Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to congratulate Roxburgh Park Football Club on being named Victorian Good Sports Club of the Year. I commend the club for the important work they have done and continue to do in creating social cohesion and harmony in our diverse local community. Last Monday, the club's committee and its players all got the opportunity to celebrate this success with an official awards presentation to the Roxburgh Park Football Club by the Alcohol and Drug Foundation's Good Sports program. The event also gave me a chance to sit with club committee members, including Mr Trevor Gladman, Mr Arthur McLarty, Mr John Short and Ms Pam Caruso, who recently left the committee, though she's still a very instrumental part of the club's family. We got an opportunity to discuss the success of the programs so far as well as the future programs they plan on building on and delivering.

About five years ago, Roxburgh Park Football Club identified the need to change the culture of their club for the safety of their players and families but also due to the changing nature of the community. They began by introducing workshops designed to tackle domestic violence, educating their players on the effects of drugs and alcohol and ensuring their club was pretty much female friendly by introducing a women's team and an under-18 youth girls team. The importance of female participation has seen an equal split of male and female members on the committee, with six male and six female committee members. The football club has run community involvement days, bringing together people from non-English-speaking backgrounds to explain the benefits of joining a sporting club, such as the Roxburgh Park footy club, and has worked with the local Dianella health centre to attract newly arrived migrants and refugees to Aussie rules football.

It is this tireless advocating that the club does to include the most disadvantaged in my community that I'm very proud of. The club constantly looks at ways to ensure newly arrived migrants, refugees, the elderly and, in particular, the disabled and disabled young people become members and are included in the sporting activities which in turn creates an active, healthy, family friendly and positive community in my electorate. When it was announced last year that they'd won the award, committee member Trevor Gladman said, 'This award means vindication for a lot of hard work put in by the committee to change the culture of our football club. It also means that the strides we have taken are paying off and that we are on the right path moving forward.' Roxburgh Park footy club is definitely on the right path moving forward and, as we discussed last week, they will make a very big effort to try to include into the sports club many of the hundreds of newly arrived refugees that Calwell has received from Syria and Iraq. I congratulate them.