Southern Metropolitan Region
Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (12:56): My question is to the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events. The Grand Prix is expected to lose at least $100 million this year, as it has in previous years, and it is Victorian taxpayers that will subsidise that loss. Victoria’s other major events do not rely on taxpayers to cover, by law, their annual operating losses. The excuse for such an atrocious waste of public funds is that the attendance generates economic activity. In fact there have been years of concerns that the attendance figures for this event are grossly inflated. What other major event, or any event, would hire a legal heavyweight and go to VCAT to keep its methodology of counting its attendances hidden from scrutiny and then contend it is in the public interest to keep it hidden from scrutiny, given the level of public money that this event devours? Minister, why is the Grand Prix trying to hide its true attendance figures?