SAVE ALBERT PARK’S ROLE

Save Albert Park’s most important function has been to work towards the permanent removal of the Grand Prix from Albert Park, to determine the facts relating to the event and to expose misleading claims made by the Australian Grand Prix Corporation, a Victorian government agency, and repeated by government and media.

Save Albert Park has supported the sports clubs in Albert Park negatively impacted by the Grand Prix for months every year. They say that government, including the Grand Prix minister and the AGPC, have done little to help them.

Save Albert Park has also supported local traders whose businesses continue to suffer because of the go-away/stay-away effect of the Grand Prix.

And we have advised like-minded groups around Australia who have opposed governments taking over public open space for motor racing events.

Through FOIs, with the intervention of the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner, we know that the AGPC adds around 70,000 staff and credentialed persons, such as delivery drivers and caterers, to its four-day attendance estimates. Tennis Australia, for example, have said that they do not do this.

We have also established – on the basis of observation and official information and our own accounting – that AGPC claims regarding attendance numbers and TV audience are grossly exaggerated.