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Debate over Australian GP flares again

Roar Rookie
27th March, 2011
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Is it the F1 race Melbourne has to have, the race it wants to have, or the race the state government is scared not to have?

This year’s Australian Grand Prix provoked more debate than the 15 that have gone before it at Albert Park, and probably less than the four more that are guaranteed to come after it.

At the centre of the argument is the value the state of Victoria gets for the money it tips into the race.

What is certain is that the 2011 edition will cost Victoria in excess of $50 million.

What is uncertain is how an event that charges big money, that attracts around 300,000 people and is sold on television around the world can be a loser.

Organisers defend the contribution from the government as money well spent.

“It would cost $100 million for a government to mount an advertising campaign that gave as much exposure as the grand prix,” said Ron Walker, the event’s chairman.

Walker also points to the additional business the GP brings to other businesses in the city, although independent economic studies find it difficult to quantify the financial benefit, or even confirm that there is any.

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Walker also points to the Australian Open tennis championship as an event the state government supports without too much objection.

Successive governments have spent more than $300 million building a tennis centre to stage the Open, Walker says.

But the tennis centre is used most weeks of the year for a major event and its courts are open to the public.

One way to view the grand prix is to accept it as one of the few permanent world class events on the Australian sporting calendar, and one which competitors openly admire and which rival organisers envy.

This weekend’s winner Sebastian Vettel made a point of praising the event and the venue.

“It is really always very nice to come here,” Vettel said.

“The atmosphere is always something special, the organisation is incredible ….. the crowd support is something we don’t get everywhere.

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“We have to keep coming here.”

Australia’s former world champion driver Alan Jones provided a more valid opinion.

“It seems the cost of hosting the race is always an issue and there is no doubt spending should be kept under control – but that goes for any major sporting event funded by government,” Jones wrote this weekend.

“If Victoria was alone in the world in funding an F1 grand prix then I could understand all the opposition, but Singapore, Monaco and Montreal go through the same exercise and see value.”

The debate, however, is one thing.

If the Victorian government was frank and open about the level of its financial assistance, if the Grand Prix Corporation was the same about what it spends and receives and if Walker was less ambiguous in his statements on the event, informed public opinion might at last exist.

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