Tour Down Under

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (14:54): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment about the Tour Down Under.

Leave granted.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: South Australian Stuart O'Grady had a celebrated cycling career for Australia, including winning an Olympic gold medal, and he has had a successful association with the event as a rider before his retirement. He is now the new director of the Tour Down Under—but Mr O'Grady is also a confessed drug cheat.

In his biography Mr O'Grady admitted to taking a banned substance, EPO, in the lead-up to the 1998 Tour de France, this frank admission in 2013 coming after years in which he flatly denied taking drugs—essentially lying—even if it were dismissed as a one-off event, if we can believe that now. While he was never stripped of his awards, it nonetheless tainted his career. However, he is now welcomed back as the South Australian president of the Australian Olympic Committee.

When they were in opposition the Liberals strongly attacked the Rann Labor government and the Weatherill government regarding the signing of cycling's most notorious drug cheat, Lance Armstrong—who, I might add, also spent years lying about his drugtaking before he was finally found out. My questions to the minister are:

1. Did the government take into consideration Mr O'Grady's admission that he had taken a banned substance when making his appointment as tour director, and did the minister personally sign off on the appointment?

2. What makes Mr O'Grady's admission of cheating any different to that of Mr Armstrong's, particularly in light of his repeated denials previously?

3. Does the minister believe that a person holding such a prestigious position as the director of Australia's premier international cycling event should have impeccable integrity?

4. Does the minister believe the appointment of Mr O'Grady may now impact on the event's credibility and that of Mr O'Grady, who had repeatedly misled the public and the world media?

The Hon. D.W. RIDGWAY (Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment) (14:56): I thank the honourable member for his question regarding the Tour Down Under. It was with great pleasure that we announced, earlier this week, that Mr Stuart O'Grady is to be the race director. This will be Mike Turtur's last race and Stuart O'Grady will, if you like, be his right-hand man throughout this particular 2020 race. Stuart will then take over as race director in 2021 with Mike Turtur being there as a bit of a mentor for him.

To try to answer some of the honourable member's questions, there was a quite extensive process undertaken—effectively almost like a competitive tender, I think, the way it has been described to me. There was quite an extensive process, and there were a number of people who were interviewed in that process. I think the only caveat on it was that we wanted it to be an Australian, and my understanding is that only Australians were considered for that position.

It was very exhaustive, with a panel put together that included Mike Turtur—so Mike Turtur was well involved with that—to do the evaluation. The evaluation was done, and the recommendation was for Stuart O'Grady to be the new race director.

I think Mr O'Grady addressed the concerns around his admission that he had taken a performance enhancing substance—I think it was EPO. He admitted that was a mistake, he admitted that he had paid a significantly high personal cost, as had his family, but the sport has now universally and internationally accepted that the only way for it to prosper and go forward is to be drug-free, and that is certainly the view of Mr O'Grady.

So while he does not shy away from the fact that he used that substance, it was nearly 20 years ago, I think, when he used that. It is the view of the South Australian Tourism Commission and the government that Mr O'Grady has paid a heavy price and has learned from his mistake.

I also think we have to take into consideration that Stuart O'Grady comes with the full support of the president of the UCI, David Lappartient. As we know, the Tour Down Under is the start of the UCI World Tour, and if the president of the UCI had any doubts he would have expressed them. He has no doubts; the appointment comes with his full support.

Mr Gerry Ryan, who owns the Mitchelton-Scott team—the Australian team that races here, but also in the Tour de France—absolutely fully supports this appointment. We have a couple of extremely important figures in international cycling who are very vigorously supporting the appointment of Stuart O'Grady.

On the back of that, we don't believe the appointment of Stuart O'Grady will affect the credibility of this spectacular race. It is the largest cycling event in the world outside of Europe, and it continues to grow. I had the good fortune to attend three days of the Tour de France in July and I can say that while that is a spectacular and iconic event, what we have here is particularly special. The riders that I met talked very fondly about our great event here.

I see the appointment of Stuart O'Grady as a great opportunity to take on this race with his creativeness. It is about the race director, it is about the different routes that he will take us on, and we are looking forward to a very exciting future with Stuart O'Grady as the race director.