The South Australian Motor Sport Board has complained it was bombarded with unwanted emails after Adelaide City Council publicised its email address, in the latest show of tensions between the council and state government over the MotoGP.
The email overload was described in a previously secret July 29 letter, published by the council on Thursday after councillors voted for it to be released from confidence.
In the letter, SAMSB chair Andrew Daniels responds to questions from the council regarding impacts to the Adelaide Parklands from both the Adelaide Grand Final and the MotoGP street circuit event, announced in February.
“It should be noted that the SAMSB executive email account was recently provided by City of Adelaide and its elected members, without authorisation or consultation,” Mr Daniels wrote.
“The vast majority of correspondence was matters outside the scope of the current consultation for the ADLGF event.
“SAMSB requests that the City of Adelaide remove the executive email address from the website and any future correspondence unless otherwise agreed.”
In further displays of tension, the board responded to a council question asking how it would comply with the Natural Resources Management Act 2004, by “noting” the act was repealed in July 2020.
Responding to a council request for SAMSB to “immediately provide independent, pre-and post-event ecological monitoring”, the board said it was “not aware of any major events in the Park Lands being required to conduct pre-and post-event ecological monitoring”.
Most vexingly to the council, SAMSB did not agree to conduct a July 2026 briefing on the MotoGP’s impacts to the parklands.
In a statement to The Advertiser, Lord Mayor Jane Lomax-Smith said the council had “very little” information after earlier expecting a formal briefing from the board by the end of July.
“That process has been delayed, and a briefing did not eventuate,” she said.
Dr Lomax-Smith said a confidential council meeting on Tuesday was “about acknowledging the information we have and clarify the material we do not have”.
“Importantly, it is about us having a shared understanding that to date we have been provided with very little,” she said.
Councillor Kieran Snape told The Advertiser the board’s letter was “unsatisfactory”.
“Council is being left largely in the dark still. The sooner the Motorsport Board can give us a briefing … that would be a good step for them to take,” he said.
A spokesman for SAMSB told The Advertiser it was “focused on the complex task of designing the circuit”.
“When we have a design suitable for public consultation, it will be released and the consultation process will commence,” he said.
The state government has touted its deal to host the MotoGP – considered the motorbike equivalent of the Formula 1 Grand Prix – as a major coup, with the event delivering an average of $217m to local economies.
However, the event has sparked backlash from community activists, the Liberals, Greens and Adelaide City Council ahead of its November 2027 start date, over the removal of trees in the Adelaide Parklands.