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(Above: the 2025 OzAsia Festival, photo by Yu Chu Chin, Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0)
The annual OzAsia Festival in Adelaide is being scrapped by the SA Government's Adelaide Festival Centre, despite Premier Malinauskas speaking about the importance of immigration from Asian countries to the well-being of the economy.
The festival has been held each October since 2007. October 2026 is its last year. Each year (apart from Covid years) it has attracted up to 200,000 people and has been recognised as Australia's leading contemporary arts festival engaging with Asia. It has included Asian and Australian music, visual arts, literature, a large variety of Asian food stalls and a writing and ideas program called Weekend of Words. Weekend of Words provided the opportunity for Asian Australian writers, journalists, artists, political analysts, comedians to discuss with their audiences Australia's engagement with Asia.
The SA Government funds the OzAsia Festival to the modest amount of $40,000 per year. This is a small portion of the SA Government's $250 million funding of the Arts which recently has included renovations of the Adelaide Festival Centre and $200 million to the Adelaide Fringe Festival.
The 200,000 people per year visiting the festival has included people of diverse cultural backgrounds.
Danielle Lim, leader of Contemporary Asian Australian Performance said about the scrapping of OzAsia Festival, "If you want to ask an Asian artist where they started, I think it's very likely to hear OzAsia", according to an ABC report.
The end of the OzAsia Festival also includes the end of its Weekend of Words, one of the last remaining live forums led by Asian Australian writers, journalists, scientists and media workers.
The closing down of Weekend of Words follows the banning of a Palestinian Australian writer from presenting at the Adelaide Festival of Arts Writers Week last year on the urging of SA Premer Malinauskas, and the subsequent closure of the Writers Week when the vast majority of participants pulled out in solidarity with author Randa Abdel-Fattah.
These politically progressive festivals have been scrapped despite South Australia having had an ALP government since 2002 except for the four-year term of the Marshall Liberal government from 2018 to 2022.
More government money has been directed to other events such as Liv Golf, MotorGP and Gather Round (AFL games). The costs of these events has been hidden by the arboricidal Premier behind “commercial in confidence” provisions, but they run into the hundreds of millions, dwarfing the paltry tens of thousands spent to hold the OzAsia Festival.
The SA government's priorities regarding events may attract a temporary increase in profits for hospitality and accommodation sectors of the economy but do nothing to improve the living standards of working people and nothing to strengthen cultural diversity within the state.