Mass Participation Events

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (14:53): Thank you, sir. My question is to the Minister for Tourism. Minister, how is the state government ensuring that we attract mass participation events in South Australia?

The SPEAKER: Minister.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Agriculture, Food and Fisheries, Minister for Forests, Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport, Minister for Racing) (14:53): Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. I thank the member for Florey for her question and acknowledge that she is heading down to Murray Bridge over the weekend for the South Australian Masters Games. She is still too young to qualify, but she will be down there as a spectator, I understand.

The Masters Games is a fantastic thing for local regions. This is the 21^st South Australian Masters Games and it will bring about 900 people to the area. We know that one-third of them will come from interstate or overseas, mostly from Victoria and New Zealand, and more than half the participants will come from outside the region. So, it is a terrific way to show off the region. It is also a really brilliant way of keeping people active more often. We know that when you get a little bit older, it gets a little bit harder to get out and participate, but if you are in those sorts of team events in particular, it is a terrific thing to do.

I know the croquet club down at Murray Bridge have had a doubling of their membership since word got out that they were going to host the Masters Games. I mentioned to the member for Hammond before that maybe we could go doubles in the eight ball or the darts competition. I think that is probably our standard. I have asked Dawn Fraser if she would get with me in the relay, maybe the 800-metre relay.

An honourable member: She said no.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: She didn't agree to my terms. I wanted to go in the 800-metre relay. I said, 'You do 15 laps, I'll do one.' I'm sure you would still give plenty of people a run for their money, and I must acknowledge the great work that you did when South Australia hosted the Australian Masters Games back in the late 1990s. I was a journalist out there covering those and you did a tremendous job, along with Marg Ralston, of course, who was a former adviser of mine, a former sports editor of mine, and someone who did so much for the Olympic Committee here and running the Masters Games.

Mass participation sports are fantastic injectors of money into our economies. Just two weeks ago, we had the International Dragon Boat Races down at West Lakes, the first time Australia has ever hosted them. This might come as a bit of a surprising statistic to people, but have a guess how many people are involved in dragon boat racing in the world: 50 million people. It is a sport that started out in China and it just continues to grow.

Meeting up with a lot of the athletes down there from over 20 countries, it was terrific to see the camaraderie that they have. They are of all different levels of fitness, but what it did was just showed off how, by working together with people, you can get a boat to go a certain speed through the water. It teaches teamwork, it keeps people active, it keeps people involved, and it gives people a reason to get out of bed and be fit. From that point of view, it is just a terrific thing. That brought $4 million into the South Australian economy. We had over 6,000 people come here for that event alone.

Of course, last year we had the Australian Masters Games here. We had 10,000 people here and more than $4 million into our economy. The people there call it schoolies for grown-ups. They get out and they get into the pubs and clubs. When they are out there playing their sport, they take it seriously, but they have a good time after that, and that is a terrific thing. They go back to their respective states and to other parts of the world, and do you know what they do? They talk glowingly about South Australia and the terrific time they had in Adelaide. It is the sort of thing that, when we invest our money into it, brings lots of people in and we get an immediate impact into our economy, but it is that goodwill that we get following from that that is terrific.

We are hopeful of getting the Australian Masters Games back here in a couple years' time, which of course would be terrific to have them coming back here. People loved it so much. In this year's budget, we put an extra $35 million into tourism, because we know it is a great way to get more money into our economy from outside of our economy. It is a great employer in the regions and it employs 33,000 people. We want to grow that figure. It is worth $5.6 billion; we want to get that to $8 billion by 2020.

Time expired.