Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Adelaide is home to Australia's biggest arts festival, the Adelaide Fringe, and it is about to start this Friday. It is unique in Australia. It takes place in around 350 venues, with 1,200-plus shows and over 6,000 artists. I am very honoured to have them housed in my electorate in the Park Lands. The annual box office at the Adelaide Fringe is more than $20 million a year, which is paid out to the artists and presenters. So it goes back to the arts community. Approximately 800,000 tickets are sold each year at the Adelaide Fringe. This year they are predicting to break the million mark. Around 2.5 million attendances are clocked, including the free events. The Adelaide Fringe also generates over 6,500 jobs and delivers $90 million, which has a massive impact on the South Australian economy. These are pretty impressive figures.

While the Adelaide Fringe is one of our festivals, we also have the Adelaide Festival and WOMADelaide at exactly the same time. So we have three major arts events taking place in Adelaide during the end of February and in March. This creates the biggest festival cluster in Australia, and it's about to start this week. It is the most wonderful time to be in Adelaide, and to anyone who hasn't been I encourage you all—my colleagues in this House and everyone else—to visit Adelaide during our festival season.

These past years haven't been kind to the arts sector. Everyone understands the devastation and the impact of COVID and the impact that it had on the arts communities. So I am determined to do all I can to ensure that the arts and creative sectors recover and continue to thrive in South Australia and around the country. This is why I so welcomed, as did everyone on this side of the House, the Albanese government's new national cultural policy, Revive. It sets the course for Australia's arts, entertainment and cultural sector for the next five years. Revive will empower our talented artists and arts organisations to thrive and grow. It will unlock new opportunities. It will reach new audiences and tell even more stories in compelling new ways. It will bring drive, direction and vision back to this essential industry.

At the centre of the policy is the establishment of Creative Australia as the government's new principal arts investment and advisory body. These reforms deliver what the sector and artists and creatives have told us was needed. It was a great consultation process that Minister Burke undertook. This sector is essential for our culture, for our economy and for who we are as Australians, developing our culture. But it's also essential for our wellbeing. Anyone who has been transformed by a concert, show, book or painting will know: the arts are good for the soul. So to all the creatives and artists I say: thank you for making our lives richer.

The Adelaide Fringe opens this Friday, 17 February. The Adelaide Festival opens on 3 March and WOMADelaide is on from 10 to 13 March. So do yourselves a favour and get to Adelaide during festival season and continue supporting and valuing our amazing industry, our creative people, the best way you can. I know I will be doing so, and I know many of my colleagues will be visiting Adelaide for some of the festivals.

But it is not just the arts where the fringe festival takes place in the Park Lands to see. We have Rundle Street, which is full of restaurants and so vibrant. It's wonderful to see it packed. There are some great restaurants, including Sostas Argentinian Kitchen steakhouse. It's a wonderful restaurant. For those on the other end of the scale, there is also Staazi's vegan street food up the road. So there is choice for everyone in Rundle Street. Come along, grab a show and see some of the wonderful talent that will be on display in terms of theatre, stand-up comedy and live acts. Grab yourself a meal and visit one of the wonderful bars, such as East End Cellars and Mother Vine, all in the east end in my electorate of Adelaide that I am very proud to be the member for. I am very proud to have such wonderful events in my electorate. As I said to all my colleagues: support the arts, attend the shows and help them out after what they've been through with COVID.