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

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay) (15:24): We know that this has been a bad year for those in the tourism and hospitality industry, but the hits just keep coming. Like many South Australians, I was shocked that our much-loved event the Superloop Adelaide 500 has been axed by this government. We know that we were coming up to the last part of the contract because I had been asking questions of the previous Minister for Tourism and now the current Minister for Tourism: 'What are we doing? Have we signed it? Have we guaranteed that first race?' But I never believed, even in this difficult time of COVID, that it would just be gone.

My concern here is the lack of judgement and the lack of leadership. Labor has made it very clear: we want to support this race. We want to support this major event in our calendar that brings great vibrancy, and we did something about it when our Labor leader signed that MOU because he wanted to guarantee it for South Australians—the more than 15,000 who signed a petition to say that we want it back. This is not something you can just cut up. We know that you gave away the Grand Prix, but this? What are you doing?

But let's talk about the economic impact. Let's talk about the 60,000 fewer nights we are going to get because not only will we not have the Adelaide 500 but the Tour Down Under is not going to go ahead as it did previously. That will leave a $100 million hole in our economy and, particularly, it is going to impact the Adelaide CBD.

The key point of my discussion today is not the decision that Labor has made to bring this back; that is out there and that is supported. My point is a failure of leadership. We have already seen cuts to the tourism budget. We have seen budget 1 and budget 2 of this government. We also saw a pattern of behaviour where we saw funding cut, which meant it cancelled the Adelaide Fashion Festival and the Adelaide Motorsport Festival and we know that Adelaide's Australian International 3 Day Event was only given one year of funding to go ahead, so forgive me for questioning the behaviour.

I question the leadership here because you have a pattern of behaviour where you cut festivals that were small, diverse and going well and now you make this decision to cut the Adelaide 500 with no notice. I do not even think that you told Supercars. You told them after you had gone to press. They believed they were negotiating a way forward with you. What kind of reputation does that give us? What type of reputation does that give South Australia as a place to invest for events in the future?

We know that the Illuminate Festival has been announced. It is sketchy on the details: 'It is going to be in winter. We want it to be like this.' That is fine, but it takes a long time for a festival, for a major event, to be successful. Earlier this year, it was wonderful to celebrate 60 years of the Adelaide Arts Festival and the Adelaide Fringe Festival. We know the economic contribution they make every year, but that has taken decades and decades to build up. Even those events that have started and built up take time to get there, so to make this announcement that you have axed events with nothing to replace them is a failure of leadership.

The Premier announced that he is going to establish an events advisory committee. Do you not think that perhaps you would have got these people together with great ideas about how to diversify events before you made the decision to get rid of a significant event?

It is a failure of leadership, and what we will see is the impact on tourism and hospitality, not just this summer coming but in the future, where you have not adequately replaced those major events.

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