Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Workplace Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the motion moved by the member for Grayndler and congratulate him on bringing forward this motion, because it does address the very important topic of Australian sport and, in particular, calling for more equal representation of women's and men's sport in radio. As was mentioned, quite sadly, women's competitive and amateur sport only makes up seven per cent of media coverage in our country. We need to do better as a nation.

We have heard, of course, of the growth in women's professional sport. For a long time, it was just the WNBL that was a national league promoted for women and our netballers, but this year we have seen another successful cricket season, we have seen and started another successful AFLW season, and we have heard that we will soon have a national rugby league competition. However, there is still a massive imbalance between men's and women's sport when it comes to sponsorship and broadcasting.

I wish to raise the example of the WNBL, which is close to regional electorates and, in particular, my electorate of Bendigo. It was very unfortunate and quite sad for the WNBL to be axed from the ABC because of disastrous funding cuts. Quite a lot of money was cut from the ABC, and, as a result of that, they axed the broadcasting of the women's soccer and also the WNBL. At the time, the Bendigo Spirit, which is the WNBL team in my part of the world, raised their concerns. They spoke about what would happen to sponsorship. They spoke about the struggle without broadcasting to raise the sponsorship dollars (1) to pay their players more but (2) to invest in the next generation of sports stars and women. That was a big cut delivered to the ABC and to the WNBL by this government, and the team has struggled.

What has since happened is this government has given $30 million to Fox Sports—a bit of a backdoor deal about media control—to encourage them to promote more women's sport. There's a lack of documentation in relation to this agreement and a lack of accountability. An FOI application by the ABC established there was no documentation about this gift to Fox Sports. What we have seen is that Fox Sports did pick up coverage of the WNBL and is broadcasting part of the AFL season. However, what Fox Sports has done has bullied the WNBL into a shorter season. When the ABC was involved in broadcasting, we would have been getting close to finals right now, but we're not. The season has already ended. A professional women's league has been cut back because of broadcasting.

This government created that problem. They've said loudly and clearly to the WNBL and the AFL Women's League, 'You must both finish before the men's competition starts.' How outrageous is that! We are trying to get towards more equal representation of men's and women's sport, yet the broadcasters are saying to the women's league: 'You must end. The two of you must compete against each other and end before the men's competition starts.' It's quite sad that this is where we're at in 2018, when so many young women are engaging in sport.

That is why the support for radio is so critical. I know that, if it wasn't for the broadcasting of the WNBL games and the AFLW games on our local community radio, many of those sports' fans would have missed out on an opportunity to listen in and hear the call of the game. It is so critical that, as a country, we take radio and the broadcasting of women's sport more seriously. Radio continues to be a medium in which all of us engage, whether it's in our car, whether it's working in our gardens, whether you're in the city or the metro. Radio continues to be important, just as important as investing in women's sports and sports broadcasting.

See this speech in context