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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2002 Week 7 Hansard (4 June) . . Page.. 1867 ..

MR STANHOPE (continuing):

spent $60 million, in one go, on a football stadium and we did not blink about it. We do not think about whether or not that is equitable expenditure.

I acknowledge that many women go to watch football matches, and that is wonderful. They go to watch women play football as well, but women do not utilise the Bruce Stadium or the Canberra Stadium. We know that women play at some other facility, somewhere down the back.

These are the sorts of issues that we know are out there, and we struggle to find ways to break the chain-to change the culture. As with so many things-discrimination against women, recognition of women in sport, funding and resourcing aspects-it is a question of changing the common, everyday assumptions, such as: "It is only women playing sport, it does not really matter. Women are not really interested in sport, they are just having a bit of fun, they are not serious. You do not need to take it too seriously because they do not have a competitive instinct. It does not mean as much to them. Nobody wants to watch anyway."

Those are all the old assumptions, which must be destroyed. They must be destroyed by creating a new culture about the value of sport to everybody, the importance of sport to women and girls, and the importance of us not discriminating against half the population in such a vital area of government expenditure and government infrastructure development.

What Mr Quinlan has proposed is one way of creating a culture around the need for us to stop and think about what we are doing, and look at all the clubs around Canberra which were developed to support sporting teams. The biggest club in the ACT is the Tuggeranong Football Club. The club of the year was the Ainslie Football Club. The most popular club of the year, in the last club awards, was the West Belconnen Rugby League Club. You can go through the list. They are big clubs, massive clubs, with enormous turnovers, all supporting men's football teams and throwing a few bob at women's teams.

Mr Quinlan's bill tells us to stop, listen and think about this. It is positive encouragement and positive discrimination for clubs in favour of supporting women playing sport, women's sporting teams, and infrastructure developed for women. I believe it is a tremendous initiative, insofar as it creates those major Canberra institutions-namely our clubs-which do such wonderful work in the community.

I am not putting them down. The sporting infrastructure the clubs have developed in Canberra is simply wonderful. We would not be in the place we are without the clubs. I am an enormous supporter of the clubs-I am not criticising them. They are fantastic institutions. They support this community in the most wonderful of ways. In fact, the clubs are one of the major generators of social capital that we have in Canberra, and I fully support them.

This proposal is a significant, positive message to these major community organisations. It says, "Look, we want you to think a bit more about the way you spend your money. We are prepared to assist in the cultural change. We are prepared to assist you, if you assist women wishing to play sport. You should be prepared to think seriously about the

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