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House of Assembly - Fifty-First Parliament, Second Session (51-2)
2008-04-10 Daily Xml
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INSTITUTE OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY

The Hon. I.F. EVANS (Davenport) (16:00): I rise today to advocate for the establishment of an institute of physical activity within South Australia based on a centre of excellence model that we have known in this state as the South Australian Sports Institute, which tends to focus on the elite level of athlete. I declare that I have had nephews, nieces and sons go through the institute of sport and, therefore, I have an understanding of how that organisation works. I am not criticising that organisation. It seems to me that Australia, and western society in general, has an epidemic of diabetes and obesity, for a thousand different reasons—some social and some dietary—but, whatever the reason, the next generation, we are told, could be the generation that does not live as long as their parents. As legislators, I think we have to deal with that; so I advocate for an institute of physical activity.

I do so because I do not accept, and have never accepted, the argument that elite athletes and elite athletic competition promotes physical activity. Those who advocate that—the elite sport lobbyists—will say, 'If you get the world cup, more kids will play rugby,' or soccer or cricket. The statistics show that holds for a very few months after a world championship event. Look at Australia over the last 20 years. We have hosted what is known as the best Olympics ever in Sydney. We have had the Thorpe, Hackett, Lenton and O'Neill sensations in swimming. We have had the Cathy Freeman sensation in athletics. We have had the Stuart O'Grady performance on the world stage in cycling, which has led to the Tour Down Under here. We have had Lleyton Hewitt, a local, do very well on the world stage in tennis.

Look at our sporting teams. Our cricket team has won the world cup in every form of the game over the last 20 years on a consistent basis. We have hosted the world cup in rugby and are world cup champions. We have won the world netball championship. Australia has hosted and won the Davis Cup. We have had our best performance in soccer in the last 20 years, our best performance in basketball in the last 20 years, and we have seen the development of the Australian Football League increase substantially over the last 20 years.

Regardless of all that sporting activity at the elite level, our kids are getting fatter and, ultimately, sicker through diabetes. So it seems to me that we need a centre of excellence to design policies and programs that get our kids active—and not just our kids but adults also. I see no reason why a centre for physical activity could not run programs in our schools, programs for public servants and programs even for private enterprise to get people physically active, because we have a health problem that is going to hit our community very hard in a budgetary sense and in a health sense over the next 20 years. So I argue that we should invest more in community sport so that when people attend community sport and recreation groups (and it does not have to be competitive) they get a good experience, because it is the first experience with those events that will gauge whether the child or parent continues in that activity.

Some people will argue for a ban on food advertising. I argue that that will do little in the long term because I do not think it is necessarily just what people are watching that is the problem. I think it is the fact that they are sitting and watching that is actually the problem. They are sitting down and watching elite sport on TV. They are sitting down and watching a lot more sport on TV and sitting in front of their computers for longer than we ever did. So, I argue that, with the health issues that we face, it is time for South Australia to set up an institute of physical activity as a centre of excellence. I think that would be a positive move for the state.

Time expired.

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