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

I rise today to inform the House of a great sporting event that happened in Lalor across the last fortnight. On Friday, 4 November, I had the privilege of sitting down with three local young boys—Noah Cooney, Jye Robinson and Wiremu Tutu—who were selected to represent their state, Victoria, in the under-12 schools championships in softball. They came to see me in my office with a representative from School Sport, their parents and someone who is critically involved in softball locally and is a key umpire and umpires coordinator to let me know that the national championships were going to be occurring in the electorate at the Werribee Softball Association diamonds. It was with much excitement that they had been selected and were preparing and training for this great competition.

I would like to report to the House that participating states—Queensland, ACT, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia—all had a fabulous time in the electorate of Lalor. There was a tie for gold in the boys competition, with Queensland and New South Wales unable to be separated; and Queensland won the girls event outright, so congratulations to Queensland. The boys I met with played for Victoria, and they won the bronze at the tournament. It was a terrific session, spending some time with some young people committed to their sport and excited about the future of their sport.

It also gave me pause for thought about sports provision across the city of Wyndham and the federal electorate of Lalor. I would like to congratulate Wyndham City Council today on their planning of provision for sport in what is an enormously challenging environment: a growth corridor that has gone from, when I was a girl, a population of 20,000 people to over 200,000 people, with a lot of that growth coming in the last decade. The softball is played in Wyndham at Presidents Park, which is also home to baseball, hockey, dog-walking, a skate park and a children's playground.

On that note, I also report to the House that Eagle Stadium—the former, Labor government made a $9 million contribution to the build of our wonderful basketball/netball/table tennis stadium—hosted the Victorian netball state championships in the past month.

Wyndham is fast becoming not just a place where we love sport, where we use sport in really innovative ways to grow our community from the grassroots every day and where our volunteers share their passion but also a place where everybody across the state and the country comes to visit to play sport. We are very proud of our community.