Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Gallacher for his question and his well-known interest in the Australian and particularly the South Australian tourism industry. The Gillard government supports tourism across Australia, including in our regions, through a range of targeted grants programs and initiatives and through our highly effective marketing tool, Tourism Australia.

In the 2012 round of our T-QUAL Grants Program, nearly 90 per cent of successful applications were from outside Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, with a very high proportion being from regional areas. There were 294 applications received for the current T-QUAL round, which closed on 3 May. Successful applicants will be announced later this year and we expect many regional projects to again earn a grant. Direct support for our regional tourism sector is provided through our $48.5 million Tourism Industry Regional Development Fund grants program, known as TIRF. Successful applicants under the first round of TIRF were announced in March. In that round we initially offered a total of $13.5 million, Senator Ronaldson, to 65 successful applicants, leveraging a total of $141 million investment in regional tourism across Australia. An additional 19 high-quality projects will share in a total of $4.3 million funding under the round 1 projects.

Round 2 of TIRF opens today. I was very pleased to be able to announce the second round on Saturday at the Seppeltsfield Estate Winery in South Australia's iconic Barossa Valley. Seppeltsfield has been offered $250,000 under round 1 of our TIRF program. The winery owners believe the projects, with the support of TIRF, will boost their visitor numbers by 30 per cent.