Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gave me great pleasure on Sunday to attend the Adelaide Zoo, together with Senator Penny Wong, and announce that a Shorten Labor government will keep the iconic pandas, Wang Wang and Fu Ni, in Adelaide, extending the agreement between the federal government and the zoo in South Australia for the next five years. Since these giant pandas were housed at the Adelaide Zoo in 2009 they've welcomed more than 3.8 million visitors, and we know from the economic analysis that having the pandas in South Australia has generated $33.5 million in economic output since 2010. If you add another nine years onto that, the real figure is around $70 million in economic return to South Australia as a result of having these pandas at our zoo.

As one of just 22 zoos worldwide and the only location in Australasia to host pandas, all South Australians have been proud of Wang Wang and Fu Ni, who have been calling Adelaide home for more than a decade. The love of the pandas is reflected by the more than 400,000 people who visited Adelaide Zoo to see the pandas just last year, the third-highest attendance figure in the zoo's 135 years. It's a great announcement that'll ensure another generation of children, including my grandchildren, will be able to visit the pandas.