A Victorian government plan to extend the Australian Formula One Grand Prix to a three-week event has hit the skids after failing to win the support of crossbenchers.<\/p>\n
New legislation would have extended the race period from seven to 21 days, leaving joggers, walkers and sports teams locked out of the Albert Park precinct.<\/p>\n
The government failed to win support for the Grand Prix Amendment Bill from crossbenchers and now says the bill has been adjourned for a later date.<\/p>\n
Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell said she couldn’t support the bill, leaving the government without the votes it needed to pass the legislation.<\/p>\n
“Something that was really clear from me after talking to community groups, sporting groups, and environmental groups, is that three weeks is just too long without any community benefits,” she said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Animal Justice Party MP, Georgie Purcell, said the Australian Grand Prix Corporation was trying to “steamroll” communities. (ABC News: Tyrone Dalton)<\/p>\n
“The community was receiving no benefit for this inconvenience. The people in this area utilise Albert Park year round. It’s really important to them. It’s one of their only green spaces.<\/p>\n
“We can’t just have organisations like the Grand Prix coming in and steamrolling entire communities.”<\/p>\n
The government had already failed to win support from the opposition and The Greens for the plan.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Australian Grand Prix has attracted record crowds in recent years. (Reuters: Loren Elliott)<\/p>\n
A Victorian government spokesperson accused the opposition of not supporting the event.<\/p>\n
“Victoria is the major events capital of the nation but if the Liberals had things their way that would not be the case \u2014 the Liberal National Party are against major events like the Formula 1 Grand Prix and the thousands of jobs and businesses they support,” the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
“The Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix is one of the highest attended races on the Formula 1 calendar \u2014 pumping more than $320 million into the Victorian economy each year, supporting more than 1,600 jobs and keeping our hotels, restaurants and businesses busy.<\/p>\n
“The Grand Prix Amendment Bill is ensuring we strike the right balance of maximising public access and safety at Albert Park.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Victorian government plan to extend the Australian Formula One Grand Prix to a three-week event has hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,580,577,3758,74462,82,18581],"class_list":{"0":"post-137431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-f1","11":"tag-formula-1","12":"tag-formula-one","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-grand-prix","15":"tag-motor-racing","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-victoria"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}