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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Third Session (51-3)
2009-12-03 Daily Xml
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ADELAIDE OVAL

Mrs REDMOND (Heysen—Leader of the Opposition) (14:24): My question, again, is for the Premier. Given that the Premier announced yesterday that the SACA and the SANFL have agreed to continue to keep talking, why did he then not ensure that a legally binding agreement between the parties was signed before the state election next March? The government announced yesterday that a legally binding agreement between the SACA and the SANFL must be signed by 1 July 2010. The Premier told the press yesterday:

If any of the parties walk away from a deal this money is off the table for good.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Treasurer, Minister for Industry and Trade, Minister for Federal/State Relations) (14:25): I would love nothing more than to have a legally binding agreement today—or yesterday or tomorrow.

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader will come to order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: What I find extraordinary is that there is barely a person in the streets of Adelaide today or in South Australia who does not think that this is a great move forward for sports in our state, except the Liberal Party.

Mr Williams interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for MacKillop will come to order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: The Leader of the Opposition on radio today said that she has never been to AAMI Stadium. Then she said, 'But I've been to AFL matches, you know, like, around the local comp in the city.' They are not AFL games.

Mrs Redmond: I know that.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Where did you go to an AFL game?

Mrs Redmond: In Melbourne.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Melbourne? She prefers to go to watch football in Melbourne but not in her home state. As I said, if I can just have a slight indulgence of the house to talk about my football brilliance, an open-air stadium is essential for footballers, such as me, who could kick a footy fairly well, but—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: —we need the wind behind our back for it to be a decent kick.

The Hon. P.F. Conlon: To go 30 metres, you mean?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Just to get a little bit of distance in me old drop punt.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: With all due respect, I would never try to suggest to the leader, with her passion for the arts, whether or not we should have a roof over an arts centre, whether we should have shag pile carpet or whether we should have a great big orchestra playing in whatever. With all due respect, I do not think that the Leader of the Opposition is qualified to make a statement that we should have a roof over a football stadium.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mrs REDMOND: A point of order, Mr Speaker. My question was about the need for a legally binding agreement to be signed before March.

The SPEAKER: Yes. I do uphold the point of order. The Deputy Premier must answer the substance of the question.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Thank you, sir; I did digress. Talking about my football experience does require a fair bit of digression from anything, to be honest.

The Hon. P.F. Conlon: And invention.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: And invention.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: I played football with the working grade punters in C grade—right where the real people play footy.

The Hon. I.F. Evans interjecting:

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: I did play B grade football, but it was not a lot of games. I was noted for my cricket experience.

An honourable member interjecting:

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: That is true. Interjections opposite are making me go off course. I would have loved nothing more than to have a signed agreement, but to recap where this has come from and where we are today is important in the context of where we go forward. I refer to the suggestion yesterday by the leader that this was cobbled together in four days as a response to their plan. I wish it was only four days. It has been long (and at some points tortuous) but incredibly satisfying that, in the end, we have got these parties together. When these parties—

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The Leader of the Opposition will come to order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: I would ask the leader to talk to her Liberal Party colleague, a great South Australian, a great Liberal, Ian McLachlan, because I can tell members what Ian McLachlan thinks about this deal: he is over the moon. He thinks this is extraordinary, and he would be very disappointed—

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The leader will come to order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: —if the Liberal Party was not to allow the redevelopment of his beloved Adelaide Oval. He would be very disappointed. The respective groups had a meeting in Melbourne about four weeks ago, as we said yesterday—senior members from both the SACA, the SANFL, the Chairman of the AFL (Mike Fitzpatrick) and Andrew Demetriou. What is called a term sheet was signed, quite a detailed document—

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order! The Leader of the Opposition will come to order.

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: The leader knows little about process, and that is evidenced by their slapdash, mickey mouse, Disneyland fairytale in the West End precinct. At that meeting they debated, discussed and reached agreement on what they agree with and the issues that must be agreed for this to go forward.

In any complex negotiations there is a set of stages. The document that was signed (and I sighted it for the first time in Victoria shortly after that meeting when I was there to meet with Andrew Demetriou) was an enormous step forward. Mike Fitzpatrick and Andrew Demetriou were both surprised and delighted that they got that far at that meeting. That document commits both parties to agreeing that this is the right option, the option that both parties want, and these are the issues that need to be resolved so that we can finally get a legally binding document.

Some of those issues are going to take some time—hello! Before they are prepared to commit, they want council approval. You do not get council approval, least of all from the Adelaide City Council, within 24 hours—point 1. The other thing is that they have to agree on a design. They have to agree on issues such—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, the members on my left!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: It is not going to happen? Mr Speaker, there is even a chance that we could get it signed off before the election: 1 July is an end date. There has to be agreement on issues such as the facilities for each of the codes; they have to work through corporate facilities; they have to work through whether or not there will be a naming rights sponsor allowed at the oval. There is a strong view, to which I accord myself, that the Adelaide Oval in itself is a great name. However, they are issues that have to be sorted through.

Mrs Redmond interjecting:

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: So, she knows more than Ian McLachlan, Andrew Demetriou and Rod Payze? That is what the leader is saying. Never having been to AAMI Stadium, she is smarter than the most experienced administrators in sport in this nation. Other issues that are to be resolved are issues such as car parking and exactly how that will be configured. They have made clear what they want. That is not an unreasonable ask, and I do not think that that will be a major issue.

There is also the issue of the membership model. The membership model will be the most complex piece of arithmetic in all of this exercise. They have to build a business model that will accommodate SACA members, AAMI Stadium members, Crows members, Power members and the general public admission members. They have to work out a division and distribution of earnings and they have to work through issues such as the management structure of the stadium marketing authority. They are just some of the issues that have to be resolved. They have to consider appointing architects and engineers and there are, no doubt, a number of other critical issues.

It is impractical and ridiculous to suggest that that could have been done in a matter of weeks or even one month or two. I can say that there was some strong opinion that 1 July was too short a time frame for all of this to be resolved. We insisted on 1 July, and we will be doing all we can to get it done beforehand. But also remember, Mr Speaker, that we do go into a caretaker period, and that takes a whole month or more out of the process.

However, importantly (and I will conclude on this), this was not a Labor government proposal that we brought out from the bottom drawer to somehow gazump the Liberal Party. This is a proposal brought to this government—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: —by no-one other than Mike Fitzpatrick, the Chairman of the AFL, Andrew Demetriou, who in my opinion is the finest sports administrator in Australia; Leigh Whicker, the most experienced and finest sports administrator in South Australia; Rod Payze, a man of enormous experience and respect; and Ian McLachlan who, I think, if not the greatest chairman that SACA has had, is very close to it, who for six years has worked tirelessly to improve—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: I said 'if not, one of', okay. Don Bradman may have been a great cricketer but whether he was the best chairman, I was not around in those days. I was a great chairman of my cricket club, but not many would suggest that I was a great cricketer.

The Hon. P.F. Conlon: Did you bat or bowl?

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: Well, did I bat or bowl? Digressing again if I may on the last day—

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: —when I was chairman of the cricket club, all of a sudden I was able to become captain of the B grade and, as soon as I became captain of the B grade, the use of me as a strike spin bowler multiplied enormously.

These people have come to government with what they consider to be the best plan, what they want, and we as a government have embraced it because we are a government that leads from the front, we are a government that can manage this state, we are a government that has the experience, the track record and the capability to make the hard decisions for leading this state.

Make no mistake, this state would not be in as good a position economically and financially as it is today had it not been for the Rann Labor government. If government in this state wants to maximise economic opportunities, there is only one government capable of doing it over the next four years—and that is the Rann Labor government.

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