Paul Starick: City arena kickstarts critical election battle | The State

A $700m arena is Marshall’s double-barrelled shotgun blast to start an election battle but it leaves Malinauskas an opening, writes Paul Starick.

Premier Steven Marshall’s election campaign-opening salvo was more a double-barrelled shotgun blast than a popgun’s volley.

Vowing that a re-elected Marshall Liberal government would build a $700m, 15,000-capacity, multipurpose indoor arena in Adelaide’s Riverbank is a bold and decisive move that can dramatically change the CBD’s landscape.

Mr Marshall’s pitch is centred on the project’s job creation and the arena helping cement Adelaide as one of the world’s most liveable cities. He points out more than $2 billion in private and government investment will have been pumped into the Riverbank precinct in recent years. Most significantly, this includes the $535m Adelaide Oval redevelopment, opened in 2014, and the $397m Adelaide Convention Centre upgrade, opened in 2017.

The new arena, which will replace the Adelaide Entertainment Centre, is capable of hosting concerts, conventions and court sports – including basketball, netball and tennis.

A concept drawing of the Adelaide arena west of the Morphett St bridge. Picture: Supplied

The increase in convention space by 5600 sqm is this plan’s economic driver. This significant increase, Mr Marshall argues, will enable SA to compete for major international conferences. Events and conferences will be staged far more regularly in the arena than concerts or sports.

But the latter are the key sales points, because conventions do not excite voter imagination. In this sense, the arena is the reverse of the former Labor government’s Adelaide Oval upgrade. This was underpinned by AFL rejoining cricket at the Oval, with concerts and events as a sideline.

This distinction has created an opening for Mr Marshall’s opponent, Labor leader Peter Malinauskas.

When The Advertiser broke the story on Friday, Mr Malinauskas neither supported nor opposed what he immediately branded “a basketball stadium”. This is an attempt to frame the arena as an idle folly of Mr Marshall’s, by drawing a subtle contrast with the Oval upgrade. Basketball – fabulous sport that it is – attracts smaller crowds than AFL or cricket at the Oval. Importantly, though, Mr Malinauskas is yet to declare a firm position on the arena.

There will be elements of the influential football lobby who are upset that the World Game remains at Hindmarsh, rather than finding a new home in a city arena.

All this means the arena will require deft sales work and a rigorous business plan to avoid Mr Marshall’s shotgun blast backfiring. So far, though, the indications are that the plan has been favourably received by voters. By late Friday, 57 per cent of almost 3500 respondents to an Advertiser.com.au poll said Adelaide needed a new arena – 43 per cent were opposed. Of almost 3000 respondents to a related poll asking if the Riverbank site was the right spot, 69 per cent were in favour and 31 per cent against.

A concept drawing of the arena’s interior. Picture: Supplied

Mr Marshall’s announcement to a Property Council lunch was made exactly a year out from the next election, on March 19, 2022. Thankfully for voters, it heralds the release of substantive policy well before the election by both major parties vying to form government.

Mr Malinauskas is about to start releasing major policies, development of which started in early 2019.

He wants to produce a serious economic vision for new industries and full-time, secure, inclusive jobs of the future. Echoing former prime minister Sir Robert Menzies’ famous 1942 “forgotten people” speech, Mr Malinauskas wants to outline ready-to-go policies that result in jobs for people left behind by the COVID-19 pandemic and industrial transformation.

In state parliament in recent weeks, Labor has seized upon South Australia taking the unwanted mantle of the nation’s highest unemployment rate. The two leaders have verbally duelled over economic statistics, which Mr Marshall capitalising on those showing SA leading the states on jobs and wages growth since the pandemic hit last March. But Mr Malinauskas argues the state is slumping on a series of measures.

Premier Steven Marshall. Pi/Russell Millard

Opposition leader Peter Malinauskas. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Naomi Jellicoe

Referencing the jobless rate in parliament on Thursday, he accused Mr Marshall of being in denial about those without a job who were trying to work out how to pay the bills this weekend. “Those people need leadership, and that is exactly what the Labor Party will be providing at the next election. It is one year to go … As we go into the post-COVID economic recovery phase, we will not allow a lack of leadership from this Premier to govern the question before the electorate in 12 months’ time. Instead what they will hear is a thoughtful, bold policy provision from me and my team, and we look forward to presenting that over the next 12 months, because that is what the people of South Australia deserve,” Mr Malinauskas declared.

This is a decisive moment in the state’s history. The pandemic has changed the landscape. Voters deserve a rigorous policy exchange before next March.