Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I recognise the important words of the member for North Sydney. We all need to work together to deal with this and support all members of our community, especially older Australians, and ensure that they have everything they need.

I want to talk about some local sporting and recreational facilities in the finest electorate of McNamara. Caulfield Park is located in the City of Glen Eira. The City of Glen Eira is the local government authority with the lowest amount of open space of any local government area in Victoria. There is no local government area that has less open space than the City of Glen Eira.

In the heart of the city of Glen Eira we have Caulfield Park. Caulfield Park is the largest park in the city of Glen Eira and is the second largest in my electorate, behind the great Albert Park. It is home to a number of clubs and teams, both senior and junior, including North Caulfield Maccabi Football Club, Caulfield Cricket Club, Maccabi AJAX Cricket Club, Caulfield Lacrosse Club, Caulfield Park social soccer and Caulfield Park Tennis Club.

It is a bumper to bumper schedule at Caulfield Park because the land there is so scarce. So what better facility to access the government's recreational and Community Sport Infrastructure Program—the $100 million community sport infrastructure program. So the city of Glen Eira, on behalf of all of the local sporting clubs that use Caulfield Park, put in a grant application. They put in a grant application to upgrade Caulfield Park's community and social clubs, to upgrade the lighting to better enhance the usage of the oval for competitive and social sport, in an area that's completely overfilled and not utilised enough in the park. These things cost money. We need that space so let's put in the application. The good news is that Sport Australia thought that that was a pretty good idea too. They thought that Caulfield Park needed a bit of money, that's why they awarded the application 83 out of 100—not bad. We thought we're not going to ask for the full amount. We'll just ask for less than half—$213,000. Especially because down the road in the electorate of La Trobe the Pakenham footy club only got 50 out of 100. If they didn't get the full $500,000 then surely at Caulfield we can only get less than half, that seems reasonable—but not a dime.

I now know the two reasons why Caulfield Park didn't get any. The first was that it wasn't in the Prime Minister's electorate and it hadn't already been built. If that had have been on the application they would have helped them. The second reason was that it's not a regional grant. I know the member for North Sydney has got a nice new pool, but in Macnamara our kids and our parents are missing out because of the rorting government.