Mid Coast Community Challenge

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (15:34): I rise today to speak about two excellent events I recently attended. Firstly, in my electorate of Reynell, in our magnificent southern community, together with the member for Kaurna and fellow lifesaver, on 29 January we supported and attended the Mid Coast Community Challenge. This event, held at our beautiful Christies Beach Surf Life Saving Club, was a fantastic day made perfect by the generous and collective efforts of many.

For a number of years, the Mid Coast Community Challenge has been developed and put on by our five Mid Coast surf clubs: the Christies Beach, Port Noarlunga, Southport, Moana and Aldinga lifesaving clubs, with strong participation by members of those clubs and clubs right along our South Australian coast. This year, an extraordinary organising committee of lifesavers, including Keith and Gaynor Holeman, Jane Roberts-Bristow, John Smith, Sheena Wilson, Jared Turner and many others, with the support of the presidents of each club, each of whom have dedicated many years to keeping our beaches safe, turned the annual event into the Mid Coast Community Challenge.

This community challenge focus engendered the development of strong partnerships and involvement of a number of community partners, including the City of Onkaparinga, Tribe FM 91.1, Southern Football League, Surf Life Saving SA, the world lifesaving championships group, the Lions Club of McLaren Vale and many others. Participation in this unique event saw an increased number of lifesavers and potential lifesavers of all ages compete in a one-kilometre community swim and a number of other events.

As I have said many times in this place, surf lifesaving is an excellent way to volunteer to provide service to our community, to engage in healthy competition and to bring people together as part of a club and a movement focused on keeping our fellow South Australians safe at our beaches. The Mid Coast Community Challenge does all this and more, and it is an event that I know the member for Kaurna and I look forward to supporting for many years to come. Thank you to everyone who made this happen.

The other event I speak about today is the ISPS Handa Women's Australian Golf Open. I was very pleased to attend a series of events as part of the open program and to watch some of the best golfers in the world display their extraordinary skills. The open is one of the world-class women's sporting events that I am very proud our government has supported. This event has, of course, seen the world's best golfers and thousands of fans flock to our state to enjoy the golf alongside thousands of South Australians.

The event's founder, Haruhisa Handa, is known for promoting and also introducing to Japan golf for people experiencing vision impairment. ISPS Handa is admirably also committed to promoting disabled golf to be adopted as an official event of the Paralympics. The Women's Australian Open supports our South Australian government's focus on growing and promoting women's sport, as well as golf tourism in South Australia.

South Australia is reaching new milestones in achieving gender equality in sport and hosting events like this one, which in its first year last year brought $6.5 million of economic benefit to our state and is one of the steps forward we are taking. By attracting and hosting such a world-class event televised to millions across the globe, we are demonstrating that we are committed to advancing women's sport and women in sport.

It was wonderful to see the number of girls and women watching the golf and also signing up to Golf Australia's Swing Fit program, which provides a unique opportunity for girls and women to connect, to get fit and to develop their golfing skills. This event was also part of our summer slam, an initiative of our South Australian Women in Sport Task Force aimed at encouraging attendance at a series of women's events over the summer period.

People were encouraged to take photographs of themselves at each of the summer slam events to show their support for women's events and to enter the draw to win a range of excellent prizes, including a run with Jess Trengove and a golf lesson with Tamie Durdin, amongst others. This initiative is something we intend to roll out during winter as well to keep encouraging people to support women's sport by coming along and watching the women.

We know that increases in attendance help demonstrate how important it is to invest in women's sport. We know that increases in attendance help improve sponsorship and other support, so I take this opportunity to encourage all my parliamentary colleagues to attend some of our fabulous women's sporting events. Whether it is one of our SANFL women's matches, an AFL women's match, our Adelaide Lightning, our Thunderbirds, our Adelaide United Women or the golf or women's tour, the atmosphere is incredible.

To return briefly to golf, congratulations to winner Ha Na Jang, world number six. Thank you also to Golf Australia, Golf SA, minister Bignell, Events SA and many others for the incredible promotion of women's sport through this event. I hope that we will continue to see this event held in Adelaide as it is an incredible boon for women, for every sports fan, for golf, for tourism and for our economy.