Partnerships Program

Ms BEDFORD (Florey) (15:04): My question is to the Minister for Recreation and Sport. Were all 19 projects to be funded by the new Partnerships Program recommended by the Office for Recreation and Sport and which sporting organisations make up the nine in the secondary stream of funding?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD (Gibson—Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing) (15:05): The short answer is, yes, all 19 were recommended by the Office for Rec and Sport. This is our Partnerships Program, and a big part of what we have been doing—and we have engaged with the sporting industry heavily—is we want to get more people more active.

I mentioned the heavy investment we have made into sport right across the board—$400 million or thereabouts—from grassroots right through to elite. What we also want to do is to get more people more active. We want to reach beyond the sporting sector, beyond the sporting realm, and find others we can bring in because we know, and the studies have been done, that if we can get every person doing 150 minutes of exercise per week we can reduce the health budget by some $800 million a year. It sounds enormous, I know, but that is the value of exercise.

We talk about mental health and wellbeing, and we note that in this time of COVID sporting clubs, sporting organisations and recreational groups are really important for that wellbeing aspect. These projects and these programs—these 19 projects that we elected to support—are about growing it and getting more people involved in sport and more people involved in recreation and not just working in the same pool. That was the specifics of this.

We know investment in infrastructure—the local sporting clubs in everyone's communities right across the state—plays a really big part in attracting people into those sporting clubs. If we improve the facilities for people who play football, netball, calisthenics or whatever sport it might be, they will come.

But we want to work on bringing people from outside, people who aren't involved in sport. We also want to collaborate between sports and organisations to bring people together. Councils play an important role in that. One of the projects I was really proud of was Surf Life Saving partnering with cricket. You think, 'How does that work? How does that come about?' It's a really great idea.

The Hon. D.C. van Holst Pellekaan: Beach cricket.

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Through beach cricket, you're right, as the member for Stuart, the Minister for Energy and Mining points out. We go to multicultural groups that have cricket at the core of what they love and what they do, but they are not really familiar with the beach, and they don't go to the beach and they are not involved with surf lifesaving.

These two organisations came together and put a program together to invite people from a Muslim background or people from an Indian background to come down to the beach, play cricket and then get immersed and engaged in surf lifesaving. Guess what? These young people are learning to be safe around the water. They are learning to be part of a surf lifesaving club and they are learning what goes on and they are growing into other sports and getting more active in that area.

These are the types of projects and programs we have partnered with, and we want to look at doing more of that. We don't just want to be giving money to organisations just to administer their organisation. We want to be putting money into projects and programs that grow participation and get more people more active. That is the key to what we are trying to do with our Partnerships Program, and we are really excited by that.

It goes hand in glove. The Partnerships Program is a $2 million to $3 million program, overlaid with the $400 million or so we put into sport as far as infrastructure is concerned. We did a big grants review and we had a look at what was key to sporting organisations and they said it was infrastructure. They really stressed that a lot of that community infrastructure had been left to go to rack and ruin over a long period of time. Local sports clubs and community clubs have really dived off.

We started with our grassroots footy, cricket and netball program, and I think I have spoken about that here before. We took $15 million of taxpayer money—and we thank the Treasurer for that—and turned it into $59 million worth of projects and programs. That was what the community said they wanted. As a result of that, another $24 million was in the next round we did, and we have just closed off the $20.6 million round and we have more applications to work through. We are building that because that is what the grants review showed us, that infrastructure was vitally important.

But then, on top of that, with our Game On, we want to get more people active. How do we bring them in and get them involved in sporting organisations? Our Partnerships Program is one of those such programs. I think all the money but 0.42 per cent went to a private investor. The rest went into not-for-profit organisations. We brought councils in, we brought our universities in and we brought sporting clubs in. There will be another round and they will be able to apply for more, so it is a great program delivering great outcomes for the people of South Australia.