Adelaide Oval Hotel Development

The Hon. S.C. MULLIGHAN (Lee) (15:03): My question is to the Premier. Was the Stadium Management Authority rejected for a commercial loan to facilitate the hotel development by a financial institution before approaching the government?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (15:03): Well, I don't have that detail; again, that would be a good question to ask at the inquiry. I think all the questions regarding that should be directed to the SMA. I have made our position very clear; I am happy to reiterate it again—that is, we were requested to make a grant. They probably had pretty good cause to ask for a grant. They had been operating under the previous government for a long period of time and grants were handed out left, right and centre, so they probably thought, 'This is great. We're going to ask for $42 million.'

But it is a new government and we are acting in the best interests of the taxpayers. We applaud the SMA looking at ways to continually diversify their revenue. We think this is important because they can't have their hand out to the taxpayer all the time for upgrades and they can't continue to increase costs for patrons. What they need to do is look for ways to diversify their revenue, and that's precisely what they have been doing. What we see with the SMA is an organisation that has invested in augmenting what they were probably originally envisaging to do at the Oval. I think they have done a good job of diversifying that revenue, and we are the beneficiaries of that.

The SMA make a contribution each year into a sinking fund, which allows for them to continuously upgrade the facilities at that site. This is the responsible way of going. In other jurisdictions in other parts of the world, you might have a stadium and, over time, the fabric of that stadium diminishes and then at some point the taxpayers have to stick their hand in their pocket for a very large sum of money. I actually think this is a good model; it's the model of the previous government, so I'm not sure why they are asking questions and querying it.

The reality is that we believe that this was the right level of support from the taxpayers but, again, not a grant. It's not imposing upon the Parklands. The SMA pays $2.8 million into a sinking fund each year. They make another contribution to grassroots sport. They make distributions to the SANFL and to SACA and therefore to clubs right throughout South Australia. The taxpayers of South Australia will actually be making a margin on the loan that we negotiated with them.