Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on behalf of wine grape growers across Barker, who are facing a deep and widening crisis that demands urgent government action. This is not a short-term downturn. It's not a cyclical correction. It's not a problem that can be solved with a bigger marketing spend or recycled announcements. Global wine consumption is in freefall. It fell by 3.5 billion litres between 2022 and 2025, with consumption set to decline by a further one billion litres this year. Yet Australia continues to produce far too much wine, and the market can't absorb it. The result is chronic and structural oversupply, collapsing prices and growing pressure on growers, who have done everything asked of them and still can't make the numbers stack up. The impact is being felt acutely across the Riverland, the Barossa, the Limestone Coast—anywhere that has wine grapes. Behind every vineyard, of course, there's a family carrying a heavy emotional and financial burden. That toll has grown with every season of delay, and many are now at breaking point. If government continues to look the other way, the cost of inaction will not disappear. It will show up in abandoned vineyards, business failures, job losses and the long-term decline of regional communities like those I represent.

So what can government do? Well, the Australian Grape & Wine's prebudget submission released last week represents a clear and responsible call for action from an industry under extraordinary pressure. It's not a wish list. It's not a plea for handouts. It's an industry led proposal from growers who understand the reality they're facing and are asking governments to confront it with honesty. The submission calls for structural reform and support for orderly adjustments by helping growers who need to exit the industry to do so with dignity, assist those who want to transition to alternative crops or new enterprises and, critically, ensure access to financial counselling and targeted mental health supports for growers and their families who are carrying the emotional burden. These are practical and responsible solutions to a structural problem that individual growers didn't create and, quite frankly, can't fix alone. The message from industry is clear. The evidence is clear. The solutions are on the table. What's missing is not ideas or capacity; it's political will to act. Government must heed this warning and act now before more families and regions are pushed past the point of no return.

When it comes to political will, Labor priorities are unmistakeable. In recent months, Labor has committed more than $2.4 billion in joint state and federal funding to prop up the Whyalla steelworks, with further taxpayer funding flowing to industry at Port Pirie. By contrast, the entire Australian Grape & Wine structural reform package would cost around $140 million over three years. That's a fraction of the billions of dollars Labor has—appropriately—put towards the unionised Australian steelworkers. Yet wine grape growers, who have sustained regional communities, employed thousands of Australians and built an industry over generations, are being told to suck it up and fail quietly. This isn't good enough. We need those opposite to rise to this challenge. It's not just union workforces that matter.

See this speech in context