Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party, Minister for Regional Communications) Share this | Hansard source

Sport, as we all know, underpins our local communities. In regional Australia local clubs are more than just a sporting team—they are community leaders. In cities local sporting clubs provide that pivot point for developing networks and community in often busy and overcrowded suburbs. But our local clubs need facilities, not just for the future but right now. For example, as I've travelled around the country I've heard about the tsunami of increase of young women, in particular, on the back of our elite female athletes such as the Southern Stars, the Matildas, our AFLWs and Rugby Sevens. They are flooding into club-land, and we do not have the community infrastructure that those sporting clubs need to meet that increased demand from young women. That's why we've announced $30 million for local community sporting infrastructure, grants of up to half a million dollars for our local clubs to provide the essential infrastructure that they need to meet increasing demand.