Adelaide Festival Season

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (15:32): After a very busy month we emerge from a cloud of glitter, sunshine and sequins after what has been an absolutely stellar festival season in Adelaide. I want to start with the Adelaide Festival. It has absolutely smashed attendance records, with a total audience of 478,890. That includes both Writers' Week and WOMAD. There were more than 63,700 tickets sold, with interstate visitors making up about 30 per cent of those ticket sales. It was just incredible. It is why we are so proud to have committed an extra $2.3 million to the Adelaide Festival, and it is certainly paying dividends.

There were a couple of events I was able to attend, one being Stravinsky's The Nightingale and Other Fables opera directed by Robert Lepage at the Adelaide Festival Centre. It was absolutely spellbinding. I have never actually seen an orchestra pit turned into a swimming pool, but that is exactly what happened with this magical opera, with puppeteers and the most incredible singers and also shadow puppeteers, which was absolutely beautiful. Congratulations to Robert and his team.

I was also able to attend the world premiere of Baleen Moondjan from the creative visionary of Stephen Page. It was set on the foreshore at Glenelg and was just simply incredible, so very moving and powerful. It was an absolute testament to the artistic director, Ruth, for bringing such an incredible production to Adelaide, and a big thanks and congratulations to Stephen Page for his world premiere of that story.

I would like to congratulate our arts minister, the Hon. Andrea Michaels; as I mentioned before, the Festival's Artistic Director, Ruth Mackenzie CBE; the Chief Executive of the Adelaide Festival, Kath Mainland CBE; and the Chair, Tracey Whiting: four incredible women who have delivered an absolutely magnificent Adelaide Festival. It does Adelaide so incredibly proud and really puts us on the map.

This leads me to our wonderful Fringe Festival and its Director and CEO, Heather Croall AM, also led by its Chair, Kate Costello, and the board. They have once again made the incredible achievement of surpassing one million ticket sales. We made that feat last year and we have repeated it, and it is no surprise. We all enjoy heading out to the Fringe, not just in the East End and at the Garden of Unearthly Delights but at Gluttony, in the West End and all across our state. My two children, Audrey and Ned, were able to enjoy Fringe activities in my home town of Naracoorte in the Naracoorte Town Square. The Fringe is really about bringing the arts to everybody in our community, from our regions to our metropolitan areas.

One example of the Fringe effect was that in the first three weekends of the Fringe, we had more than four million visits to the CBD, with data from the Adelaide Economic Development Agency seeing a 30 per cent increase in foot traffic compared to the same time last year. On the second weekend, we saw a 47 per cent increase in foot traffic in the West End and the Hindley Street precinct compared to the same weekend in the previous year, and a 31 per cent increase in foot traffic in the East End on that second weekend compared to the same time last year. It is bringing so many visitors to our city, which is absolutely incredible.

'But wait, there's more!' It does not end there. We are now finishing up Mad March but we then head into Awesome April, when we have the Gather Round. Being a country girl, I absolutely love my footy and I cannot wait to see the Crows and the Demons go head-to-head on the Thursday night. My best friend is coming up from Lucindale. She is a mad keen Demons supporter and I am a Crows supporter; hopefully we are still best friends by the end of the match. After the Gather Round, we have the Adelaide Equestrian Festival heading to town, which is going to be an incredible precursor to the Paris Olympics. We also have LIV Golf.

It does not end there. We then head into Magical May. I hope everybody has some energy left for Tasting Australia and also the Matildas, which is already sold out. So there are some very exciting events happening in my community and I cannot wait for them.