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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2023-06-01 Daily Xml
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Major Sporting Events

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:05): Last night, there were 48,000 people at Adelaide Oval to watch one of the great rivalries in sport: the Blues versus the Maroons. I was really happy to do work on this back in 2017. We announced the State of Origin in January 2018, and we locked it in for every third year. It was terrific to be there last night and see the Blues and the Maroons. Of course, I had the Maroons gear on. It was great to see Queensland prevail by eight points.

Today, we have also announced another coup for South Australia. In 2025, South Australia will host the Beach Volleyball World Championships. This is the first time that these championships will be held in Asia or Oceania. As well as the world championships, we have locked in an Asian championship and six national events over the next three years. So, between 2024, 2025 and 2026, we are going to have eight beach volleyball and indoor volleyball events here in South Australia, which marries up with our commitment to a sport that has called Adelaide home in the men's program since before the Sydney Olympics, down at the South Australian Sports Institute.

What we want to do is provide a pathway for our emerging athletes and also have training centres here for athletes around Australia who come and want to be part of the national team. That follows on from the investment we are making at the South Australian Sports Institute, where we are building a new centre next to the South Australian Athletics Stadium at Mile End.

I want to thank a whole bunch of people, including those who run the world governing body of volleyball. I was in Switzerland last year meeting with the International Olympic Committee and a number of different sporting federations. As I worked my way around from meeting to meeting, the question I got the most was, 'Where's Adelaide?' It just proves that you actually need to get on a plane and go and tell people what Adelaide has to offer. When you do that, they take notice and look at alternatives other than maybe some of the bigger cities in Australia.

What we have proved through the Major Events Attraction Committee that I chair is that this is all about relationships. Some of the other states have been bidding more money for events that we have won already or that we are close to agreements on because of the relationships we have with these international and national sporting bodies.

I want to thank Andrew Dee, the CEO of Volleyball Australia, who has been terrific to work with over the past few months as we have honed the negotiations and discussions about where we will host these different events. The world championships will be hosted at Memorial Drive because grandstands and a roof are already in place, which were a great investment by the previous government—credit where it is due—in sporting infrastructure. We will have seating for 8,000 people, we will have great media facilities and we will have facilities there for the corporates as well.

We will be taking some of the world's best players out to film games that will not count as qualifying games, but they will be at places like Port Willunga, Grange Beach and Glenelg. The ones at Glenelg will figure in the championships in some cases. We will take them to Kangaroo Island. We will use these world championships as a vehicle to promote our wonderful beaches here in South Australia, not only along the metropolitan coastline but right throughout South Australia.

I think sometimes people interstate and overseas do not appreciate just how good the beaches are here in South Australia. Sometimes we have visitors over and they say, 'We went down to Henley,' or 'We went down to Port Willunga and cannot believe that you've got these beaches and everyone is not actually crowded all on top of each other.'

I also want to thank Craig Carracher, who started life as a young lawyer, as Kerry Packer's legal counsel, and owns a business now called Scape, which is the biggest provider of student accommodation in Australia. He is a former beach volleyballer himself. He is on the Australian Olympic Committee, he is the President of Volleyball Asia and he is the President of Volleyball Australia. Craig is a very astute businessperson who has been a pleasure to deal with over the past few months. Not only do we now have a great relationship with him around volleyball competitions here but also he is keen to invest in South Australia. That is terrific news, and it just shows that some of these events bring a lot more than just sport to South Australia.

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