Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I spoke in my maiden speech about the importance of stronger communities, how this Morrison government understands the importance of having strong communities and fostering strong communities, and how I wanted to do that in the Ryan electorate. Such an important part of our strong communities are our strong sporting clubs, because they are part of the lifeblood. They make up much of the family weekend; they're so important.

There is a grassroots movement happening within our local sporting clubs, and that's around female participation. Not a week goes by that I do not have a sporting club either in my office or at an event talking to me about the explosion in the number of young girls who are trying to get involved in their clubs. Now those clubs are accommodating them as best they can, but they are talking about a waitlist of many hundreds of young girls and young women. They should be participating in those sports, particularly soccer, but those clubs aren't yet able to accommodate them. To accommodate this explosion of female participation they are really looking for new or upgraded facilities. A lot of them have facilities that were built a long time ago, which of course suited the circumstances of that time—that is, a lot of them were men-only clubs or had very low female participation rates. As a result, the change room is normally an open, single room, and there is normally only one referee's room. This is not conducive to having both male and female participation in the club.

Some of my proudest achievements during the recent election campaign was being able to secure funding for a couple of clubs. First of all, there was the Bardon Latrobe Football Club, and then there was the Toowong Football Club. Now, both of these clubs are perfect examples of that experience. The Bardon Latrobe Football Club, for example, has a single room as the change room. The $500,000 that will be provided by the Morrison government will help deliver them new change rooms, extra change rooms, a dedicated female referee room and upgraded kitchen and clubhouse facilities to cater for, again, the explosion of numbers that they are trying to accommodate that are currently on the waiting list.

The Toowong Football Club will receive a similar grant of $500,000, which they are going to put into new change rooms and referee rooms, particularly to accommodate the hundreds of young girls and young women who are wanting to get into the club who currently can't be accommodated. I was just at an event on the weekend with the Taringa Rovers Soccer Football Club, and, again, they are one that has hundreds of people on the waiting list. They are also now looking for a grant for new facilities, which will allow them to upgrade their change room and referee room facilities and their toilet facilities.

The Morrison government have done a lot. We have put a focus on this, and I will talk a little bit more about some of the overall achievements of the government in this space. But we can do more, and I think we should. We shouldn't lose this opportunity whereby this grassroots movement is coming through in order to grow our clubs, to grow our community participation and to build stronger communities, and we can do that with relatively modest investments in these local community clubs.

I look forward to seeing the projects in Bardon Latrobe Football Club and the Toowong Football Club come to fruition. I look forward to working with those communities to work them through. I particularly look forward to working with Phil, the President of the Bardon Latrobe Football Club, who described this project that we're currently working on as 'a game changer for us and wonderful for the local community'. They already have 500 members and are currently catering for women and men of ages four to 55. I look forward to working with the Toowong Football Club as well, and Phil and the team, who I know are doing a great job to see their project not only funded but also designed and through to fruition to get more people through those tremendous clubs.

The Ryan electorate has a strong tradition of producing sportsmen and sportswomen of enormous talent. We have some fantastic training facilities in St Peters Western Swim Club and also the John Carew Swim School, which have produced previous Olympians. We have some current constituents—for example, two living in Chapel Hill—who are talented athletes. There is Megan Ross, a talented athlete who competes all across Australia in half ironman events and is sponsored by Ride Indooroopilly. These are incredibly gruelling events—far more than I could ever manage. They include a 1.9-kilometre swim, a 90-kilometre cycle and a 21-kilometre run—extraordinary! There is also Fiona Nichols, who plays for the University of Queensland Hockey Club. Fiona took up playing hockey when she was just seven, and her passion for the sport means that now, at the age of 33, she still looks forward to representing the University of Queensland Hockey Club each Saturday. I pay tribute to both of these very talented and remarkable sportswomen in the electorate of Ryan and want to see many, many more of them come through. We've already seen a very strong performance from the Matildas at the FIFA World Cup recently, and wouldn't it be great to get the next crop of Matildas through the Bardon Latrobe and Toowong Football Clubs as well?

As I said, I want to do more in this space in order to provide extra facilities to accommodate female participation in our local sporting clubs. We've soon got round 5 of the Stronger Communities Program opening, and I'll be working with my local organisations on local projects that do exactly this. I think it fits very well with the program's goals of bringing our communities together and strengthening that social connection that these local sporting clubs provide. In particular, I'm proud the Morrison government recognises how vital this is and how vital sport in general is to health and wellbeing, and is actively supporting women's sport.

The Australian government continues to actively support the Women Leaders in Sport program, with funding of over $814,000 in the 2019-20 budget, through the Women's Leadership and Development Program and Sport Australia. Thirty million dollars is provided in 2018-19 to support the construction of a new Brisbane Lions AFL Women's facility in Queensland, for which I know they've been lobbying very hard for a long time—it was tremendous to see that as the centrepiece of the recent election—and to support the redevelopment of the Carlton Football Club's Ikon Park in Victoria, building on its existing AFLW facilities. I know a lot of young girls in the Ryan electorate are following in the AFLW footsteps.

The government also committed $5 million to support Football Federation Australia's bid to host the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup in Australia, and the Morrison government is also providing $150 million to support the development of female change room facilities at sporting grounds and community swimming facilities across Australia.

With some fantastic individual performances by our sportswomen, like Ash Barty, dominating the news at the moment, we're currently having a discussion about whether the South-East Queensland region should be hosting a future Olympics. Wouldn't that be a fantastic opportunity to showcase to the world what our sportswomen can do and really encourage female participation among those girls who are coming through in the various sports, to see their heroes in action as part of the Olympics? I think putting forward a very successful bid, a very strong bid, would really build on the momentum that South-East Queensland has. We have a lot of the infrastructure already in place in South-East Queensland. We seem to have the political will. We certainly have it amongst the South-East Queensland regional mayors, who are working as one—and I pay tribute to Graham Quirk, who is currently leading the bid on their behalf. We certainly have the will amongst the Morrison government, where we not only have a firm commitment from the Prime Minister himself but have Ted O'Brien in Queensland, who is leading the charge on that particular project. I hope that we will get a firmer commitment from the Palaszczuk government as well. Currently there are a lot of words, but it would be good to see more money on the table, because we have a fantastic opportunity to bring the paramount sporting competition in the world to South-East Queensland so that we can further encourage sport participation in Ryan, in the whole of South-East Queensland and in the whole of Australia.

Congratulations again to all the tremendous sportswomen in the Ryan electorate. I look forward to seeing these projects through, which will encourage more female participation in our local clubs. If there are any local clubs looking to encourage more female participation and have projects that will do that, I encourage them to get in touch with me so that we can get on with fighting for extra funding and a grant through round 5 of the Stronger Communities Program, which will be opening very soon.