Doorstop - Adelaide

DAVID RIDGWAY: It'sFederal's pleasure today to host the Trade Ministers' Meeting here in SouthAustralia, 84 days since we were sworn in. It's a pleasure and honour to havethe Federal Minister and our state colleagues from around the nation here. Soit's been a good meeting with some perspective on the international issues aswell as what the other states are doing as well to grow their economies. It'sbeen a great pleasure.

STEVEN CIOBO: Great.Well, David, thank you very much for the chance to be here in Adelaide, inSouth Australia, this is part of the meetings that we have between all Trade,Tourism, and Investment Ministers. This morning we had the Trade Investmentcomponent. This afternoon, Tourism Ministers will meet. It's a chance for us todiscuss the way in which we can work constructively together as a Federation tomake sure we put Australia's best foot forward. Obviously, our economy isheavily reliant on getting great access into global markets. The FederalCoalition Government has worked very hard on making sure we open up as manyopportunities as possible for Australian exporters. We've been able tocapitalize on that success, and we've seen very strong growth in a whole rangeof areas. Here in South Australia, of course, one of the biggest wine producingregions for our country, we've seen extraordinary growth in wine exports. Justin China alone, we've seen wine exports grow from $211 million a year to nowmore than $1 billion of wine exports. And, of course, South Australia has beena big beneficiary of that better market access and we've got to major markets,like China. All of us though are working and committed to making sure thatAustralia continues to have even more advantages into the future. David, to youand your team, I know that the premier, Premier Marshall is very focused onopening up more opportunities for South Australia globally. The AustralianGovernment looks forward to working closely with the South AustralianGovernment on boosting your points of presence globally, being able to drive thoseexports from South Australia, the high quality, clean and green produce,especially in relation to wine but also in other areas, traditionally foragricultural products would be great for SA and then there's going to be awhole range of new industries. You've told me about some of the initiativesyou've taken with entrepreneurial builders and others in the high-tech space.So great news for South Australia, great to have you on board as the newminister. I look forward to working closely with you. But more importantly,great news for Australia to keep building on the great success that we've had.

JOURNALIST: So, you said that Tourism was coming out with somethingtoday. So what was going out to that there national brand?

STEVEN CIOBO: Yeah,sure. We discussed that this morning.

JOURNALIST: Oh, okay, great. So, what will we be thinking our nationalbrand is, how far along is that process?

STEVEN CIOBO: Sowe just started the process to evolve a nation brand for Australia. We seeother countries that have had great success with nation brands. Of course,we've only to look across the ditch at our Kiwi cousins to see their '100%Pure' campaign, which has now been in existence for more than a decade. I wantto make sure that Australia has a strong brand too. We have some of the verybest and brightest that Australia has to offer, who we've put around a table tocome up and develop a brand. It shouldn't be developed by politicians. It's gotto be developed by those with skin in the game, those who've got globalexperience of developing brands, building brands, reinforcing brands. So AndrewForrest is driving this initiative. By the end of this year, I hope that theywill have worked together with our creative industry to develop a great brandfor Australia, something that government can get behind, private sector can getbehind, something we can market Australia to the world with. And as aconsequence, make sure that we can sell more of what we know and love tocustomers all around the world.

JOURNALIST: David, what would you like to see with the national brand?

DAVID RIDGWAY: With the national brand, I think we do need a nationalbrand. I've been overseas at export expos and trade expos where other countriesdo it much better than us. So I do believe we need a national brand. We'vediscussed this morning about the states still having their identity underneaththat national umbrella. So I look forward to the work that the team MinisterCiobo has put together. I look forward to the work they're doing so we can havea vision of what their proposals are and how we can feed into that nationalbrand.

JOURNALIST: Just on another topic, I know it probably isn't one fordiscussion today, but I wanted to ask about the space agency. Do you thinkSouth Australia can win that if it's competing against Victoria and W.A.?

DAVID RIDGWAY: Look, we're in a competitive space for the space agency.We're going to put our best foot forward on a whole range of things. We've gotthe space agency, we've got the Qantas are looking for their national pilottraining centre. We're going to put our best foot forward and we're going tofight as hard as we possibly can to win those sort of opportunities for SouthAustralia.

JOURNALIST: What sort of difference would those kind of opportunitiesmake for the state?

DAVID RIDGWAY: We've just got the space age, it brings the whole focuson the technology around space and some of the smaller satellites, and thelower orbiting satellites, and the ones that go around to the north and thesouth of the state. [Inaudible] The new State Government Premier is very keenon us really rolling up our sleeves and getting stuff in for the state.

JOURNALIST: Where would we put it then? The Qantas training centre?

DAVID RIDGWAY: That's an evaluation that's still yet to be done. There'sa number of regions, towns, cities in South Australia that've said they'd liketo be considered, likewise there is all around the nation about 40 or 50cities, country cities, regional cities around the nation that've put their handup, so it will be a bit of a process to go through. We are small andmanoeuvrable we can case-manage the Qantas project and if we put our best footforward and hope we're successful.

JOURNALIST: Just briefly a bit back onto trade and tourism. I think thatbefore you talked about collaborating in markets overseas. So have you had achance to speak to your counterparts this morning about how maybe we work thatover with particular states or territories overseas?

DAVID RIDGWAY: Oh, I think that's really working with all of our, if youlike, our neighbours and the Federal Government as well, in collaboration. Someof the trade shows I've been to where we've had a disparate representation,different states do different things. Brand Australia is highly recognizablearound the world. I think we've got to collaborate around that national brand,and that's why I'm very supportive of the Federal Minister, the initiative todevelop a national brand. It makes a lot of sense. And then we can plan to fitin where we fit. Naturally, we'll be competitive with our colleagues. We haveintense rivalry around football and cricket and things with the Victorians andwe're always going to be competitive, but we do complement each other in thatcompetitive nature.