Grassroots Football, Cricket, and Netball Facility Program

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (15:22): Here in parliament today I take this opportunity to speak about how the Marshall Liberal government is helping community clubs to bounce back from the impacts of having their seasons either ended or delayed because of coronavirus. It certainly has had an impact with clubs not being able to play. Community clubs are run by very hardworking volunteers. The players who make use of the clubs and who enjoy their sport rely on these volunteers, and volunteers are really what make the clubs work.

However, apart from volunteers, the clubs still need to pay for certain necessities to keep the wheels of the club moving. There are things such as equipment and training facilities. Football and netball need balls, cricket needs cricket bats, and there are other things that the money is used for as well. Often games are played under lights, or training is done under lights, so the clubs have to pay for electricity. There is also ground maintenance and team uniforms. Match days are when many of the clubs make their money, either from raffle tickets or barbecues, and without the ability to do that these clubs are not able to keep moving.

It was great that, as a state, we worked very hard and made sacrifices in order to battle coronavirus and get to the stage where we can now have competitive sport again. Last weekend, contact games were able to start. Prior to that, obviously tennis and those non-contact sports could start. This weekend is fantastic because we have moved into stage 3 easing of restrictions, which means it is now a principles-based approach and we can have spectators back to these games, one person per two square metres. That really opens up the opportunity for games to start again.

I think this season gets underway for many of the community football clubs as well, so that will be really welcome for those clubs. One aspect where these clubs really need a lot of help is in terms of their facilities. That is why the Marshall government is helping so many community clubs across this state via the Grassroots Football, Cricket, and Netball Facility Program. This sees not only contributions from government but also matched funding from the clubs or the councils, and also money provided by the peak bodies for those sports, the SANFL, SACA and Netball South Australia. That certainly is very important for those clubs.

Round 3 of this program was brought forward and offered up to $5 million that could be matched, dollar for dollar or even more. Thankfully, 15 of those projects have been approved most recently and announced this week. I was really pleased that one of the projects that was given approval was for the Glenelg Football Club, where $487,000 is to be provided, which will go towards two new unisex change rooms. It will also include umpire facilities, a first-aid room, a meeting space and storage at Glenelg Oval.

This will be fantastic for the club. They support over 37,000 underage players in their zone, with 32 primary schools, 32 kindies and 20 high schools making use of this ground. Prior to that, the facilities were run down. This will be a fantastic new facility for not only the players but also the support staff and umpires.

I will just touch on the benefit of unisex change rooms. The idea is that they are very interchangeable. It does not matter if you are male or female, you have separate cubicles. This makes a really flexible space for the game. Quite often, at Glenelg Football Club you might have a men's game followed by a female game, or vice versa. By having these unisex change rooms, it really does not matter whether the male game happens first or the female game; they can be interchanged.

With modern design standards, there are roll-up doors, etc., where you can actually open these spaces out to have both the seniors and the reserves get changed out of the one facility or, if you close it down again, then you can have two separate teams, allowing for either a female or a male team to play there. I congratulate the Glenelg Football Club and I congratulate the federal member for Boothby, Nicolle Flint, on her hard work on this. I wish all my clubs in my electorate a successful season coming up.