Page 4185 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 24 October 2018
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women and young girls to be involved. But it is also up to us to ensure that that encouragement does not just stop when they grow.
Kiara is now in high school and still loves driving go-karts and hopes to continue in the motorsport field. I hope that we across the community can help to encourage young women and girls like Kiara to do that.
I will also talk about the opening of elite pathways in the traditionally male-dominated sports like AFL, Rugby Union and Rugby League. The ACT has had some fantastic success, as has Australia, with women’s Rugby Union in particular. We had a success at the Commonwealth Games with our women’s sevens bringing home gold. I have a connection to one of those women, Louise Burrows. She is an amazing athlete and recently at the age of, well, somewhere around my age was still playing for Australia. That is an amazing achievement considering that male elite sportspeople often do not make it to their 30s.
Louise is another fine example of what can happen when you support and encourage women and girls to do whatever they like to do in the sporting fields. I had the privilege of playing with Louise in Rugby Union when we were much younger, and she certainly is an amazing player. Her tenacity has seen her reach the heights of her career for Australian Rugby Union.
The AFLW has been magnificent, and as a foundation member of the AFLW Giants I have been amazed to see the crowds grow and to watch the support we have for the sport in Canberra. I note that one of the teams I have a lot to do with—the Woden Blues—only a short time ago was lucky to be able to field one team to play in the men’s competition. It is now fielding several men’s teams, a women’s AFL team as well as five women’s netball teams. That is an amazing story of what support and encouragement do for women and sport across the Canberra community.
We have had many debates recently about the community contribution scheme that has been introduced and how good that has been for local small and sometimes large sporting groups in our community. Many members of the community and many sporting organisations contacted me through the consultation period about the community contributions scheme. They told me many stories about the help and support they have had through that scheme, and it is a really wonderful scheme.
I know the Woden Blues have an opportunity to go to their local club in Weston Creek and enjoy a beer after the game and support their club while their club supports them. I am glad Minister Ramsay will be bringing forward some legislation soon to hopefully strengthen those community contributions.
Although I am talking about Canberra-specific support for women and girls, I do not want the recent outrage when the Australian Football League looked at reducing the number of games and teams in the AFLW League to go unnoticed. We saw amazing crowds in the initial year of the AFLW across the board, so much so that at the very first AFLW game many people had to stand around outside the stadium because they were unable to get access. More people went to the first AFLW game than went to
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