Liverpool Football Club International Academy Australia

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (15:31): I rise today to talk about a very exciting announcement that happened in my local community of Prospect this morning. If you, like me, often set your alarm for quarter to three in the morning to watch the mighty Liverpool play in the English Premier League, you will know the joy and pain that comes with following the mighty Liverpool Football Club. Today, Liverpool came to Prospect.

The Blackfriars Priory School has announced an exciting partnership with Liverpool, where they launched the International Academy Australia. This exciting initiative will basically bring what is called the Liverpool Way, the Liverpool way of teaching soccer, to our local community in Prospect, to benefit not just Blackfriars students but young people all across our local community and the wider metropolitan area.

I was proud to speak as the local member at the launch, and basically what we talked about was the fact that Liverpool lives by its values of ambition, commitment, unity and dignity. Those values really closely align with the Blackfriars Priory School, so it was a perfect fit to bring this Liverpool Football Club International Academy Australia to Blackfriars.

It is going to be able to provide a high-performance soccer program for Blackfriars students, where the coaches, school staff and volunteers are able to be coached in the Liverpool Way to then provide this program by the academy. What I was really excited about was the opportunity for this program to go broader, both to go into our local community and to be offered to other young boys and girls across our state.

I come from a soccer-mad household at the moment. I was just talking earlier about filling out the sports voucher for Audrey as she begins her journey into club soccer, playing for the Adelaide University Soccer Club. We really are absolutely obsessed with soccer, not just in our household but in Prospect and also in the wider community, so we are incredibly proud of this partnership with Liverpool. What it really does at the heart of this is get our kids off screens and out being physically active, playing sport with their peers and making friends, ensuring that we can have physically and mentally healthy and happy kids in what is increasingly a digitalised world.

That is why our government has been taking massive strides in this space, not just from a policy sense of leading the nation in the conversation around banning young people from social media and the dangers that exist in the social media world, but also looking at opportunities for more kids to remain active. That includes our Sports Vouchers program, which we have doubled to $200 per child per family, from reception to year 9, and investing in community infrastructure that our young people can access.

This infrastructure includes the brand-new Adelaide Aquatic Centre, literally just down the road from Blackfriars; the new Walkerville recreation facility (for which I am partnering with the Town of Walkerville to deliver) which will return community sport and recreational services to the heart of Walkerville; and our massive investment in netball with the netball stadium. I know that is a hugely popular sport. I did try to lead Audrey down that path, but she has chosen soccer, and I am very happy for her.

We are providing opportunities for more young people to remain physically and mentally active. This is not just about throwing money at sport; this is one of the best preventative health measures that we can make in the future of our young people. So I want to congratulate Blackfriars on being part of that movement to keep our kids healthy and happy, and I want to congratulate Liverpool. I believe we have a 6am game tomorrow, so I will not have to set the alarm too early for our game against Aston Villa. We are on top of the table. I just want to thank everybody involved and say: you will never walk alone!

The ACTING SPEAKER (Ms Clancy): I am sure Melanie Chisholm, aka Sporty Spice, will really appreciate your contribution as she is also a big Liverpool fan.