Matters of Interest

Sam Smith Concert

The Hon. J.S. LEE (Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (15:25): Today, I would like to highlight the recent tourism campaign disaster by the Labor government and their obsession with influencers. One of the opposition's main roles is to question the government of the day and hold them accountable. Any good government should uphold the highest level of transparency and accountability; however, this is not the case with this Malinauskas Labor government. There is no transparency, and there is no accountability. It is very disappointing that taxpayers are kept in the dark on how the government is using their money and for what purpose.

On Monday 29 May 2023, it was revealed that the $32 million worth of advertising value that the Malinauskas Labor government claimed as an outcome of its exclusive, invite-only Sam Smith concert was completely bogus. The opposition's analysis of the tourism campaign results, which were obtained under freedom of information, shows that more than $24.5 million of the estimated advertising value equivalent was generated by mostly negative coverage or was completely off topic.

What does that mean? It means that a huge 76 per cent of Labor's purported advertising benefit was actually for negative or unrelated coverage. One of the top-priced articles—valued at $3.1 million—was about a concertgoer complaining that the Sam Smith event was ruined by bad behaviour from social media influencers, including one who allegedly 'peed in the mosh'.

One of the articles with the highest value—worth $6.5 million—was about how the Malinauskas Labor government had refused to say how much taxpayer money was spent bringing royal couple Zara and Mike Tindall to South Australia. Other articles that made the cut include those titled, 'Dark side to Sam Smith concert unearthed' and 'Commercial-in-confidence is a poor excuse for state secrets', and many unrelated stories.

It is truly astounding that Labor believes that negative coverage is worth tens of millions of dollars, and it is quite insulting to South Australians when we were made to believe all publicity, including negative publicity, should be considered good publicity. We call on the Malinauskas Labor government to go back and crunch those numbers again, because an article about a woman urinating in public cannot possibly be worth $3 million. It is certainly not how we want to be selling South Australia to the world.

South Australia's Tourism Commission has failed to explain the calculations used to back up claims that the Sam Smith concert was a huge success. Secrecy surrounding the Sam Smith concert has attracted widespread criticism, with Labor continuing to keep taxpayers in the dark over how much they forked out for the private, exclusive party while South Australia is facing a cost-of-living crisis, a housing crisis and a ramping crisis.

The Malinauskas Labor government and Minister Zoe Bettison also claimed that the Sam Smith event 'resulted in a potential global audience reach of 1.58 billion'. This is another absolutely ridiculous claim, because that means that the Sam Smith concert attracted 80 million more viewers than the FIFA World Cup final—seriously bogus. Of course, when the review came out the minister backflipped and said it was only five million people. The Malinauskas Labor government has been pulling numbers from thin air since day one of the Sam Smith concert controversy.

On Monday 29 May 2023, the SA Tourism Commission chief executive defended the use of advertising value equivalent as a metric in an interview with ABC radio in the morning and at a parliamentary committee meeting; however, a few hours later, after the opposition presented FOI analysis of the negative coverage of $24.5 million to the media, we forced tourism minister, Zoe Bettison, to concede she was wrong about the calculation. She then announced that the AVE measure would no longer be used.

South Australians should be very disappointed that this Labor government continues to get their priorities wrong. In fact, by their own calculation, the Sam Smith concert was a $24.5 million disaster for the Malinauskas Labor government and for South Australia. This should serve as a wake-up call for Peter Malinauskas and Zoe Bettison.