Question Time

Superloop Adelaide 500

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:06): My question is to the Premier or the Minister for Tourism. Why hasn't the Premier announced a single new event to replace the Adelaide 500?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:06): I thank the Leader of the Opposition for his question. As he would be more than aware, we have announced a new event for next year, which is Illuminate Adelaide. This responds to a statement or a contribution that was made at the TiCSA event earlier in the year that was held down at the Showground. I am surprised that the Leader of the Opposition missed this because one of the things that the industry has been calling for for an extended period of time is to not just have events in one month but to spread them out right throughout the year. So that's exactly and precisely what we responded to.

We announced earlier this year that we would have Illuminate Adelaide, which would be held over two weeks and three weekends. This is the type of event which we will now see populating our entire calendar and spread out the benefit to more businesses in the event sector, the tourism sector and the accommodation sector. We have recently made a decision not to continue with the Supercars as a street circuit in Adelaide. Motor racing is a sport which has enjoyed a lot of support in our state, and the Supercars have been a great time of celebration and a great time of economic contribution to our state.

But what we have seen in recent times is diminishing revenue and increasing costs. We were coming up towards the end of our contract with Supercars. We had one further event to be held and that was for 2021. We made an announcement some months ago that we wouldn't be holding it in early 2021 and we formed an opinion in recent weeks that we wouldn't be having an event of this size or scale during 2021.

All mass events changed very significantly around the world. We were very proud that South Australia was probably one of the last places in the world which held a mass event. That was the Adelaide Festival and the Adelaide Fringe Festival, both in their 60^th anniversary year. They were probably the last mass events that the world had seen, but things have changed with the coronavirus. So what we have decided to do is not continue with a Supercars event in 2021—in fact, we will not be signing an agreement to continue from 2022 onwards—instead quarantining that money that can go to transforming, if you like, to move away from having one single event to a larger number of smaller events which will support more employment right across the year in South Australia.