David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak this morning on the important issue of access to netball facilities in the southern Bankstown region in my electorate. We have a lot of great netball clubs in the Bankstown region: chief among them in my electorate are the East Hills Bullets, the Padstow RSL Demons, St Christophers Netball Club in Panania and the Picnic Point Pumas. The issue we have in the Bankstown region at the moment is that there is only one hardcourt facility for netball players. It is located up at Condell Park, which is part of the Bankstown region but not an easy place to get to from the southern part of Bankstown, particularly during the week, when teams want to train. Getting there through peak-hour traffic is often not easy. What we need is a hardcourt training facility in the southern Bankstown region. We currently have a number of grass court facilities. Whilst these were good in an earlier era, the reality is that these days netball is pretty much exclusively played on hard courts, and we need to convert one of these grass court facilities to a hardcourt facility.

I have been in touch with the Canterbury-Bankstown council about this issue. To date, the council has unfortunately not agreed to do that, and I think that needs to change. I would certainly encourage the netball community to continue to work on this issue. I, for my part, believe that this is certainly a project worthy of funding support, and I will advocate for funding support for this project not only at the council level but potentially at other levels as well. We need a hardcourt training facility for netball in the southern Bankstown region.

I also want to acknowledge the great work of Diane and Natalie Albrecht at Revesby Girl Guides, which has been in operation for over 50 years. In a community that has a very strong guiding tradition, Revesby Girl Guides is one of our strongest groups. Natalie was recently nominated for the Banks Volunteer of the Year Award for her great efforts over the past 12 years. She was also instrumental in setting up the Gumnut Group, which is for the very young girls around five to six years of age.

Revesby Girl Guides does a tremendous amount of work in our area helping out with things like Clean Up Australia Day and many other important projects. My own daughter has benefited greatly from the Girl Guides movement, and it is tremendous to see people like Diane and Natalie Albrecht doing such fantastic work and helping the next generation of young girls to get the benefit of the great tradition of Girl Guides.