Melbourne City Council has signed a three-year, $525,000 contract to sponsor the Australian Grand Prix, just nine months after the city’s Lord Mayor Robert Doyle called for the event to be ended. The Council will inject $125,000 each year, with an additional $65,000 in kind for allowing the GP to use public spaces. One can only wonder what Doyle was trying to achieve with his remarks about cancelling the event.
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joeblogsf1 
This will necessitate a revised circuit layout . . . . to include a U-turn 😉
I live in Melbourne.
Lord Mayor Doyle is a tool.
No, I take that back, he is a Colossal TOOL.
The effort he made to try and coerce a reduction in fees was pathetic and clumsy, demonstrating that he is not capable of negotiating anything.
I’m a Brit with an Australian wife whom I met when I lived there 10 years ago. We visit every year to see the family and keep up with Australian national news as we feel strong ties with the country and will most likely move back at some future date.
Australia’s economic policy is driving a very high value AUD$ which is having a negative effect on tourist figures (amongst other things, noteably exports) and the income that brings. There are many other issues affecting tourism and those in charge are under quite a bit of fire for how they have promoted the country and tourism in years gone by.
Given that backdrop it is amazing to me that an Australian mayor would advocate terminating such a massively high profile event that annualy places the nation centre stage to such a large audience.
Presumably there is a certain demographic in Melbourne with objections to the raise who’s votes he was trying to secure??
Well maybe there is more to it than that. The reports I have read on tourism figures show the tale of a steady decline over many years of tourists visiting from the Western world and critics of tourism policy and the industry comment that those in the west can receive better service, cheaper and better accomodation and arguably the same attractions far closer to home.
Some commentators suggest that battle is lost in the short term and that the focus should be on the Chinese market where tourism numbers are growing substantially, thanks to the positive economic situation there and the relative geographic proximity.
So (and this is a highly superficial but of speculation) perhaps China is now the new Australian target audience and as has been written in another recent post, there is no strong Chinese following of F1. So perhaps those who hold before them the accounting numbers on the Australian GP and it’s benefit to the nation can see that it is not actually financially beneficial.
Sometimes you need to threaten to take things away to make people realise what they have. Or he’s stupid?
He was trying to pander to a very vocal aged minority. The same grey army that pretty much hates anything that makes Melbourne busier.
Although, to be fair, it’d be good for the event to move to Geelong. I love the convenience of Albert Park, but Geelong has a motor industry and a bit more hunger for it.
Wow, that is a fairly spectacular u-turn. His original point was that the losses being sustained by the state government from the GP were spelling its demise is still unchanged. The losses are up to $50M per race and climbing. Surely there is point where politically it is too hard to justify? Melbourne is a sports mad city but, in my opinion, it is also tiring of the GP. It is no longer embraced like it used to and is seen as just one more event. There are questions over the “rubberiness” of the attendance figures.
Should Mark Webber’s retirement coincide with contract renewal time for the GP then it could be very sad here for F1 fans. So no pressure at all on Daniel Ricciardo!
One may suspect that the admin have made a decision without the input of the politician?
Not hard to figure he is a politician pandering to the minorities
Joshua,
Geelong has a motor industry? I hate to say it,but, its also going down the gurgler. Where would they have a track? Where would the specators and teams stay?
Geelong is not an option.
Forget Geelong; Phillip Island (with massive safety upgrades) would be spectacular! Take a trip down there when you’re in Melbo next Joe….
@shake’n’bake – are you seriously suggesting that Aus should stop selling iron ore, coal and gas which would massively weaken the economy- thereby reducing the value of the $AU, so that you can have a cheaper hoilday?
125,000 x 3 + (3 x) 65,000 doesn’t equal 525,000
math fail…
Oscar,
You must be an accoutant. Put it down to the exchange rate. That will balance up by next week
Ron Walker is a very well connected figure in Melbourne. A few phone calls since all this started and now its no longer an issue!
Part of the problem I have with going to Oz is that is costs so much, in time and money, just to get there. Then, while there, all the businesses have jacked up the prices on an already jacked up AU$. While Australia certainly has scenery, and friendly people and all that, it seems to pale when I look out the window of my home in Anacortes, WA. We have some pretty spectacular scenery right here. I can go to the zoo down in Seattle and see the peculiar antipodean animals. As for the people, I just go up to Whistler, BC Canada. Many of the employees are Aussies. The US Pacific Northwest and Lower Western Canada are about as far away from the F-1 scene, or any motor racing scene for that matter, as one can get. So we are stuck with television.
At least it’s in HD this year.
Just give it to us in Sydney 🙂 it’ll save me an annual trek to Melbourne.
I agree with Mael,
It should be Mayor Snapon…………………
But that is being unkind to such a great product that is helpful to many. The complete opposite to our Mayor Tool who has trouble telling day from night.
Well, I agree with most of the posts here. Doyle even posed with the GP girls in the same week as his monumental pandering.
The GP is good for the world’s most liveable city.
I dont think the world is ready for the glamour of Geelong.
Well, my folks just bought an apartment in Queens Road (that’s right next to the track, for those who don’t know), so I’m hoping the event sticks around long enough for me to take advantage. The problem is that Melbournians in general have no idea of the popularity of F1 internationally.
Reddishdog
Phillip Island…………. F1..HANDS OFF. !!
@reddishdog
Where in my comment did I even get CLOSE to suggesting any such thing? You seem to think that the measure of a strong economy is the relative value of it’s currency against that of other nations. I suggest you do more research!
My point was about how applicable the grand prix is today to the target market Australia may have for tourism and that only those that the actual data know this.
However I’ll take on your argument gladly. The Australian dollar’s high value is NOT a measure of a strong economy. In fact to your point of mineral exports a high AUD$ it makes them
The real measure of economic strength is the % increase in gross domestic product. Australia has been in decline for some years. The mining exports have helped prop this up but the single reliance on this is bad news – witness the negative GDP effect after the flooding!
The australian economy is dominated by its services sector – fact!
Recent economic successes are due to mineral export – fact!
A relatively high AUD$ does not (in the long term) aid either of the above.
So YES given a services and export based economy YOU as an Australian should be very, very keen to see your currency exchange rate move back towards the normal range.
Sorry if that will make YOUR overseas holiday more expensive.
The high AUD has decimated the ESL industry. Was an 18B industry in 2009. Whose idea was this free market, service based economy guff? Economic success is built on manufacturing.