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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1998 Week 6 Hansard (3 September) . . Page.. 1935 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

As everybody knows, there are very significant areas of discrimination against women in sport. In fact, after political representation, perhaps it is one of the last areas of significant discrimination - systemic discrimination and governmental discrimination. Whilst I think that Canberra has a better record in this regard than any other jurisdiction in Australia, we still drag the chain in relation to most indicators of equality of opportunity for women in sport.

I was reminded of this last Saturday. I had the good fortune to attend the finals of the Women's Soccer Association on Saturday at O'Connor oval. I am happy to record that Canberra City beat Weston Creek in the final of the senior women's soccer championships in the ACT, and that Radford College was the winning junior team for the third year in a row. During the game I sat with Heather Reid, the president of the ACT Women's Soccer Association. I was chatting to Heather about how the sport is going here in Canberra, and she is very pleased with the progress that women's soccer is making.

She made a point to me which I think is very telling in terms of Australians' attitude to women in sport. Of the soccer matches that Canberra has had the fortune to attract for the Olympics, six of the matches are women's soccer matches. The most senior and most significant of the games to be played at Bruce Stadium is a women's semifinal. Yet the ACT Government, for instance, in establishing the ACT Olympic football task force, a very important group of people whose task is to ensure that Canberra's contribution to the Olympics is smooth and successful, does not include any women from the ACT Women's Soccer Association. Six of the games that we have attracted are women's soccer games and the most important of the games we have attracted is a women's semifinal, yet the Women's Soccer Association, the organisation in Canberra principally concerned with women's soccer, was not considered for the ACT Olympic task force. That is, I think, the sort of disappointment, oversight and perhaps unconscious slight that women in sport have suffered perhaps since the Olympics were first created a couple of thousand years ago. It is a discrimination that continues.

Of course, this is not only in relation to women's soccer. I am concerned about the infrastructure development that we embrace so willingly as governments - for instance, the development of Bruce Stadium. The redevelopment has blown out to $30m or something or other. That represents $30m of sporting-directed funds devoted almost exclusively to men's sport - to the Raiders, the Brumbies and the Cosmos. That money goes to men's sport. Whilst the facility is available for all sport, it is money going to support those very fine teams that we all wish to see supported, but this highlights some of the difficulties that women in sport suffer.

I raised the other day, and I will raise it here again, the issue that the women at the women's jogalong suffer. The Government, through ACT Forests, has chosen to impose a fee on entry to Stromlo Forest, so women runners who now attend a monthly running event in Stromlo Forest are, in effect, being forced to pay a toilet fee in order to continue to participate in their chosen sport. This discrimination is not suffered by men because of those differences. This area, Minister, requires much more attention. I think there

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