Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Lingiari for his series of questions. I do not know whether he did break the member for Blair's record of 40 questions in a five minute period, but he certainly did his absolute best to do so.

If I could address the questions in relation to Clontarf first, Clontarf, as the member for Lingiari mentioned, is a terrific organisation started by Gerard Neesham. Many years ago, Gerard Neesham, the first Dockers coach, went on to establish the Clontarf Academy in Western Australia. Subsequently he has been rolling out academies right across Australia, providing AFL football in some places and NRL in other places. They do an absolutely terrific job of ensuring the kids stay in school and are regularly attending school, because that is the fundamental basis of the program; they do a terrific job in providing mentoring to those young boys; and they do a terrific job in providing pathways from school into employment. I have had the opportunity to visit many of these academies across Australia, to see the terrific work which they have been doing, and to speak to young men who will literally tell you to your face that their lives were fundamentally changed as a result of the work of the Clontarf Academy.

The question was asked: why there no similar program for girls? The Clontarf Academy was established for boys, and there has been a lot of pressure on Gerard Neesham. He gets pressured quite frequently to offer the program for girls, and his answer is always: 'We do a very good job with boys; that is our core competency. Let us do that.' We of course would like to see other proposals and ideas and programs established to provide similar types of outcomes for girls, but the Clontarf Academy does a great job of delivering outcomes for boys. When an organisation has a track record in multiple places of delivering outcomes, we should continue to fund that organisation to deliver more outcomes across the country.

Mr Snowdon interjecting—

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