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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-11-10 Daily Xml
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Superloop Adelaide 500

Mr MALINAUSKAS (Croydon—Leader of the Opposition) (14:25): My question is to the Minister for Tourism. How much will South Australian taxpayers have to pay Supercars Australia for the government cancelling the contract in the 2021 race?

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL (Dunstan—Premier) (14:25): Obviously, there is a contract which exists between the people of South Australia and Supercars. As I mentioned in my previous answer, we had one year to run of that contract. That won't be going ahead, so there are negotiations which are currently underway between Supercars and the SATC. Ultimately, after this year, when we did have a successful race, we will not be having the street circuit.

We would like to maintain a good relationship with Supercars. We would like Supercars to continue to come to South Australia. They had three events here in South Australia this year: one with the street circuit and two up at The Bend, which is a fantastic facility. In fact, many people say it is one of the greatest circuits that exists anywhere in the world, and we should all be very proud that it is right here in South Australia.

Of course, that is only part of motorsport opportunities. Supercars have been a fixture on the calendar for an extended period of time. They were one of the replacement events that came after South Australia relinquished the Australian Grand Prix—the Formula One Grand Prix—and, after we lost that, there was a lot of gnashing of teeth and a lot of people were very concerned about losing that event.

What came out of that was a rebirth, with a number of new events. One of them was Supercars, but also events like the Tour Down Under, Tasting Australia and a range of other events which continue to this day; and that's exactly and precisely what we need to do with the completion of the contract with the Supercars. We need to ring-fence that money and put that money into a series of events, smaller events, albeit. Importantly, they can go ahead and employ people over an extended period of time.

I was speaking with a contractor over the weekend who supplied into the Supercars, and he was telling me that, whilst it was excellent work for the local contractors during that four-day period, of course the capacity requirement for the hiring was well beyond the capacity in South Australia. So a lot of the money went to interstate firms that had to truck their work over to South Australia. And he agreed—like the entire SATC board agreed—that what would be far better to create more jobs in South Australia would be to have a series of events over the year, and that's exactly and precisely what we need to have.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: When we look at the economic analysis, this is an interesting point, because the Leader of the Opposition was on radio the other day saying his number one priority was jobs; he wanted to keep jobs here in South Australia—

Mr Brown interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, member for Playford!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —so I went back to the SATC board and I said, 'The Leader of the Opposition is making these points about creating jobs.' They said, 'This was our number one issue in framing the advice to the government, that we need to move away from a four-day event to many more events to maximise the amount of jobs coming to South Australia.'

Economic analysis was done, which has been released and people have seen it. It has been in the media; I'm surprised those opposite haven't taken the time to take a look. What it showed was that this year's event created a total full-time equivalent of 353 jobs. That is not nearly enough for the expenditure that we were making—and this was pre-COVID when many people said this would be the biggest event—

Mr Malinauskas interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order, the leader!

The Hon. S.S. MARSHALL: —because it was the last Holden v Ford event. So it was a very important historic event: the last Holden v Ford event. It was before COVID, yet the economic advice, which those opposite often say is overly generous, created a total of 353 full-time equivalent jobs. What we want to do is to create many more jobs from that expenditure. It's supported by industry. It's supported unanimously by the SATC board. There's only one group of people that are not on board and, unfortunately, that is the Leader of the Opposition opposite.

Mr Brown interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Before I call the leader, I warn the member for Playford.

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