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

I have previously spoken in this place about the very important role community sporting organisations serve in communities across Australia. In addition to providing sporting opportunities and contributing to a healthy lifestyle, they bring families together and engender local pride and community spirit. It is also the local sports clubs, who do all of the foundation work, which the professional and elite sports recruit from. As the Crawford report into sports funding points out, elite sport performance ultimately depends on the depth of participation.

When the associated advertising, telecast rights, sponsorship, players' payments, gambling and so on are all taken into account, elite sport is today a multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry. Yet for all of the money generated by the commercialisation of sport, very little ends up in community sports groups.

Earlier this year I attended a presentation evening of the South Australian Amateur Football League. The SAAFL manages one of the largest community football competitions in Australia with around 40,000 players, officials and supporters through 66 member clubs. In his address on the night, South Australian Amateur Football League President Gino Capogreco provided some very concerning statistics relating to the level of funding that reaches community football in South Australia. In a letter that he subsequently sent to me, Mr Capogreco stated:

Our information is that the AFL currently provides the following financial support to state peak Australian Rules Football organisations—approximately $20 million to New South Wales and Queensland combined; $5 million to Victoria; $3 million to Western Australia and only $1 million to South Australia. Victorian community football receives $1.5 million, Western Australia receives $850,000 and in South Australia no money is allocated. In recent years the AFL has cut funding to the SANFL which in turn has reduced funding at a community league level. With our clubs predominately run by volunteers and an increasing cost of running facilities, at least a dozen of our clubs are under financial stress.

I bring those comments to the minister's attention.

Furthermore, the figures reflect my own observations and my discussions with local football clubs, who all struggle to fund their ongoing operating expenses, and have little hope of raising the funds needed to upgrade their often outdated facilities.

I acknowledge that considerable amounts of the federal government's stimulus funding, provided under the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program, found its way to community sporting clubs. It was very welcome and appreciated. However, we need to do more.

I am conscious that all three levels of government share responsibility for community sporting groups and that governments have competing demands for available funds. However, it would make an immediate and real difference to community sports clubs if more federal funding went directly to community clubs rather than to national sports bodies from where very little ever trickles through to community sports. Indeed, there is a perception that currently too much of the funding is swallowed up by self-serving national and state administrations.

Furthermore, it is not just the facilities that are looking tired and worn out; it is also the thousands of volunteers who devote an extraordinary amount of time and who are not being replaced because no-one else is prepared to take on the burden of and responsibility for struggling clubs. As the Crawford report stated:

The supply of volunteers, often the lifeblood of any club or association is under pressure.

…   …   …

Compliance obligations and duties of care are increasingly onerous. Volunteers face increasing costs. There is rarely any reimbursement for required courses such as coaching, first aid and necessary police checks or other out of pocket expenses including telephone calls, travel cost, accreditation costs and sporting equipment.

… Volunteer coaches and administrators are overloaded and under-resourced and feel trapped in their roles with little support.

Community sport is central to Australian life. Regrettably, it is getting to a point where only those children whose parents can afford the ever-increasing participation costs can play sport, even at community level. I can only speculate as to how many potential champions and future Olympians are forced to drop out of sport because of the high participation costs forced upon community sport clubs in order for them to survive. We all lose out when that happens.

I believe that elite sport has the ability to generate most of its own funding. The government's focus should therefore be on supporting community sports and I urge the minister to consider more direct funding of local sports clubs.