Hamilton-Smith puts Liberal plans into action, but Libs aren’t happy
Plans to develop a raft of export strategies and format a schedule of outbound and inbound trade missions were first detailed by Martin Hamilton-Smith when he was the Liberal spokesman for Trade.
InDaily this week revealed a series of measures the now-Trade Minister is putting in place to boost the export potential of South Australian business, including a regular calendar for trade delegations and developing new engagement strategies for key markets.
But the core of the plan was first detailed in the Liberal Party’s policy paper for the 2014 state election.
Titled Trade & Investment – Growing Our Economy, it is attributed to two authors – Opposition Leader Steven Marshall and Shadow Minister for Economic and Regional Development Martin Hamilton-Smith.
Hamilton-Smith spectacularly quit the Liberal Party last year to join the Weatherill Government as an independent.
The policy paper determines that a Liberal Government would “establish an ‘Export Ready’ program to train small businesses in the fundamentals of exporting” and “develop seven separate regional trade strategies and pursue bilateral trade and investment missions to complement these strategies”.
The latter in particular forms the bedrock of Hamilton-Smith’s recent announcements, though he now says only six engagement strategies are required for “a more complete engagement strategy to trade”.
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Questioned today about his old policy paper, the minister told InDaily: “I wrote the policy in Opposition, and I’m now in a position to implement it.”
Asked whether the Government’s previous exports policies had failed, he said: “I wouldn’t say that.”
“I would say when you become a minister your goals should be to make improvements,” he said.
“My goal in public life has always been to make a difference, to create jobs and leave the state in a better place…I’m just being consistent with the goals I’ve always had throughout public life.”
The Liberal paper says that outbound trade missions “will be industry-led and incorporate a wide range of strategic industry sectors…the State Government will provide incentives and support participation from small and medium enterprises”.
Regular in-bound missions, it continues, “will attract major investors, importers and international journalists to our state”.
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The document laments that under Labor “we have lost vital market share to the eastern states and failed to capitalise on growing international markets” – a point Hamilton-Smith re-emphasised this week when he noted previous trade missions had been “very intermittent, often organised at relatively short notice and based around the availability of the Premier or the minister”.
When asked about the policy paper’s similarity to this week’s announcement, Marshall acknowledged “there’s no doubt there are elements of it” but nonetheless argued that “the likelihood of it being successful is negligible” because “the Government keeps slashing the budget to support exports out of the state”.
Marshall said “the whole shadow cabinet was involved” in formulating the policy, but added: “I’ve no doubt (Hamilton-Smith) has looked at some of those elements”.
“But of course he’s suffering from being part of a Government that doesn’t believe in exports,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the problem is Martin Hamilton-Smith doesn’t have sway in the cabinet…he’s presiding over a diminution of resources in this sector, and that’s not good for exports in SA.”
He argues the agency budget for “Globally Integrating the SA Economy” has been slashed from $30 million in 2011-12 to around half that last financial year.
“He doesn’t have the clout, he doesn’t have the sway and exports out of SA are suffering,” Marshall said.
He said his former colleague was “quite right to point out that exports account for a huge number of jobs and are a great source of developing long-term jobs”.
“So what’s the solution to growing the size of the pie? It’s not cutting the expenditure,” he said.
“Just because some headings are similar doesn’t mean he’s implemented the policy the way we would have…we advocated significantly more money.
“It wasn’t the Liberal policy to slash support for exports out of this state.”
When Marshall first stood as Liberal leader, Hamilton-Smith vowed to work with him, declaring that he’d found in him a “political soul-mate”.
