A Newcastle councillor says she feels "disturbed" her request for specific Supercars attendance data was shot down by her colleagues.
Greens councillor Charlotte McCabe asked for council's support to write to Supercars CEO Shane Howard asking for race attendance data.
But this was rejected by Labor councillors and Liberal Callum Pull. Labor councillors argued the data had already been provided.
Supercars has announced crowd figures for each race, but critics have long called for a breakdown of scanned tickets, resident numbers and people working at the event as opposed to total tickets issued.
Cr McCabe's notice of motion requested the letter to Mr Howard say "the attendance data must not comprise of tickets issued, but rather confirmed ticket holders who have entered the event on each of the days", with postcodes or countries of attendees included.
It said the attendance figure should not be a gross number of everyone at the event, and data for people delivering, working at, or supporting the race needed to be separated from other attendees.
Cr McCabe said Supercars had "never provided the accurate attendance figures" and the council was "absolutely entitled to ask for basic information from Supercars" to help councillors decide if the event should return.
"No one in the room can be clear about the economic benefits of that race without being certain about how many people actually come and attend that race and where they come from," Cr McCabe said.
Council CEO Jeremy Bath responded to Cr McCabe's request saying "extensive ticketing data" from the 2017, 2018 and 2019 events was provided to Ernst Young for an economic impact assessment, which was released in 2021.
He said the Supercars CEO had committed to provide "similar ticketing information" to council for the 2023 race.
But Cr McCabe said these were not the figures she and the community had asked for, and questioned why the community could not see the "actual attendance data for ourselves".
She pointed out Newcastle East Residents Group found through Freedom of Information 30-40 per cent of tickets for previous events were sold through Ticketek, with the remaining issued by Supercars.
Cr McCabe said the gross attendance figures in the Ernst Young report were multiplied for three days. She provided a breakdown of how she interpreted the gross numbers were calculated.
Newcastle lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes responded saying "my first thoughts were 'well if you've already worked out all of our attendance numbers why would we need to go back to Supercars and get them'".
She said the motion was "an opportunity for grandstanding" and the numbers Cr McCabe provided were "a complete furphy".
Mr Bath said Cr McCabe had made assumptions about the data, and her methodology had provided a "flawed number".
Cr McCabe said she had used the data provided and believed it was "possible to extrapolate what the local government figures are".
Greens councillor John Mackenzie said the Ernst Young report was not asked to look at the number of Newcastle residents who attended the race.
"This needs to be an evidence based decision," he said.
"We need to be assessing what is the benefit of this race to the City of Newcastle versus what is the cost to local businesses who more or less have to shut their doors for the nine weeks during the bump in and bump out.
"Where people just stop going to Newcastle East because they can't find a park.
"We also have to understand the benefits and we can't understand the benefits unless we have accurate ticketing numbers.
"This race costs ratepayers money, it's not our money to spend. We need to be absolutely 100 per cent confident that we are generating a benefit to the people of Newcastle as a consequence of hosting this race."
The lord mayor called out Cr McCabe as being an opponent to the race regardless of how many people attended, which Cr McCabe did not deny.
"It wouldn't matter if five million people came to the event and economic data was provided to you that showed billions of dollars of economic benefit you would still not change your vote".
Cr McCabe said elected councillors should be provided with accurate attendance figures from a private company.
"If they expect to work with us we should expect them to be transparent and to be accountable," she said.
"It is trauma that we are subjecting our community to."
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