ABC Illawarra - Southern Highlands Agritourism Roundtable
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO NEWS BULLETIN
ABC ILLAWARRA
TUESDAY, 29 SEPTEMBER 2026
SUBJECTS: SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS ARGITOURISM ROUNDTABLE
[START]
STEFAN POSTHUMA-GRBIC, HOST: At 25 minutes past five o'clock and a roundtable exploring the role agriculture plays in the Southern Highlands economy and the opportunities provided by agribusiness was held in the Southern Highlands today. In attendance were local farmers, business leaders, also the Federal Minister for Agriculture, Julie Collins, and the Member for Whitlam, Carol Berry, who joins me now.
Hi, Carol.
CAROL BERRY MP: Hello, how are you?
HOST: Tell us about this roundtable. What were you doing in the Highlands today?
BERRY: So we had over 30 attendees join our roundtable today at one of our local wineries, and it was an opportunity to have Minister Collins address the group, but also to get feedback from the sector and to talk about the importance of the alignment of agribusiness and the visitor economy for the Southern Highlands.
HOST: Okay, and so what sort of things came out of the... Firstly, actually, why do this?
BERRY: So we have over $400 million spend that happens in the Southern Highlands related to visitor economy. And there's so many future possibilities for us to continue to knit together our agribusiness and agritourism sector with the visitor economy, between businesses, between stakeholders, to really position the Southern Highlands in the best possible light, in order to ensure that we can continue to take advantage of the visitor economy spend.
HOST: So what did you hear from some of the attendees? Is there any sort of low-hanging fruit that the Government can sort of get into action soon as possible to try to increase opportunities for agribusiness and to boost the economy in the Highlands through things like agribusiness?
BERRY: Probably an obvious opportunity is the fact that we've got the Western Sydney International Airport opening soon. And we know that international tourists in particular and domestic tourists are looking for immersive experiences. And so we've been talking a lot within the Highlands about how we continue to build those collaborations across businesses so that we can really enhance the way that the Highlands is positioned.
So at the moment, probably about two per cent of the visitors that come to the Highlands are international tourists. So how can we continue to position the Highlands to take advantage of a growing international tourism market? That's probably low-hanging fruit in the short term.
HOST: What can the Government do to help in that endeavour to translate the new international airport into agribusiness for the Southern Highlands?
BERRY: So we have a strategy, a visitor economy strategy, which is called THRIVE 2030. And our objective is to increase visitor economy spend to about $230 billion across the Australian visitor economy market. And we want about $95 billion of that to be spent in regional economies.
So really what I'm doing is working in collaboration, both at all levels of government and across the whole sector in the Southern Highlands, to really help to tell that very coherent story about what is special about the Southern Highlands.
So part of what we were doing today was really putting the Southern Highlands on the radar of Minister Collins. So that was our objective today, and I think that went really well.
HOST: Okay. We're going to get to Greg Walsh from Business Southern Highlands. Carol Berry, thank you so much.
BERRY: Absolute pleasure.
[END]
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