31 March 2009

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, Tony Burke
Director of Beef Australia, Geoff Murphy

Rockhampton, Queensland

TONY BURKE: G’day, it’s Tony. I’m out in Rockhampton at the moment—here with Geoff Murphy—and we just made the announcement of Federal Government funding for the Beef Expo, Beef Week, that should be here in Rockhampton in about five weeks time?

GEOFF MURPHY: Five weeks time, Tony. Yes.

TONY: So, we’re actually at a school, which is why you can hear the announcements overhead, too. How many people do you reckon will come along?

GEOFF: Oh, we’d expect there’d be about 60,000 people to come through the gates, and then we’d have—out of that—somewhere between 600 and 1,000 of those will be overseas visitors that are coming to Australia expressly for the expo.

TONY: Okay.

GEOFF: They’re not coming for any other reason. Hopefully they’ll look around Australia before they go back, but they’ll be coming for the expo itself.

TONY: Okay, so a fair bit of business for beef producers comes out of it?

GEOFF: Oh, enormous. Last time we were able to measure over $50 million worth of business that was done from the expo itself.

TONY: Okay, and what sort of events happen during the course of the week?

GEOFF: Oh, well you can have all the entertainment in the world. Come here, we’ll give you a real good time. You can go to the ball; you can eat prime beef right throughout great restaurants. Then, of course, we have the stud cattle—we have over 2,200 stud cattle which will be on display—

TONY: Okay.

GEOFF: —and they’ll all be over in the showground, so you’ll be able to walk around all of those and see all of those. And then out at the Gracemere saleyards we’ll have another 2,200 commercial cattle, which we’ll be judging on those as well. So there’s a little bit of everything for everybody. Anybody that’s involved in primary industries—we’ll have something for you.

TONY: And within Australia, how far away do people come? It’s not just central Queensland.

GEOFF: Oh, no, no. They come from all over Australia and we’re having a carcass competition and that carcass competition—we’ve got entrants from Tasmania even—

TONY: From Tasmania?

GEOFF: —even from Tasmania, and last year somebody from Western Australia won it.

TONY: Okay. Well, thanks for that—

GEOFF: Thank you very much.

TONY: —and I’ll be back here with you in five weeks time.

GEOFF: Yeah, it’ll be lovely to see you. We look forward to it, and thank you very much for your support.

TONY: Real pleasure. Thank you.

GEOFF: Thank you, Tony.