Adelaide Football Club

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (14:57): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking the Treasurer a question regarding the Adelaide Aquatic Centre and the Adelaide Football Club.

Leave granted.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: On 28 February, I revealed that discussions were well advanced for the club to take over the dilapidated Adelaide Aquatic Centre at North Adelaide and build new headquarters and training facilities. This was met with denials by club hierarchy and brushed aside by the council. It now seems those informal approaches were far more developed and have been going on for months.

At the weekend, it was announced that the federal government would, in last night's budget, contribute $15 million to the move, the same amount it would cost to replace the centre. This week, the Adelaide city council, which has been quite precious about the hotel development at the Adelaide Oval, announced that the Crows had already made an unsolicited bid for the area of Parklands in North Adelaide known as Park 2 and that it has recommended they can proceed to stage 2 of the council's unsolicited proposals process.

The possible outcomes are that all or part of the proposal proceeds to stage 3 on an exclusive consideration basis, that the proposal should not continue to be considered on an exclusive basis but that it warrants a competitive bidding process or that the proposal is not suitable for further consideration. Given that the Lord Mayor has in the last few days been spruiking the project, along with a committed handout, the latter seems an unlikely outcome. My questions to the Treasurer are:

1. Considering the estimated cost of the project is around $61 million, is the state government going to follow the federal government and provide funding for the Crows? If so, what amount?

2. Has the Adelaide Football Club approached the government about securing a loan through the South Australian Government Financing Authority for the project?

3. As a project of this type would involve significant change of use to the Parklands, do the Treasurer and the government believe the proposal requires consultation with residents and businesses to gauge broad community support before it proceeds?

4. Considering the Adelaide Aquatic Centre attracts 750,000 unique visits each year, how does the government propose to provide a swim centre accessible to the public in the city?

The Hon. R.I. LUCAS (Treasurer) (15:00): I thank the honourable member for the question. No proposition for funding has come to me as the Treasurer of the state. My views in relation to these general issues—in the absence of any specific proposal, we are speaking about a hypothetical. I accept the member has put a hypothetical question to me. My general attitude to these sorts of questions is I would take a power of convincing that we should be providing a grant equal to the commonwealth grant, evidently of $15 million. But there has been no proposition put to me as Treasurer.