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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, First Session (52-1)
2010-07-20 Daily Xml
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Ministerial Statement

ADELAIDE OVAL

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY (Port Adelaide—Deputy Premier, Treasurer, Minister for Federal/State Relations, Minister for Defence Industries) (16:00): I seek leave to make a ministerial statement. As I said, I was quite happy to give this in the house before but the deputy leader insisted that I not give it then.

Leave granted.

Mr Williams interjecting:

The Hon. K.O. FOLEY: I was just happy to clarify my statement, as I said I would when I got my briefing notes checked. I have again read the transcript of Mr Cantley before the finance committee in the upper house where he made the issue of the interest payments reasonably clear. One may interpret the evidence of Mr Cantley to suggest that the interest payments would be absorbed; that is the advice that I have in front of me, but it is somewhat confusing, given the nature of it.

The original $30 million was to be offered to the South Australian Cricket Association as a one-off grant. The advice of Mr Cantley, which I accepted, was that it would be more prudent to provide a loan so that should the oval not proceed the government would not be providing a $30 million capital grant up front and, in fact, would have a commercial loan for which it would be recoverable.

I am advised that the interest rate subsidy is not repayable by SACA should the oval not go ahead. During question time I think I said that the advice I had was that it would be. With respect to the full loan of $85 million to SACA, on commercial terms, for the Western Stand development and in discharge of the Treasurer's guarantee, if an agreement for the Adelaide Oval redevelopment is entered into between SACA and the SANFL by 1 July 2010, interest on the loan will accrue and is capitalised and will only be payable by SACA should the Adelaide Oval redevelopment not proceed. This is designed to address the risk that the redevelopment may still not proceed for some reason, even though SACA and the SANFL have signed a legally binding document.

It is very difficult, and Mr Cantley himself said, 'It is a very complicated structure designed to protect the taxpayer to the full extent that we can.' Mr Cantley said, 'I have negotiated something fairly complex, so if the Treasurer might trip up on some of this I can understand why.' The original intent was to provide a grant, but we decided to provide a loan and we would cover the interest payments, and, of course, had we made a grant it would have been the same cost to the government. I hope that somewhat clarifies the matter.

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