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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2013-11-12 Daily Xml
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ADELAIDE CONVENTION CENTRE

The Hon. L.R. BREUER (Giles) (15:13): My question is to the Minister for Tourism. Can the minister advise the house about the establishment of a bid fund for the Adelaide Convention Centre?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson—Minister for Tourism, Minister for Recreation and Sport) (15:13): I was delighted to join with the Premier today to announce a $2 million bid fund for conventions to South Australia. We are spending as a government $350 million doing up the Convention Centre next door. The western end of the Convention Centre is well underway and, when that's finished, we will be knocking down the very original part of the Convention Centre and replacing it with a room which, for plenary functions, can seat up to 3,500 people, so it is a very important piece of infrastructure for the South Australian tourism industry.

We already have $160 million worth of forward bookings for the next three years, and that could well grow to $200 million. We are just about to lock in about $40 million worth of business, but I don't want to count the chickens until we've actually got them. The bid fund—with $1 million next financial year and $1 million the year after that—will help us be agile out there in the ever more competitive convention market. There are people right throughout the world who are all looking to host bid conventions.

Adelaide was the first capital city in Australia to have a convention centre, and we want to make sure that we maintain our spot as one of the leading convention cities in the world. We are facing increasing competition from other parts of Australia, and we need to be in the marketplace with the agility to be able to match and better offers that may be made by Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and other cities that are in that competition. This is something that we have worked very hard on with the private sector.

Just a few months ago, I sat down with all the leading major hotel owners and operators in Adelaide, along with AHA. We worked long and hard and in good faith to reach the decision today where we were able to announce this bid fund. I thank those hoteliers and the AHA for their kind words of support and congratulations to the government today on bringing this fund about. It is going to be a game changer; it is going to make sure that we get even more conventions here.

We want to thank the private sector for their ongoing investment in this state that follows on from the big capital spend we are doing as a government. The Premier and I made the announcement at the Ibis Hotel, which is rising out of Grenfell Street. They are putting on two new storeys every 18 days. We were up on level—

Ms Bedford: Will it eventually stop?

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL: They will eventually stop. We were on level 11 today. It was great to be on a construction site with 90 to 100 workers building South Australia. It will be a 17-storey building, and they expect it to be open in April or May next year. It is one of three new hotels—we have also got the Quest Apartments on King William Street and the Mayfair on King William Street—three brand-new hotels that will be opened between now and May next year that will deliver more than 600 rooms to South Australia. Again, it is great to see the confidence that the private sector has in South Australia, in our state, and in the future for the tourism sector. We want to grow it from a $5 billion a year industry into a $8 billion a year industry by 2020.

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