Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think many members would agree with the member just finished that child care is an essential issue for the future health and welfare of Australian communities—not to mention busy mums—which is the subject I rise to speak on today, in line with the member for Moncrieff’s excellent contribution on Queensland Health and dealing with the situation once people have become unhealthy. I would like to talk about preventing that in the first instance, in terms of encouraging physical fitness in our schools.

As Minister for Sport and Tourism I introduced a program in which we invited sporting clubs to come in and initiate after-school sport for children who stayed behind between 3.30 and five. This has been expanded by the subsequent sports minister in a magnificent way. We are now funding community coordinators to go out in the communities and keep our kids healthy after school and provide them with real work-life balances which hopefully they will take into adulthood and which will enable them to stay fit and healthy throughout life.

I was recently on an ACYPL—American Council of Young Political Leaders—exchange with the Australian Political Exchange Council. We visited the Colorado General Assembly, and all of the members of that assembly were handing in their fitness cards to show how much exercise they had done during their sittings. They sit for 120 days, so everyone comes into Denver to sit for 120 days, and that is all they sit for the year. They have a fitness initiative in the House, where everyone has to put in fitness cards. I know on previous occasions, Mr Deputy Speaker, I have underestimated your fitness, much to my cost. Do not race the Deputy Speaker—he is actually fitter than he makes out!

It is a juggle for busy lives, not just in parliament but throughout the community, when you are trying to make child-care deadlines and when you are trying to meet spousal demands, parental demands and trying to keep your fitness as well. In the long term, I think these types of efforts need to be supported by our population to really ram home how very important it is for mothers to take quality time for themselves to keep fit, because once you lose the level of fitness that you have prekids, it is very hard to regain it. That has some terrible consequences later in life in a number of different, particularly feminine, ways that are then picked up by health systems—which are under increasing stress. I urge the members of this chamber to set examples for the community in a broader sense in terms of looking after their health and wellbeing and trying to avoid any subsequent reliance on health systems later on.