Page 4910 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 25 October 2011
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There was a tremendous sense of community on those evenings, but as the awards went through for volunteers of the year, referees of the year or officials of the year, it sort of played out all of those points about people becoming involved, taking on greater responsibility, feeling part of a team, wanting to put back into the sport. All of those factors were very practically demonstrated at those award nights.
When it comes to participation, we know that factors such as gender, parents’ employment status, country of birth and the relative socioeconomic status of the neighbourhood are found to be strongly associated with children’s and young people’s participation rates in sporting activities. So we understand that some people in the community will need additional support to facilitate their participation and we support programs that are targeted at engaging these particular groups.
For example, in the ACT many youth services use sport as a means of engaging young people by providing access to equipment, playing fields, support and an opportunity for social development and the formation of positive relationships. Of particular note is the work which has been done by Multicultural Youth Services, where programs such as the junior world games were used as a way of engaging young people from a range of cultural groups and newly arrived migrants in the Canberra region. The refugee day soccer tournament is another great example of this.
Members will recall that the issue of community sport was debated in the chamber in June this year in relation to the government’s active 2020 strategic plan, in which increasing participation in all forms of sport and recreation at all levels was one of the three overarching goals. The ACT Greens supported the motion at that time, but we also moved amendments to include reporting on the progress of increasing participation in sport and recreation. Having measurable indicators means that we can set participation targets, measure our progress against the targets and then evaluate where we need to do more and where we need to focus our energy and resources.
Of course, the ACT government website, measuring our progress, does adopt this kind of approach. According to its data, the ACT is Australia’s most physically active state or territory, with a sport and recreation participation rate of 87.4 per cent in 2009 for people of 15 years and older. This is a very good start and we would like to see the data for children so that we can track how this changes over time. Of course, setting the foundations right is so important from a lifelong participation perspective.
The question we might want to consider this afternoon is how can participation in community sport be further supported and encouraged? I believe that the backbone of community sport is the volunteers who run the clubs and they need to be supported. Crucial to any sport are the coaches, officials, referees and umpires. I would like to take the opportunity to commend those who take the time to support players in games across Canberra every weekend. I spoke about this a little earlier. Despite the importance of these roles, unfortunately there are frequently shortages of volunteers for games and the turnover can be high.
I would like to commend those programs that are funded by the government’s community sport and recreation grants, which support volunteers by, for example, easing the administrative burden on clubs to run their activities in terms of helping
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