Events Advisory Group

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (15:36): My question is to the Premier. Has the Premier axed his Events Advisory Group? With your leave, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON: In a press release last November, the Premier boasted that an Australian actor, an international food festival director, industry representatives and business leaders are among members of a new group that will help inform the Marshall Liberal government's exciting new era of events in South Australia.

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (15:36): Again, I am very surprised because we announced this about 10 or 12 days ago. When I was a shadow minister, I worked very hard to keep on top of my brief and find out what is happening in the portfolio. It seems quite extraordinary, you hold a press conference, you announce the winding up of the Events Advisory Group, you thank all the members for their excellent work and input and then a couple of weeks later the Labor Party wake up, come into question time and ask a question that has already been answered in the public domain.

I thanked very much Nikki Govan, the chair of the Events Advisory Group I think last week or probably possibly the week before, for the excellent work and the input that those people had given in a volunteer capacity, to take a lot of suggestions from a lot of different groups across South Australia and put them into a logical order and present them to SATC.

We have obviously announced the Bloom festival, which I think is something which is going to meet the needs of the people of South Australia, especially in terms of creating additional jobs in South Australia right throughout that calendar. That was one of our major focuses. It was a response, if you like, to the recommendation from the SATC board, the unanimous recommendation from the SATC recommendation which was to move away from the Adelaide 500 and move towards a suite of events right throughout the year which would support employment in South Australia.

We have had Illuminate Adelaide, and what a success that was. I know that a lot of people were very disappointed when Light Cycles in the Adelaide Botanic Gardens finished. I know that Van Gogh Alive is still going in North Adelaide, and it's going because of the support of the people of South Australia. They hate it over there, but the people of South Australia love getting out in the winter months.

But we also have to have people getting out in the spring months, so the Events Advisory Group of course provided that input into the types of events that could be held right throughout the calendar, which would maximise employment right throughout the year, not just concentrate it in one part of the year. I think that the former Labor Premier of South Australia used to refer to it as Mad March. In some ways it was mad—it was mad that we concentrated everything in one part of the year, rather than spreading it out right across the year.

There is still plenty on at the beginning of the year, sir, as you would be more than aware because we have events like the Adelaide International, which was introduced by our government on coming to power, or the TDU introduced by a former Liberal government here in South Australia. We have the Fringe and the Festival and, as it turns out, they were both also introduced by a former Liberal government, albeit many, many decades ago. But they are still the legacy of the Liberal Party looking at ways that we can actually employ South Australians. But we've got to have more, and that is why we are putting the Illuminate Adelaide set of festivals and experiences through the middle of the year—hugely, hugely successful. We want to do more throughout those spring months as well with the Bloom festival.

So we thank the members of the events advisory committee. I have spoken to the vast majority of them personally—I have certainly written to all of them—to thank them for their volunteer service. They didn't get a cent. They didn't get a cent for the work they did, but they did it because they knew that this was what we needed in South Australia.

We have already announced several events that have come together from that advice that we have received, but there is still plenty of work to do, and that is precisely what we will be doing in South Australia. We are putting the people of South Australia first. Forget about the politics, we are putting the people of South Australia first and getting on with getting people out and about right throughout the year.

It was the unanimous recommendation from the SATC board. They made that recommendation to the government to move away from the Adelaide 500 and to quarantine that money—I think it was $14 million—and spread it throughout the year, maximising employment. We can see the response from that reflected in the most recent ABS statistics, where we have more people employed in South Australia than at any time before in the history of the state.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Before I call the member for Ramsay, I am going to warn for the first time both the member for Kaurna and the member for Mawson.