Gynburra Festival

Mr ELLIS (Narungga) (14:40): My question is to the Minister for Tourism. Will the minister commit to funding the Gynburra Festival at Port Victoria? With your leave and that of the house, sir, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr ELLIS: The Gynburra Festival is an annual festival celebrating the Narungga people and their traditions and customs and it is an expensive proposition to run, with the organiser having to fork out his own money some years to cover costs.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Tourism, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (14:41): I was really pleased that you wrote to me about this situation, and I have recently responded. Obviously, Garry Goldsmith does a great job. I know Garry. His son goes to school with my son in the northern suburbs. He is very proud of this festival, this event, that is based around a fishing competition, but of course also talks about culture and traditions in Port Victoria in January. He asked and you have asked about regional event funding. That is a competitive process to go through that has very strict criteria and it goes through a panel.

One of the key things we want to do is look at new and innovative events and we also want to look at events that are drawing people in. As I understand it, currently we are looking at events that would attract more than 500 people. However, we are coming up for another round of regional event funding. This year, it has supported 37 different events around our great state. I have suggested through the member for Narungga that Garry and his team have a conversation with the Tourism Commission because, while we have these strict criteria, I think it is always worth having that conversation, having a diversity of events and having events that speak to many different parts of who we are, whether it be regionality, food and wine or culture. These are all really important things.

I think it would be really important to understand what the barrier is here. Is it the amount of people who are coming and maybe with a little bit of extra marketing that is something that could be overcome? It is something we would like to look at and I am pleased to also say to people that in mid-December that will go out again for people to apply for regional events. When I look around the chamber here, people have approached me for different events over different times. As I said, it is competitive because we want to make sure we have new events coming in. We want to make sure we have a variety of events that we have happening as well.

There is an information session that will be held before we actually go out to run this competitive process, so I would say to anyone here who has different events in their regional area who may not get regional event funding now, it is something to consider. Particularly, there were quite a few events that stopped during COVID. I talked to the member for MacKillop about his Taste the Limestone Coast event that came back but needed a little bit of extra support to make sure it came back at its full capacity.

There is no doubt at all that we know holding festivals and events has increased in cost as well. We have seen those costs go up, whether it be security or hosting the event or hiring the equipment or marketing. We want to make sure that we remain known for our festivals. We have our really large festivals here in the CBD. We have seen that becoming more and more attractive and attracting people from interstate to come here.

We know that our favourite time of the year is Mad March, with the Fringe Festival and WOMAD, but regional events throughout the whole of the year are just as important. I know Generations in Jazz has been something that has been going for quite some time. We have been able to support it over a long period of time and watch that event develop and be a great drawcard for people from all over our state and interstate as well. These events are incredibly important. I am keen for the Tourism Commission to reach out to Garry Goldsmith through yourself to see what we can do.