House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-10-24 Daily Xml

Contents

Lot Fourteen

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) (14:27): My question is again to the Minister for Transport and Infrastructure. When the minister delegated all responsibility for Lot Fourteen to the Premier, did the Premier become responsible for all contracts, tenders and tenancies granted at Lot Fourteen?

The Hon. S.K. KNOLL (Schubert—Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government, Minister for Planning) (14:27): To the best of my understanding, yes, but I would say that there is a process that is undertaken by Renewal SA to decide which tenancies are put onto Lot Fourteen. There are some guidelines that Renewal SA uses to vet potential tenants. We have a vision down there for the Lot Fourteen site that is around trying to create an innovation cluster and, quite clearly, our ability to get the right kinds of businesses that are going to really bring and inject that talent is extremely important.

We have the centre for machine learning that Adelaide University is putting on the corner of the Lot Fourteen site and there are many businesses that are very keen to get access to those graduates. We are moving towards a situation where knowledge is power and getting access to these highly skilled people is desirable for these start-up businesses.

Certainly, the response that we have had at Lot Fourteen is extremely strong and the number of businesses wanting to go down there is immense, but we need to make sure that we curate that site properly so that we can create this proper community and this idea that we can bring together smart minds so that they can talk, discuss and coexist with each other in order to be able to spark new ideas, start small businesses and work with the Chief Entrepreneur and the work that the Department for Industry and Skills is doing on that site to really drive forward entrepreneurship and innovation in South Australia, which is something that has been lacking up until now but something that we are really proud of, that is really strong, that we are creating down at Lot Fourteen under the extremely good guidance of the Premier.