Page 1105 - Week 04 - Thursday, 22 April 2021
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including better facilities for women’s rugby. I am greatly looking forward to seeing the Royals women play there. I am sure the irrigation upgrades at Curtin oval will be appreciated by a range of clubs, including the Rebels baseball and Easts junior Rugby Union. And we are still appreciating the upgrades to the cricket facilities in Phillip that enabled visiting teams to train here last summer.
I was very happy to see the ACT government’s announcement in February that Belconnen skate park will get a competition-standard half-pipe. This gives me hope that in future perhaps we will also see funding for a skate park in Dickson.
Most of all, I would like to see a facilities management plan and support for a community sport and recreation peak body to give us long-term strategic advice on our plans for our city. If for no other reason than that you will never have to hear me advocating for indoor sports courts in Woden ever again, I hope you will all support Mr Davis’s motion!
MS BERRY (Ginninderra—Deputy Chief Minister, Minister for Early Childhood Development, Minister for Education and Youth Affairs, Minister for Housing and Suburban Development, Minister for the Prevention of Domestic and Family Violence, Minister for Sport and Recreation and Minister for Women) (4.08): I welcome the opportunity to talk on this motion today. I was happy to work with Mr Davis in putting this motion together for the Assembly. It replicates what is in the parliamentary and governing agreement. I will continue to explore this work with sport and recreation representatives—as I have in the past—as I have committed to do.
It is important to note, as Mr Milligan said, that there was a sports organisation peak body, SPORTSACT, which ceased operating six years ago. Since the ceasing of SPORTSACT, significant changes in the representation of the sports communities have occurred with their increasing sophistication and with their being able to employ people to do that sort of work with the ACT government and within their communities—more than there had been in the previous 30 years. The SPORTSACT work was not really required, as these sports communities became more sophisticated and were able to work and represent themselves to governments in a way they had not been able to before.
Also, after that, once I became sports minister, I revamped with the sports community the CBR Sport Awards. That was significant work. It was previously done by SPORTSACT, but we really zhooshed it up. Mr Milligan will agree, having attended those sports awards celebrations at the Arboretum, what a fantastic celebration of all our sports that was—not just at the elite level, but also at the community-based level, recognising everybody in our sports communities from volunteers all the way up to gold medal elite athletes. I really enjoyed being with all our sports communities in celebrating their achievements across the ACT.
I want to mention a couple of other things that Mr Milligan referred to around women’s sport, in particular, and women’s facilities. I remind members in this place that for as long as I can remember, and well before that, women’s sports facilities did not exist, because sports facilities and pavilions were built by men for men. Who
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