House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-10-29 Daily Xml

Contents

ADELAIDE, LONELY PLANET RECOGNITION

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (15:07): In the minister's answer he mentioned bringing the AFL corporates over in recent weeks to visit the Adelaide Oval. Did the government contribute any money to bring the AFL corporates over, or was that all paid by the clubs or the AFL?

The SPEAKER: It's not a supplementary, but the minister.

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport) (15:07): Absolutely, we contributed to it. I think the final bill was $7,449.20, but I will check for you. We paid for the AFL clubs for a dinner at Rigoni's. We hired a bus, which cost $1,000, to take them down to McLaren Vale to two wineries, and we took them to lunch, which we paid for, at the Star of Greece. That investment of about $7,500 will result in millions of dollars of economic benefit for South Australia.

You shake your head and you want to be negative over there, but when you go and you talk to these people from the 16 interstate clubs who came here, who have never brought people to South Australia to watch football, because Football Park was a terrible place to watch football—when you talk to these clubs they say, 'We guarantee we will all be bringing at least a thousand fans each.' Let's just say they spend an average of $400, these thousand people or, if Collingwood bring the 6,000 that they took to the Gold Coast last year—do the sums: $400 by 1,000, by 6,000, and tell me how much that is worth to the South Australian economy. $7,500—best investment ever.

The SPEAKER: I remind the Minister for Tourism that I am neither shaking my head nor being negative. The deputy leader.