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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-11-13 Daily Xml
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Sport and Recreation

Mr McBRIDE (MacKillop) (14:53): My question is to the Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing. How is the Marshall Liberal government making grassroot sports more affordable for parents?

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD (Gibson—Minister for Police, Emergency Services and Correctional Services, Minister for Recreation, Sport and Racing) (14:54): I thank the member for MacKillop for his question and note his passion to—

Ms Hildyard interjecting:

The SPEAKER: The member for Reynell can leave for the remainder of question time.

The honourable member for Reynell having withdrawn from the chamber:

The Hon. C.L. WINGARD: Thank you, again, Mr Speaker. I note the member for MacKillop's passion to grow participation in sport and to make sport more affordable for families. It's a noble goal and one that we are very much striving towards.

We know that learning to swim is a really important facet of life in Australia, and in particular in South Australia. People have come to me and we, as a government, have listened. Many members have raised with me issues about the Sports Vouchers program—which, of course, we increased at the last election, taking it from $50 to $100. We added in dance as well to grow the program, again to get people to become more active.

In fact, a lady came to me and chatted about the voucher program. She said, 'Look, I have an issue. My daughter is playing Auskick, which is fantastic, and she can use the voucher, but my son is doing dance and he can't.' That was a really great point so we added dance to the program so that everyone who wants to take part can use the extra voucher.

When it comes to swimming, it was pointed out to me that swimming lessons are not necessarily a sport. Because this is aimed at getting people more active and into sport, when it came to swimming lessons they didn't fit under the right category. But we did listen. We listened to what people had to say—and the member for MacKillop was an advocate for this—and realised that people have to learn to swim before they can become competitive swimmers. The member for Colton, of course, was a very strong advocate for this as well; in fact, we might get him to run some programs because he is such a good swimmer himself.

It was a great opportunity for us to take on swimming lessons and we thought, 'Let's help young people learn how to swim.' Now people can use the $100 sports voucher—brought in by us at the last election, elevating it from $50—with recognised swimming clubs to make sure that they learn to swim. They will be registered through the Office for Recreation, Sport and Racing. Recreation SA are big supporters of this. This is a great opportunity.

One drowning death in South Australia is one too many. We have some stats on the number of people who have drowned in South Australia: in 2017-18, there were 15 drownings in South Australia, and three of those were children aged under 17; and in 2018-19 there were 14 drownings, and two of those were aged under 17. The majority of deaths of children under 14 are those who drown in swimming pools.

We can see that taking the sports voucher and rolling it over and including swimming has been really well received, and it is something that we are very proud to have done as a government. We have listened to the people of South Australia and we are getting great results. We are teaching people how to swim and, hopefully, we are also making future swimming champions, like the member for Colton. No doubt the member for MacKillop was a very good swimmer himself.

Since January this year, more than 64,000 primary school-age children have claimed the voucher, and that is putting money back in the pockets of South Australians. The environment minister was talking about reducing costs for families, and that is exactly what we want to do. This is more than $6.2 million back in the pockets of South Australian families to help them to get their kids more active, get their kids into sport and, in this case, get them swimming and, hopefully, help to save lives.

This is a great program and we are very proud to be delivering this for the people of South Australia. We have listened to what they have said. We know that it is very important to get people active, to get them swimming and, as we head into the summer, we hope that from next year, when this kicks off, many more people will take up this opportunity.

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