Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity to speak about the important role that local sports clubs play within their communities and the importance of government assistance to those clubs. Local sports clubs are critical building blocks for communities. They underpin community pride, community identity and community resilience. Regrettably, many clubs also struggle with dwindling finances, greater competition for scarce revenue, too few committee members being worn down by doing too much of the work and inadequate recognition of the important role the clubs serve. Yet without the local sports clubs we would not have elite sportspeople. We would have more health issues and we would have more social problems throughout the community.

I therefore welcome the report of the Independent Sport Panel, the Crawford report, into sport funding, which was released by Minister Kate Ellis on 17 November 2009. I believe this report provides an opportunity to reassess the process of allocation and the levels of sports funding in Australia. It is a review that I welcome. I believe that a reappraisal of federal government sport funding policy would receive widespread support throughout local community sporting organisations.

From my discussions with many local sporting clubs there is a widely-held belief that there is not an equitable distribution of government sports funding and that too much of the funding is directed at the elite level of sport. A second common concern raised is that when funds are allocated to the national body of a sporting organisation, too little of the money trickles down to the local grassroots clubs. In recent weeks I have attended several local sports clubs and listened to their concerns. I have also seen the extraordinary contribution they make to local area, and I want to refer to three of those local clubs I have visited in recent weeks.

The first club I refer to is the Golden Grove Dodgers Baseball Club. The club was the recipient of $50,000 in financial assistance from the Rudd government, which enabled the club to extend and enclose its outdoor members’ area, an improvement to the club’s facilities that would not have been possible without Rudd government assistance. The Golden Grove Baseball Club is not a large sporting club. It has limited resources, but provides a terrific opportunity for young local baseball players. Baseball is an Olympic sport and so the club offers both recreational opportunities and a pathway to both international and Olympic participation. I also congratulate the club for its outstanding performance this year. A couple of weeks ago the club sat top of the division 1 ladder for the first time in its history and I understand that after last weekend’s games they are still leading the competition. I wish club president, Ray Sharp, and his players success for the remainder of the season.

The second club I refer to is the Salisbury East Junior Soccer Club. On 15 November 2009 on behalf of the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government and in the company of Salisbury Mayor, Gillian Aldridge, and club chairman and local ward councillor, Damien Pilkington, I officially opened the new extensions to the clubrooms. These extensions were again only possible because of the $410,000 in funding from the Rudd government. The club was established just over 40 years ago and had been operating with grossly inadequate clubroom facilities all that time. Without the Rudd government funding there appeared no possibility of clubroom extensions in the foreseeable future. The extensions substantially improve facilities for hundreds of young soccer players associated with the Salisbury East Junior Soccer Club and for the parents and volunteers who assist them.

The third club I refer to is the Salisbury East Little Athletics Club, which on 17 October celebrated its 35th birthday. The Salisbury East Little Athletics Club, which I have been associated with for many years, has been the development ground for many of South Australia’s most successful athletes, including Commonwealth champion and Olympian hammer thrower Sean Carlin. It is an outstanding club, again providing athletics opportunities and friendship for hundreds of children each year. I was joined at the 35th year celebrations by the state member for Wright, Jennifer Rankine, and by a former Salisbury Mayor Pat St Clair Dixon, who continues her 30-plus years of support for the club as club patron.

Baseball, soccer and athletics are all Olympic sports and in years to come our future Olympians will most likely have commenced their careers through these or one of the many similar local sports clubs throughout Australia. Without local clubs there would most likely be very few elite athletes. If we want to support elite athletes, we would do well to support them during their junior careers by supporting local community sports clubs, because that is where we get the best value for the sports funding we allocate, and that is when and where our potential athletes need the most assistance.