The Winemakers Federation of Australia has gotten out of the tourism game and has handed back the management of the white elephant in Adelaide known as the National Wine Centre to the State Government. The Government has placed it in administration with Ferrier Hodgson, who are shortly to present the results of their investigations into its future viability. All functions booked at the centre to the end of March 2003 will be honoured. There are many close to this project who will argue that with more support from the media this endeavour might actually have succeeded, but some of us were arguing long before it was ever built that Sydney was the only place in which it stood a ghost of a chance. There’s no value in shooting the messenger. It remains to be seen if those who blew A$38 million on this disfunctional monument will be called to account, but I’m not holding my breath. I have heard unconfirmed reports that each visitor was budgeted to spend an average of $50 per head at the site. If true, a chain gang would be too good a fate for those who aided and abetted the spending of public money on this nebulous supposition.
