Arts SA

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:18): My question is to the Premier in his role as Minister for the Arts. How important are middle-sized theatres to the Adelaide arts scene and what has been done since my first letter to you about the restoration of the Royalty Theatre so it can continue to play its part in future Festival and Fringe events?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (15:19): As the member would be more than aware, we are very significantly upgrading the capacity of arts venues right across the state. Some of them are for our performing arts and some of them are for our visual arts. Of course, today we were at Memorial Drive, where we know that we are going to have a fantastic facility not only for elite sport but also for the arts. The Memorial Drive courts were used right throughout my childhood as a fantastic venue for a range of concerts. I have already spoken to the artistic directors of both the Adelaide Festival and the Fringe Festival—and, indeed, the WOMAD festival—about the potential for using that facility going forward.

The Royalty Theatre is not a facility that is owned by the people of South Australia. We've got to prioritise our taxpayer dollars on making sure that we can continue to improve the facilities that we own. Having said that, I think the member makes a good point. The Royalty Theatre, like some other private theatres in South Australia, has played an important part in providing that additional venue capacity for our state during the surge times of the Fringe and the Festival. We haven't seen fit at this stage to put additional money into this area.

The member would note that last year any discretionary money was really focused primarily on supporting those artists who had been adversely affected by the coronavirus. In fact, we put a very significant additional amount of money into the arts budget last year to support those people who were doing it extraordinarily tough. It is not to say that we would rule out putting money into private facilities going forward.

I know that several years ago we put some money into upgrading the air conditioning at the Thebarton Theatre. This is not a theatre that is owned by the people of South Australia; it is a facility that is owned by the West Torrens council, so there is precedent for the taxpayer to put money into those private facilities. As I said, last year was really a focus on any discretionary money in the arts budget to go toward supporting artists adversely affected by the coronavirus.