‘It’s unbearable’: Residents flee CBD as MP hopeful promises to shift car race from park lands
As the bp Adelaide Grand Final revs up today, one state parliament hopeful is vowing to get the race out of the city. Some CBD residents are packing up and heading to Melbourne to escape the “horrendous” noise.
For 20 years, Doug McEvoy and Ruth Frazer have lived on Gilles Street near the south-eastern Adelaide Park Lands.
The two are well acquainted with the “horrendous noise” generated by the annual Supercars race where “people cannot talk to their partner inside their place”, McEvoy told InDaily.
This year, they are fleeing the city when the bp Adelaide Grand Final kicks off today. “We’re not against motor sport. It just needs to be in another location,” McEvoy said.
It’s a position backed by independent MP hopeful Keiran Snape, who is running in next year’s state election for the seat of Adelaide against Labor’s Lucy Hood.
Today, he is announcing that, if elected, he would fight to repeal the South Australian Motor Sport Act 1984 and find a new “suitable” location in South Australia for the bp Grand Final – and his plan has won support from two high-profile city councillors.
The act created the Motor Sports Board, which has the power to fence off land for the period of the Supercars event each year.
Snape does not have a location in mind and claims he is not against motor sports, but “we need a location that’s not in a highly residential zone causing significant chaos and disruption for residents, communities, businesses and visitors”.
Snape – the current Deputy Lord Mayor of Adelaide – said the time taken to set up and pack down the race meant residents were unable to access swathes of the south-eastern Park Lands.
“That’s upset a lot of residents,” he said.
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Snape has previously attended the event once in 2022 to see rock band The Killers.
“I’m not opposed to having concerts and events. We’ve got The Fringe, we’ve got Harvest Rock. Typically, they’re one or two days, and the pack down is at most a week. This is something else entirely,” he said.
“And the two weeks either side of the event is just mass chaos and closures and lack of public access to public space for a private event.
“I’m not saying we should take it from outside the residences in Adelaide and plunk it in front of Burnside or Port Adelaide. I think there has to be a place where it’s literally not blocking roads, infrastructure and private access to properties.”
The annual event last year generated $72.6 million in economic benefit to South Australia, according to the state government.
Asked what he would say to business owners in the city who would lose out on the economic benefit the weekend brings, Snape argued he had spoken to business owners who “do not see a net increase”.
“They see disruption. They see a lack of access,” he said.
Snape was also concerned about the “destruction” of the eastern Park Lands via the pouring of asphalt and concrete onto the parks.
“Which in turn increases the urban heat island effect in an era of increasing climate change,” his policy announcement reads.
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Frazer suggested Tailem Bend was a “good place for it”.
“Victoria Park is really well used by people, and it’s disrupted for all this period of time,” Frazer said.
“It could be a park like Central Park in America, but we have this big problem with the time it takes to put up the stands and take them down.”
Snape’s push was backed in by the likes of City of Adelaide councillor Janet Giles, who told InDaily it was “time to stop treating [the city] as an event space”.
“The Motor Sport Act, Children’s Hospital Act and LIV Golf Act need public scrutiny and community input and consideration of the impact of these on the Park Lands and access to green space for our community,” she said.
Former City Councillor Anne Moran – a resident of the city’s east – also backed Snape’s policy.
“It’s very loud and many people who live in the east of the city of Adelaide, which includes myself, leave for the weekend, to escape the deafening noise,” she told InDaily.
“I can’t understand why this very popular event isn’t held at somewhere like Tailem Bend, not a densely populated residential area.”
A state government spokesperson said: “Keiran Snape didn’t seem to have concerns about the location when he attended the after-race Killers concert”.
‘Anti-car ideology’
Snape’s announcement followed comments from the state’s Premier Peter Malinauskas that those opposing his push to increase garage sizes on new home builds were proponents of “extreme anti-car ideology”.
Asked by InDaily if he was ‘anti-car’, Snape said he wasn’t: “but I’m not particularly pro-car”.
“I walk everywhere, catch public transport,” he said.
“I don’t oppose this race happening. I think there is a risk that people who oppose the race more broadly, there can be a kind of elitist element to that, as in ‘oh yes, we support certain cultural things, but not other cultural things’.
“I think the Premier has to be careful about insulting his voters as well. We’ve got a wide variety of opinions and views across the state.”
He said he thought the Premier could be a “bit too pro-car”.
“And I think there’s a lack of public transport investment,” he said.
“The money we’ve seen put on the Torrens to Darlington upgrade could cover significant public transport infrastructure works that could change the future of our city for 100 years to come.”
