AG MINISTER STILL WASHING HIS BOOTS

Adding his clarification to confusion over whether or not the SA Premier's welcome purge of Government advisory boards meant the end of the Phylloxera Board, Agriculture Minister Leon Bignell answered DRINKSTER's query with this snap of him with his shoes in a phylloxera wash.  



Which is what all travellers should do before entering a vineyard.

"Great to hear from you Whitey," he wrote in the spirit of the government's new era of glasnost and perestroika. 

"Phylloxera Board is still in place and we will continue to dip our boots! 

"Tourism commission board and Motorsport board are gone. The Entertainment Centre and Convention Centre will have one board. 

"Sorry it's taken all day to get back to you. It's been a pretty full-on week." 

'Biggles' is also Minister for Tourism, Food, Fisheries, Forests, Tourism, Recreation and Sport, and Racing. His seat of Mawson includes most of McLaren Vale's vineyard area and the string of seaside suburbs along the Gulf St Vincent.

He is fairly easily lobbied most Saturday mornings while he shops at the Willunga Farmers' market. Biggles is, after all, the son of a dairy farmer. That was before he became a gun right-hand-page reporter and sports commentator. At the market you can measure his need for privacy by the austerity of the veggies in his bag. When it's lean on, it means he's too worried about other things to even buy his own food properly. In which case it's polite to wait to allow him to make the introduction.

The Premier's office has said that any new members of the Phylloxera Board will be selected and appointed by the CEO of the Department of Primary Industries and Resources. 

The advisory committee which previously selected these board members has been abolished.