Motorsport

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (14:51): My question is to the Minister for Sport. Minister, can you update the house on the future of motorsport in South Australia?

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) (14:51): I thank the member for Little Para for the question. I just ducked out to Clipsal during the lunch break. It was fantastic to get out there and meet a couple of 10 year olds, Jessica and Christian. They have been racing for three years in the karting series and they are great little racers.

We introduced them to Nick Percat, who also started out in South Australia in the go-kart series and of course won the Clipsal 500 last year in the rain. He was a third generation Holden worker before he got his big tick and moved into the Supercar Series. He is doing a terrific job and has been picked up by Brad Jones Racing this year. The South Australian government has the state brand on the bonnet of the car. Nick is doing a lot of promotion of South Australia for us. He is also working with us to help get the message across, particularly to young people because he is in his mid-20s, about the importance of road safety.

We are actually sponsoring the series for these young go-karters this year in the 10 to 12-year-old category. We are giving them a set of tyres each for their go-karts and we are paying their entry fee so that they can be out there and competing because we have a very bright future for motorsport in South Australia.

The Peregrine group, through the Shahin family, is spending about $100 million developing the Bend motorsport complex at Tailem Bend. That is going to be an absolute game-changer, not just for South Australia but for Australia. There is nothing like this in what it can offer up. We have three racetracks at the moment for go-karting. There will be four once Tailem Bend comes online. It will be a really great incentive for people of all ages to get out there and try their hand at motorsport.

We know that we only have about 7 per cent of Australia's population in South Australia, but we have 12 per cent of the people who compete in motor racing or who are involved in motor racing, which is a big statistic given that up until now we have only really had Mallala as somewhere that they can go to compete. I spoke to the president of Karting South Australia, Craig Denton, and he said that the number of girls coming through has improved. It's at about 10 per cent, and we would love to see that up at 50 per cent to reflect the wider community population.

One way we are doing that is by getting rid of the money that we used to spend on the grid girls and paying for Simona de Silvestro, a Swiss motor racing driver, to come down here. She has competed in Nascar and plenty of other racing formats around the world. She is internationally renowned. She is the first person to compete in the Supercar race here on the Clipsal 500 circuit. I am going to be out there cheering her on, like a lot of people this weekend. She is also going to be competing in the whole season of the Supercar series, which is terrific news as well.

In the other classes of racing, it is really good to see that we also have record numbers of women competing, because when girls and young women come along to the Clipsal 500 each year we want them to aspire to be racing car drivers or engineers, or to be working in the pits with these fantastic racing crews, not just to be out there to become models. We have the Adelaide Fashion Festival for that, if they want to be models. That is another great initiative of the South Australian government. We have done it with the Tour Down Under, we have done it with the Supercars, and we are very proud we are promoting women's sport.

The SPEAKER: The minister never relinquishes a second of his four minutes. The member for Reynell.