Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too would like to acknowledge the member for Grayndler for putting this motion forward tonight to the chamber. It is no secret that I am an avid lover of sport. I love everything about sport: its ability to teach teamwork, the friendships it develops, the fitness, the discipline and the independence, amongst other things. I have grown up with sport and played it my whole life. Of course, my favourite sport is netball. I love playing it and watching it. Cheering on my beloved Vixens and the Australian Diamonds is a great passion of mine. It is also no secret that I am a strong advocate for women's participation in sport and women's achievements being broadcast for others to enjoy.

So, on World Radio Day, I think it is fitting that radio and sports be celebrated this year. It is just common sense that women should be given as much airtime as their male counterparts when playing sport. It is exciting to see that women are now being embraced in sports such as AFL and NRL, and that they are being given airtime for all in the community to watch and listen. Broadcasting women's sport provides young women and girls with the opportunity to see that they too can aspire to be sporting heroes, rather than watching their brothers' aspirations on screen or listening to them on the radio.

It is also pleasing that, as the AFL women's competition has grown from strength to strength since its inaugural year last year, so too have the opportunities for women to establish their careers in journalism and commentary. Women should be equally celebrated when it comes to sport—as celebrated as men are—and it is encouraging that, in recent times, women's sport is being embraced by broadcasting networks. Credit where credit is due, it is fantastic to see women's sport being broadcast nationally.

However, there is still a significant disparity between the coverage of men's and women's sport in Australia in radio broadcasting as well as on the television and online. So, when the Turnbull government gave a $30 million dollar handout to Fox Sports, it was never about boosting the profile of women's sport. Advocates of women's sports have the right to be frustrated. If the Turnbull government were serious about genuinely boosting the profile of women's sport, they would be offering the same assistance to free-to-air TV and radio networks, and not just Fox Sport. I'm not fooled by this. My Labor colleagues are not fooled. This is just another example of a government that is prepared to shell out to big businesses—in this instance, at the expense of women's engagement in sport. As we heard from the member for Bendigo, the women's basketball league has been asked to truncate their season to fit in with Fox Sports' coverage. This, therefore, is not about the expansion of women's sport.

To make matters worse, the Turnbull government is trying to justify their spend by saying that Fox Sports was chosen because they provide approximately 70 per cent of the women's sports coverage currently on television. This is laughable as a justification when you consider the funding cuts to our national broadcaster, cuts that saw absolute cuts to women's sport broadcasting. The member for Bendigo has been on her feet many times talking about just that. This money would have been better spent on free-to-air coverage on radio and television, to maximise the audience for women's sport.

One argument given for a lack of live coverage of women's sport is that audiences would be too small. Given that over the weekend a crowd of 41,975 attended to watch the AFL women's game between Freemantle and Collingwood, I think it is safe to say that there is plenty of interest in women's sport.

I fondly recall last year when I taped an Essendon football match, which was a strange thing for a mad Bombers fan to do, but the Melbourne Vixens were playing. So I chose to tape Essendon and watch my girls take the court in a great match. Only weeks ago I missed the Australian Open men's final to watch the Australian Diamonds defeat their arch enemy from across the ditch, the Silver Ferns. Times are changing. Women are tuning in to women's sport, and the broadcasting needs to keep up.

Unlike the Turnbull government, Labor is committed to ensuring Australians enjoy coverage of premium sporting events on free-to-air television, because equality in sport is non-negotiable. As the member for Grayndler did, I will talk about the voices in sport. We've all spent summers and other times in the car listening to sports on the radio. I look forward to listening to Liz Ellis, Sue Gaudion and Sharelle McMahon, great netball commentators. I look forward to listening to Jillaroos, Opals and Southern Stars matches beamed live into my car as I travel around the state.

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