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That is something that we supported, everyone supported; it was not a problem. The problem comes because this was then translated instantly into a directive to schools that what this all meant, which was not ever spelt out publicly, was 200 minutes a week combined of physical education and sport. Nobody heard of the 200 minutes a week during the campaign; the detail suddenly landed as a directive from the Minister. In the long run, perhaps very few people would have a problem with that, and that will probably be where we end up. But, in the short run, we, along with many other people, have concerns that we believe should be raised.

The first report that Mr Stefaniak often quotes was done by Senator Crowley and raised some major concerns about sport and physical education Australia-wide. It was not a specific report about the ACT; it was an Australia-wide report. If you visit some of the schools in inner Sydney and inner Melbourne you can see why there are major problems. The school playground would be smaller than this chamber, for heaven’s sake - not exactly something we copy in the ACT. So let us not get too excited about national inquiries and extrapolate every detail that was found to be a problem to the ACT.

Secondly, 1992 was a good long time ago for our school community and since then a great number of things have happened. The key learning areas have been implemented, and sport and physical education is one of the eight key learning areas which every school has undertaken to fulfil as an obligation. Although 1992 was not all that long ago, research has moved a long way, particularly in the area of fitness and health. The correlation between fitness and health is well known, but we now know a great deal more about genetic predisposition to obesity and about the greater capacity for physical fitness of some people and not others. So we are armed with a far better range of information about students, about fitness, about health, about sport, than we had in 1992. We also have a quite high level of ongoing concern about the level of involvement of women and girls in sport. However, all those factors do not automatically lead to 100 minutes a week, and I will come back to that.

Since that time in Victoria a report has been written by Steve Moneghetti for Victorian schools, and we commend him for that report. But, when the report was brought up at a national level, it was not instantly accepted by every Education Minister. Moneghetti is not an educator. The report is something further to add to our pool of information, but I do not see why it should be the instant blueprint for a solution to a problem that we yet do not know enough about.

We should be considering the problem in a great deal more depth in the ACT, not trying to impose a simplistic answer. No-one has ever shown me that 200 minutes each week, for everyone, irrespective of their physical state, is going to lead ipso facto to improved health. Health is a much more complex area. How can mental health be improved by running around an oval? We do not know. We do not know full details of the type of sporting activity that can be offered in schools and its effect on students. We do know that girls face a very high level of harassment. We do know that the development process of boys between Year 7 and Year 10 is markedly different. You can have within one class a boy who will weigh less than 30 kilos and a boy who will weigh more than 120 kilos. They are all in Year 7 and all purportedly able to do the same things. We do not know how to offer the best possible sports program for them; nor do we know that 200 minutes a week for each and every one of those children will produce the same results.

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