Adelaide Fringe and Adelaide Festival

S.E. ANDREWS (Gibson) (15:42): We have hit my favourite time of year. The summer weather lingers and the arts are in the spotlight, and this gives us all the opportunity to imagine a different world, to find laughter, to feel empathy, to question and reflect, or maybe just to find an escape. Enjoying the arts enables us to see the world through different eyes.

With the Fringe and Festival season in South Australia, more than 1,300 different shows are hitting our state in nearly 500 different venues, with just 100 of those in the CBD. We have more than 50 shows in the Adelaide Hills; nearly 100 in the Fleurieu Peninsula, Limestone Coast and Kangaroo Island; nearly 150 shows as far north, west and east as Ceduna, Port Lincoln, Coober Pedy, Marree and Renmark; and, pleasingly, shows in my electorate.

You would struggle to beat the atmosphere in the city at this time of year. It is so joyous to see so many people out in the street, enjoying shows, sharing their reviews, spending time with friends and family, maybe having a drink or a meal, or possibly just sitting and relaxing and enjoying the atmosphere in the gardens.

The Fringe and Festival season really takes South Australia by storm. We know that thousands of interstate and overseas visitors will come to this festival. The Fringe created 306,318 and the Festival 133,345 visitor nights in 2024 and, combined, delivered $158 million in new expenditure in South Australia. The reason these figures are so large is because both events are world-leading events. They provide many Australian and world premieres occurring here in South Australia, with a variety of genres that is hard to beat: comedy, music, dance, theatre, opera and so many others.

We have WOMADelaide starting on Friday night. I am so looking forward to that feeling you get when you walk through the gates for the very first night. There is nothing quite like it. It is a completely different environment and it is the perfect way to remove yourself from the normal grind and just absolutely indulge in the pleasure that is WOMADelaide.

Having looked at the schedule, I am particularly looking forward to seeing Bangarra Dance and Emily Wurramara play for the first time, and looking forward to once again seeing John Grant perform. WOMADelaide, as we know, has been a leader for many years in providing a sustainable event. Each year they go above and beyond, making it an environmentally sustainable place.

I am so lucky, I have been going to WOMADelaide since the second time it was on and have not missed one since. In fact, my daughter Lucy first went as a nine-month old and given that she is a WOMAD child, she is flying back from Melbourne this week so she can come to WOMAD again. If you are a regular attendee at WOMAD, there are people you always see there and sometimes that is the only place you see them. I do want to acknowledge that I will miss seeing Michelle Hogan sitting under the trees, as she always did.

I would also like to highlight the diversity of both events with artists from many different cultures performing in many different languages and sharing their culture and traditions. One example of this is Innocence, which I am pleased to hear the member for Adelaide enjoyed the other evening. This features multiple languages and Indigenous performers featuring their own languages. There are also performers living with disabilities, those from our queer community and a significant number of female performers.

I have been fortunate to see a few shows already. I would like to particularly acknowledge Song Cycles, which I saw at the Town Hall last Thursday night with Lou Bennett performing with the Australian String Quartet. She sang in language for the entire event and it was incredibly moving. I did also see Krapp's Last Tape on Friday night. I can say the critics loved it and festival audiences are truly a patient lot, given how the performance began. I have also been lucky to see some Fringe shows and it is so pleasing to see so many people at this time of year appreciating the arts.