Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Communications and Broadband) Share this | Hansard source

I congratulate the members who have just spoken, in particular the member for Gippsland, on moving this motion about the surf lifesaving movement.

I am honoured to represent some of the oldest surf clubs in Australia, in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, and, indeed, the oldest surf club in Australia. However, it would be a controversial statement for me to say which of the several claimants to be the oldest surf club was indeed the oldest surf club. Bronte surf club has a very good claim to have been founded in 1903, although we note that the first recorded minutes of its meeting are in 1907—although the minutes claim to be the fourth meeting, so presumably it was founded in 1903—and lifesaving training began at Bronte in the late 19th century, in fact, modelled on English lifesaving techniques. Also of course there is my own club, founded in 1906: North Bondi surf club. Bondi surf club, which is the club in the middle of the beach—or Bondi Surf Bathers' Life Saving Club, to give it its full name—also lays claim to being the oldest club, but it was founded in 1907. Tamarama was founded in 1904, and, just south of the electorate, literally just on the other side of the boundary, is the Clovelly club, founded in 1904, and Coogee, founded in 1907. So surf lifesaving began really in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney in the early years of the 20th century, but the mists of time, and the tact required to be the local member, requires me not to go any further into resolving the controversy. I can only say that my own club does not claim to be the oldest club, so I am quite impartial about it.

The work the surf lifesavers do in making our beaches safe is of enormous importance to our recreation, to our physical fitness—to our whole Australian way of life. Without diminishing the lifestyles of people who live in the inland, most Australians live on the coast and most Australians have a really symbiotic relationship with the water. This was a big change, of course, because, when the country was settled and certainly when the settlement was established in Sydney, the Aboriginal inhabitants were not keen swimmers. They were terrified of sharks—quite rightly so; that is why you see, in Sydney Harbour, plenty of points and beaches and islands called Shark this and Shark that. A lot of them have had their names changed, presumably to promote tourism, but there are a lot of places named after sharks. And there are a lot of sharks, so there was a fair bit of anxiety. But we have progressed from that and become absolutely connected to the water.

All of my earliest memories of growing up in Sydney involve swimming, surfing, paddling things, sailing on things, riding on boards—constantly in the water. I was inducted into the North Bondi surf club literally as a baby. By the time I could barely walk, my father, Bruce, was taking me down to North Bondi surf club, and it was there that I did my bronze medallion and my instructor's certificate. I even saved someone's life on one occasion, which was a remarkable experience.

They are remarkable institutions, you know, the surf clubs, because they are completely egalitarian. Of course they are now co-ed; they were not in my day, but there are now men and women members. They connect the oldest members. Some of the old members of North Bondi Surf Club were old men when I was a kid—or at least I thought they were they were; they were probably about my age now! Anyway, they are still there, preserved by the salt air. Then of course, you have the nippers, the very young kids.

The interesting thing from a social point of view, I always used to find and I still do, is that, in a surf club, you get people from every single background and, because they are either in their swimming trunks or wearing nothing in the showers, no-one can put on any side. It doesn't matter whether it is a Supreme Court judge or a captain of industry, or a garbo, a teacher, a policeman, or someone in the schmutters business—there is a big Jewish membership in my electorate. So you get a complete diversity, and it was that sort of diversity that I grew up with. If there was one social experience that made me what I am today, it was my involvement with the surf clubs, because I literally met, from being a little boy up to a man, people from every single background. There was nobody—you could not think of a profession or a racial or religious background—that was not represented in an environment where everyone had a common interest. It was what Robert Putnam, the great American sociologist, called bridging social capital, because—instead of reinforcing people's particular groups, like a Catholic group or a Jewish group or lawyers or doctors—you brought everybody in together and we were all mixing together. So the surf lifesaving movement, apart from the lives that are saved and apart from the millions of people that enjoy our beaches and are able to do so safely because of the work of the lifesavers, is one of the key elements in that egalitarianism that is so important for our Australian society. It is that non-deferential culture of Australia that lifesaving really enables. In a way, because of the environment, because of the common cause and because of the inevitable informality of associating with people in swimming, surfing and so forth, it really breaks down all sorts of barriers. A number of times I have bumped into people that I know from the beach in town. You do not quite recognise each other. A number of times people will say, 'Yes, of course; I didn't recognise you with your clothes on.' A passer-by might read something improper into that, but it is a wonderful thing.

Can I just say a couple of things about a particular matter, on a somewhat more political note. The North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club is the largest surf club in Australia. There are two surf clubs on Bondi Beach, which is obviously the biggest beach in terms of patronage and notoriety, fame or whatever. It is certainly the most visited beach and therefore the most challenging from a management point of view. There are two surf clubs: North Bondi at the north end of the beach, naturally, and Bondi in the middle of the beach next to the pavilion. North Bondi's building has been falling down for quite some years, and the club resolved some time ago that it really needed to replace it. As the discussions and the planning were getting underway, in 2007 John Howard, then Prime Minister, pledged $1.7 million to that rebuilding program, which was a very, very good commitment. I think it would have created a fantastic precedent in terms of strong federal support for surf lifesaving. Regrettably, in what I can only describe as a spiteful decision, that grant was revoked and nothing was put in its place. The club, undaunted by that, has raised $5 million: $750,000 from Waverley Council, $450,000 from the state government and the rest from private donations and fundraising done by the club. I should disclose that Lucy and I have supported the club as donors. The project is going to cost $6.2 million, so there is still more money to be raised. It will be an iconic building. It will be a very elegant building, but on a important location. I might say that the club has over 540 patrolling senior members, 1,000 nippers and an overall membership of over 2,000. This is a big club doing a big job on a big beach, but it is going to be able to do that through the generosity of the community and of its members.

All around Australia, surf clubs are facing these sorts of challenges. It is a matter of great regret, I would say, that at the time the Rudd government was spending money on stimulus and building school halls and so forth, whether they were needed or not, it did not put some substantial funds towards the surf clubs of Australia. (Time expired)

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