Cost of Sport

Mr BELL (Mount Gambier) (15:09): I rise to talk about the cost of sport. March is obviously a pivotal time when most sports in my electorate change from summer over to winter. Obviously, I am a strong believer in the importance of sport and the skills that are developed through sport, and it goes beyond just the physical capabilities and being active. It gives young people many advantages beyond this, including social skills and how to be adaptable and resilient, it teaches respect and rules and how to negotiate with other people—but we cannot ignore the fact that numbers in sport are declining.

Clubs are struggling to cover costs and maintain facilities, while many families are finding it harder to afford registration fees, uniforms and equipment. Time and financial pressures are also making it increasingly difficult for children to stay involved. It is vital that we support our clubs, families and participants to ensure that equipment is kept up and sport is accessible and thriving in our communities, particularly in regional communities.

I want to commend the government for extending the existing sports vouchers—I know you, Mr Speaker, were heavily involved in that—to now include two $100 vouchers per year for students from reception to year 9. But I also want to point out that year 9 is an age where people are about 14, and we see a massive downturn in participation of young people 14 years and over.

In speaking with my local clubs about some of the issues and concerns, we will be working as a community and as an office on some of the following things. That is, there needs to be a greater partnership between our local councils and sporting facilities. Most of our sporting clubs are on short-term lease arrangements, which make applying for grants difficult in terms of who has tenure over those facilities, and a short-term lease does provide some barriers to specific grants that are being applied for. Many clubs talk to me about the dollar-for-dollar contribution, which I support in theory, but it makes it difficult for some clubs who do not have deep reserves to match dollar-for-dollar funding.

Another solution that I want to talk to our councils about—the Grant district council and the Mount Gambier city council—is around signage. Our councils have taken a stance that sporting clubs cannot have signage on external fences. Some of our sporting clubs are in high traffic areas and have had signs facing the road. Drivers who drive past have been able to see who sponsors those clubs, but the removal of that signage has had a detrimental effect on the fundraising ability for a number of our clubs.

I have also been talking to council about allowing entrepreneurial activities on those grounds. Some of our sporting clubs have come to me with proposals that would provide a revenue stream if development applications were allowed to use part of those grounds for commercial activity. I will not go into those, but there have been some very creative and interesting proposals put forward.

One of the biggest issues that sporting clubs repeat to me is the cost of insurance. Most of the sporting vouchers actually go towards the clubs paying for insurance. I think we have an amazing opportunity, as a state government, to be an underwriter of not-for-profit sporting clubs, which would reduce premiums for those clubs and hence cost passed onto families. Whyalla is a perfect example of this, where the state government is providing underwriting abilities, and I would like to see that looked at in terms of our sporting clubs for our young people going forward.