Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to rise today in support of the motion moved by the member for Bendigo. I thank the member for Bendigo for her continued efforts to bring the issue of media coverage of women's sports, in particular the recent decision to end the ABC television coverage of the Women's National Basketball League, to the attention of this parliament.

Make no mistake: the broken promise from the Abbott-Liberal government that saw hundreds of millions of dollars cut from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has already had far-reaching negative effects that are by no means limited to the core issue of today's debate. The cuts to the ABC hit hard in my electorate of Newcastle with ABC 1233—our local ABC radio station—losing one-third of their total workforce with more than 12 hours of local content completely disappearing from our region. Our afternoon show with local identity and people's favourite Carol Duncan was cut, and a two-hour show on Sundays dedicated to the Newcastle and Hunter region has gone as well.

Now, rather than receiving local stories and news on a weekday afternoon, we receive syndicated Sydney broadcasts that include traffic news about the Sydney Harbour Bridge—a world away from the Newcastle and Hunter region. Having lost so much local content it is little wonder that Novocastrians get offended when Sydney broadcasters call out for the Newcastle correspondent to check-in during their 702 ABC Sydney shows for input. More than 70 per cent of Carol Duncan's 100-plus stories each month were local stories with a particular focus on local arts, music and culture. This fitted well with the timing of the show, which sat outside the morning and evening news cycles, and presented an opportunity for local artists, upcoming authors and young musicians to get a breakthrough with the local engaged audience. The opportunity and community connection has now been lost. The Abbott-Liberal government cuts also leave the community's first line of contact at the ABC—the reception and front desk—without staff, so the 1233 radio station is not always able to respond in a timely fashion. Breaking news stories may be delayed and important community announcements may be missed all together because of this government's broken promises and cuts to the ABC.

Today's motion makes clear the significance of these cuts to the media coverage of women's sport in Australia. As noted in the motion, the ABC has been a leader in the broadcasting of women's sport, which in turn has provided a significant boost to the development of women's sport in Australia. Elite women athletes provide strong role models to women of all ages and from all walks of life. A reduction in media coverage, which is already grossly unequal to the coverage of men's sport in Australia, will further remove such positive role models from the public eye. The television broadcasting of women's sports is an integral part of the ongoing development of women's sport in Australia, and the contribution of the ABC in this regard cannot be underestimated. There is no level playing field when it comes to women's sport in Australia. On the contrary, it is a place of entrenched inequality with grossly unequal pay between men and women athletes, ongoing objectification of our female athletes, underrepresentation of women in positions in power and shocking instances of public sexist abuse. While I am not suggesting that maintaining or improving media coverage of women's sports will be a panacea for all of these inequities, reducing it is certainly not the answer.

The current disparity in media coverage of women's sport, when compared to that of men's, is astounding. A one-week sample last week of just two of Sydney's major print newspapers—The Daily Telegraph and TheSydney Morning Herald, including their Sunday papers—shows just how imbalanced this disparity in media coverage has become. Last week, between the two Sydney papers mentioned, there were more than 300 articles dedicated to men's sporting events, as against 12 articles covering women's sport. One of those articles covering women's sports was in fact about the sexist abuse that the Australian women's football team had reportedly received from a group of male spectators when competing in a tournament in Cyprus.

In Australia, only two of our top 50 sports earners are women, namely surfer Stephanie Gilmore and golfer Karrie Webb. Mostly women's sports remain amateur and unpaid. Regional areas like my electorate of Newcastle are best served by the ABC, a national broadcaster, to ensure that we get the funding of women's sports that is so deserved. Funding must be restored for regional areas specifically, and I join with the member for Bendigo in calling for the Abbott Liberal government to restore the $250 million in budget cuts to the ABC.

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