Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We all know the fundamental importance of sport to the health and wellbeing of a community, and one of Australia's most popular sports is tennis. In October last year I was honoured to attend the Tennis Queensland awards evening. It was no surprise that Samantha Stosur and Ashleigh Barty won awards for their outstanding achievements. However, I was delighted that the Gap Health and Racquet Club was recognised for its hard work and dedication with two awards. The club itself won Most Outstanding Club award and one of their coaches, Mr Danial Stredder, won the Coaching Excellence award for the MLC Hot Shots program.

The Gap club caters for more than 600 children in their coaching academy as well as in their local schools and continues to go from strength to strength. I know that Danial in particular has worked very hard to arrange the Inter-Schools Tennis Cup, a round robin Hot Shots event for primary schoolchildren. With Danial's support, I am sure we will have a future Grand Slam winner coming from the Ryan electorate in the near future. And no one can doubt how delighted I was when Tennis Queensland President, Ken Laffey, presented me with a framed racquet signed by 27-time Grand Slam winner Serena Williams.

Last year the Leader of the Opposition joined with my colleagues the members for Bennelong and Kooyong and with Tennis Australia to launch Hot Shots in Canberra. MLC Tennis Hot Shots was developed by coaching professionals and is Tennis Australia's official starter program for children aged between five and 10. Through the Hot Shots campaign children learn to play on the right-sized court, using racquets that are perfect for small hands and balls that do not bounce too high. Tennis Hot Shots has now expanded to over 1,000 venues across Australia to include more than 248,000 Australian children—even more than the AFL's popular Auskick program last year. I am pleased to have more than 15 different venues in the Ryan electorate alone and I look forward to Australia producing many more tennis champions as a result of this program.

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Tennis Queensland on the success of this year's Brisbane International. It was heartbreaking to see the state of the Pat Rafter Arena after the devastation of the 2011 January floods. But, due to the relentless determination of Tennis Queensland CEO, Cameron Pearson, Facilities Manager, Michael Blomer, and their dedicated team, the Tennyson facility was back to its sparkling best for this year's tournament.

This event continues to go from strength to strength. In January 2012, the fourth Brisbane International was promoted by the Women's Tennis Association to now be a WTA Premier Tournament, one of only 22 in the world, and now the first Premier event on the tennis calendar. This tournament smashed all previous attendance records, with 92,802 patrons passing through the gates. No doubt this was due in part to the high level of leading tennis players who participated in the tournament along with our own local heroes, Sam Stosur, Bernard Tomic and Ashleigh Barty, to name just a few. But, as the saying goes, that's not all. Due to the recent success of our Australian Davis Cup team, Brisbane will be hosting the next challenge against Korea in April this year. I look forward to seeing Bernard Tomic in action again as he continues his determined rise up the ranks.

Tennis is one of those wonderful sports you can play throughout your life and you do not need to be a champion to enjoy the game. Tennis Australia is also undertaking significant community work in regional Australia, for which they should be commended. Earlier in March, Australian tennis legend Evonne Goolagong helped Tennis Australia launch the new Learn Earn Legend! tennis come-and-try days for young Indigenous Australians aged between five and 15 years. It is wonderful to see so many new from-the-ground-up community programs which really improve the health and education opportunities of our young people, particularly with the Indigenous community.

Under the stewardship of President Stephen Healy and the Tennis Australia Board, with CEO Steve Wood and Ken Laffey, Ashley Cooper and Cameron Pearson in Queensland, tennis in our country is in good hands. I congratulate Tennis Australia, Tennis Queensland and everyone involved in its success so far, and I know that tennis in Australia has a very assured and bright future indeed.