What NZ could learn from Victoria’s events strategy

Wednesday, 3 September 2025

Jeff Kennett, also president of the Hawthorn Football Club in 2022, was Victoria’s premier and credited for attracting major events to the Australian state.

When Prime Minister Christopher Luxon signalled his plan for a “rethink” on attracting large scale events to New Zealand, he referenced one name: Jeff Kennett.

The former Victoria premier oversaw a boom in major events in the Australian state, and was seen as influential when it came to Melbourne bidding for the 2006 Commonwealth Games - beating out Wellington for the competition.

Kennett’s name was mentioned by Luxon in the wake of calls for an increased pipeline of major events to stimulate economic growth. Luxon said he admired how a major event was hosted every quarter in Victoria.

It comes after a suite of high profile concerts have bypassed New Zealand’s shores entirely in favour of Australia, while sporting events like the America’s Cup have been passed over because of the cost of hosting them.

But despite name-dropping him, neither Luxon nor anyone from the Government has picked up the phone to Kennett to get some advice.

“We don’t need to [call him],” said Luxon, when asked by The Post on Monday.

Christopher Luxon wants to model his ‘rethink’ of major events on Melbourne.

“I was just pointing out … that there are places of similar size to New Zealand, like Victoria, that have actually been able to manage major events. If you think about what goes down in Melbourne now, in a given year, they’ve had a very sensible framework for … how to build out major events.”

But The Post did give Kennett a call to ask him for any lessons New Zealand could learn from Victoria’s experience under his leadership.

Kennett, who served as Victoria premier from 1992 to 1999 and began the Commonwealth Games negotiations, said that live events were “terribly important”, not just for economic stimulus but for community confidence.

“I don't think anyone should underestimate the value of sport and the value of the arts to building a community's confidence,” he said.

“We had a very major program of what I would call major events … both sporting and cultural. Then we inherited things like the Australian Open. We had our football season, we had our racing season, but we then worked very hard to attract new events. And we did that in two ways: international events, and then locally grown events.”

Luxon isn’t the only one urging New Zealand look to Australia for inspiration. Eden Park’s boss Nick Sautner said Australian state governments frequently offered grant packages and incentives to attract international artists.

“The prime minister’s call for a ‘total rethink’ and his reference to Victoria’s model of major events every quarter and micro-events every week shows the scale of opportunity for New Zealand,” Sautner told The Post.

Kennett believed the priority should be major recurring events, not just one-offs, citing Victoria’s acquisition of the Australian Grand Prix from Adelaide in 1996.

Melbourne acquired the Australian Grand Prix in the 90s as it positioned itself as a major events destination.

“I would be … saying: What are the points of difference that New Zealand has from anywhere else? Can they be better exploited?

“Secondly, what could, with its sporting and artistic offerings, be added? How could we vary it in order that [it] would bring people, mainly from Australia … to New Zealand.”

Queenstown, he said, was already becoming a popular destination for Australian tourists due to its varied offerings, like its golf courses.

“It's a matter of identifying what New Zealand has that is unique, or could be unique if it was developed, that will attract people,” said Kennett.

“You can't keep feeding and living off your own community, if you can put it that way, because once they've been to the theatre, that's it. Once they've been to the museum, that's it.”

One thing that shouldn’t need to factor into this “total rethink”, argued Kennett, was a bed tax - a proposal currently favoured by Auckland mayor Wayne Brown. Instead, the focus should be on providing more reasons for people to visit New Zealand in the first place.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon says the Government will allow overseas investors with a New Zealand investor residence visa to buy or build one home worth at least $5m, part of a wider push to attract high-value capital into the economy.

“I think if governments want to stimulate the economy, they've got to create the environment in which people will come for good reasons,” he said.

“Just applying a tax, particularly in the hospitality industry … doesn't seem to be a good way to go. It would be better if government allocated … sufficient funds to create the reason, the incentive, why either particular events or happenings or assets of the country draw people in there.

“I'm always hesitant about saying, ‘let's just apply a new tax’… then you've got to hypothecate that extra tax to whatever you want to do. And that never happens. It always goes into consolidated revenue and disappears.”

Kennett says Victoria in the 90s was recovering from a “diabolical” economic situation, with massive debt and low “morale amongst our community”.

While he thinks that the situation was worse for Victoria then than it is for New Zealand now, he said New Zealand does have economic challenges here. It was about choosing where to allocate extra money during tough times, he said.

“We had to rebuild confidence - so both sporting [and] artistic allocations - even though we were cutting down our expenditures in the way in which we operated [and] government had become more efficient. We were still applying money to those things that built the confidence in the community about the society in which they lived,” he said.

Last week, it was reported that Auckland Council was considering underwriting its own $30m fund that would allow the city to bid for and secure major events with long lead times.

The fund would allow Auckland to bid for and agree to events that require six or more years’ lead time, like the Fifa Women’s World Cup, or events decided six months out from delivery that require a verbal commitment within a few weeks from first approach.