Renew Adelaide Scheme

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (14:56): My question is to the Deputy Premier. Deputy Premier, what is Renew Adelaide doing to promote vibrancy in the city?

The SPEAKER: We didn't know that the government was responsible for gemütlichkeit in the entertainment precinct, but, Deputy Premier.

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform) (14:56): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker; and it is lovely to know that there is a linguist in the chair. He is talking about hospitality for those of you who did not pick up on what he said; and for you, too, Hansard—and it's got an umlaut over the ü.

In any event, vibrancy in the city—well, Renew Adelaide seeks to connect creative entrepreneurs who are mostly made up of our talented young South Australians with vacant commercial properties through the use of 30-day rent-free rolling licences. This approach is used as a vehicle to build capacity of creative entrepreneurs and to promote innovation.

Renew Adelaide is a not-for-profit organisation with support from the state government through Renewal SA and the Adelaide City Council, and can I add at this point also the fantastic work being done by the case management team at Renewal SA and before the present time that same team working out of Planning SA. They have done an extraordinary amount of great work in case management and assisting particularly young entrepreneurs to get into the space where they can actually get a business going, especially some of the small venues in the city.

Nevertheless, despite Renew Adelaide's admirable and welcome aims, which in my opinion the city needs a great deal more of, it has come to my attention that recently some members of the Adelaide City Council prefer to take a very narrow view indeed, and recently have described the work, as I understand it, of this group as 'cancer' and 'flesh-eating bacteria'.

Recently, for example, Renew Adelaide added vibrancy to Regent Arcade through connecting the Ginos Group (owners of the arcade) with the young entrepreneurs, and there have been a number of businesses that have been connected in this way with opportunities for accommodation. Such opportunities afforded to young entrepreneurs add life to what would otherwise be vacant tenancies in one of our well-known shopping arcades.

It also provides young entrepreneurs a relatively low-risk environment for them to trial their creative and innovative businesses which opens the potential for such enterprises to grow and to mature. The model of offering 30-day rent-free rolling licences to these innovative businesses also benefits the owners of such vacant tenancies by assisting them with having an attractive active property to market to prospective longer-term commercial tenants.

Renew Adelaide continues to provide vibrancy in other parts of the city, such as Topham Mall and, indeed, Port Adelaide. The challenge which they are aware of is, of course, how to ensure that such great work by Renew Adelaide can be more sustainable and does, in fact, continue despite unhelpful comments by some members of the City Council.

Can I say again that they have worked very well with the case management team and group within Renewal SA, and this same group previously resided in planning, and the work that they have done in terms of providing case management assistance for people wishing to establish businesses has been extremely helpful and some of the flourishing small venue scene in our city would not have been possible without their great work.