Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Small Business) Share this | Hansard source

Last week in parliament I was delighted to meet the 12-year-old Claire Falls. Claire is a passionate young soccer player from the ACT. Claire is also vision impaired. She has a condition called strabismus, which affects her depth perception and three-dimensional vision. But what makes Claire stand out is that she is a remarkable activist for inclusive soccer. She is somebody who cares about her fellow players and understands that participating in sport is a really important thing to do. Claire's passion has already led to the creation of an annual one-day tournament called FEVER, football for everyone. FEVER is a tournament that has a basic rule. If anyone on the pitch needs the rules modified to suit their special needs, then the rules are changed. That is a great thing. That is about inclusion.

Each team in the FEVER tournament is required to play one game of blind soccer as so that they can understand what it is like for other people who may be vision impaired. Blind soccer uses a modified pitch, blindfolds and an audible ball. The idea of including a game of blind football during the FEVER tournament is to give everybody an understanding of the struggle that blind players go through to play the game that they love.

It is amazing that, at the age of just 12 years, Claire was able to establish a football tournament. Having met her, I can say that I am more than delighted. I was astounded by her maturity, her ability, her passion for what she does and her capability. She has taken on quite a few tasks asides from just playing football. She was also able to lobby successfully to allow an audible ball to be used in her club games so that she was not forced to give up playing after her diagnosis.

Claire is a champion already; there is no question of that. But now Claire has a new campaign. The Pararoos are Australia's Paralympic football team. They are currently ranked 10th in the world. By any standard, if you were to take football in this country and say that we were ranked 10th in the world, I think there would be a lot of people that would be pretty excited. To have our Pararoos, our Paralympic football team, ranked at that level is remarkable. Until recently, they received federal funding of $175,000. In anyone's terms, from a government perspective $175,000 is a minuscule amount of money. But we would all agree that it is an awful lot of money to the Pararoos. Unfortunately, and sadly, the Australian Sports Commission has decided to stop this funding.

There are many people who do not agree with that decision. Claire is one of them and there are many others. Claire has decided, though, not to sit back and allow this to just happen. She wants to takes action and she has done that. Claire decided to write to the Prime Minister and to the Minister for Sport. Unfortunately, despite a very well-written letter—and I can assure you it is well beyond the years, and she did write it—she received a reply from the Prime Minister which, it has to be said, was a little dismissive and perhaps a tad patronising. The Prime Minister's response to Claire did not mention the Pararoos or funding but it did thank her for taking an interest in our system of government.

As the Prime Minister found out when Claire took his reply to the media, Claire is precisely the wrong 12-year-old to dismiss out of hand. It must be said that the Minister for Sport did send her a proper response which treated her and the funding issue with some dignity and respect. I too wrote to the minister about the Pararoos' funding and have just this week received an almost identical response. I thank the minister for that because I know he did read my letter. Despite the minister's words, it is clear that no decision to restore funding of the Pararoos has been taken.

Claire will not be put off by this set back and has launched an online campaign. The petition has already gathered more than 82,000 pledges of support and signatures with a simple challenge of government: if she can get 175,000 people to pledge one dollar each, will the government match it? There is no doubt she is well on the way to achieving her goal of 175,000, be it through sponsors, pledges and support. I hope that the Prime Minister and the Minister for Sport will rise to meet the challenge.

The petition is online. I encourage all members of parliament and members of the community to have a look at this wonderful petition, this campaign absolutely being driven by this most wonderful, delightful young girl who is 12 years old. She is mature beyond her years and has the capacity to meet and talk with shadow ministers and with former ministers, to put her case succinctly and clearly, and, dare I say, much better than many a lobbyist or industry specialist I have met in this place in the past. I pay credit to her for her efforts. (Time expired)

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