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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-03-20 Daily Xml
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ADELAIDE CONVENTION CENTRE

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide) (14:19): My question is to the Premier. Can the Premier update us on the Convention Centre?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier, Treasurer, Minister for State Development, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for the Arts) (14:19): I thank the honourable member for her question. Today I had great pleasure, along with the Minister for Transport, to see up close the $350 million redevelopment of the Adelaide Convention Centre. That is a project that is not only providing local jobs driving innovation but also developing new skills for the workers who are doing that fantastic work. Ultimately, it will provide the state with one of the largest, most flexible and up-to-date convention centres in the nation.

In particular, this morning I was briefed on an amazing feat of innovation: a collaboration of local architects, engineers and steel fabricators who had to devise a steel structure with enough strength and length to support 4,300 square metres of new convention floor space above the rail yard. You can picture a workplace of this nature. It is clear that what is required is an enormous amount of skilled thinking. The result is 1,700 tonnes of structural steel framing that will support the new wing of the Convention Centre, just metres above Adelaide's busiest railway station.

What this will physically provide the city is a seamless transition between Morphett Street, a world-class new exhibition centre and meeting space, and our revitalised existing Convention Centre. The redevelopment will make our state increasingly competitive in attracting conventions and large scale events. We have heard that we are already having to knock away work because we do not have sufficient space.

It will have enormous benefits in boosting our convention industry, which already brings in thousands of people to South Australia. These are people who spend money in hotels, restaurants and shops. Importantly, it provides jobs, now and for the future. Today, I saw 95 per cent local contracting by value on the site. This segment of work alone involves about 100 people off-site and 130 on-site workers.

I also had the pleasure of meeting a worker called Rambo—which was slightly unnerving because we were 10 metres off the ground—but he told me that he had worked continuously in the construction industry for 30 years and that this pipeline of projects that is happening in the city at the moment is allowing construction companies to employ the new wave of Rambos in the future. He had obviously developed a lot of skills over the years, and so a lot of these construction companies were able to take on new workers that were able to skill up on these difficult projects so that we have the capability to win projects of this sort in the future.

This point was also made by Woods Bagot, the architectural firm that has done the design work on the project. They told me they had been able to upskill their Adelaide-based workers and make sure they had expertise, so that now they are actually winning contracts nationally and internationally for convention centres and laboratory-based spaces like the SAHMRI because of the work they have been doing through this pipeline of projects. What is happening here is that this collaboration we are seeing between government and business is making sure that we have the skills and capabilities to create new opportunities for the new projects that will come through the pipeline.

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