great opportunity to plug the free trade deals that this government has managed to strike with some of the biggest markets that there are around the globe. I do see craft brewing as a leading example of Australia's manufacturing sector. In turn, it provides growth in our agriculture and other manufacturing industries as well as hospitality and tourism, as the member for Goldstein pointed out. This growth, I should note, has been achieved with minimal assistance from government, as is often the case for agile, successful and truly sustainable businesses.

A few weeks ago, I met with Adrian Slaughter and Marc Christmas, the owners of Green Beacon Brewing Company. Green Beacon stands out, not only as a successful brewery, but a very successful business. Over a couple of years now, they have grown from just a handful of staff to almost 30, with further big expansion plans underway. Last year, they won Champion Medium Brewery of the year and the Champion Specialty Beer award for their Bourbon Barrel Strong Ale at the Craft Beer Awards. This year, at the AIBA—Australian International Beer Awards—they won Champion Small Australian Brewery of the year. I can tell you right now that Adrian and Marc are passionate about their business, passionate about Brisbane and passionate about beer and they deserve all of our congratulations for their success.

I come from small business and have spent much of my career fighting for small business. We had a long and detailed conversation about the challenges that craft brewers face—the complexities of their tax regime, the competitive neutrality issues both within their industry and between different alcohol types and just the general challenges that there are with running a small business. I note that there is this microbreweries excise refund scheme, which was introduced in 2013. More broadly, what is not to like about the proposals to cut regulation and tax? As a broad policy principle, I do respect calls for fairness in respect to how different businesses and products are taxed. I also appreciate how protracted and complicated the recent discussions around tax have been in other areas of the alcohol industry.

I look forward to speaking further with my local craft brewers and working together with them into the future. I know they will be very happy with the tax cuts that they just got from this government as well as the extended eligibility for the $20,000 instant asset write-off. It will definitely cover some of their brewing equipment and fit-out as they grow their business. I thank the member this motion. I trust that this will be one of many areas where we can all work towards bipartisanship in this place. In the spirit of this State of Origin week, I also look forward to Brisbane's craft brewers continuing to beat Sydney's craft brewers in international and national competitions.

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