Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about two national icons within my electorate of Hughes. The first is cricket, our national sport. As a self-confessed cricket tragic, last Sunday it was a privilege for me to attend the presentation day of the Sutherland Shire Junior Cricket Association. The association has proudly seen the likes of Steve Smith's from his under-10s through to captaining the Australian men's team. The association fields 1,000 players in 97 teams in their Saturday-morning competition. Importantly, this includes 95 girls. The Association has nine girls-only teams, and this is an amazing credit to President Matt O'Brien and the executive team that have led this association so successfully. When I wanted to play cricket as a young girl, there were no girls teams, only boys teams. However, I'm delighted to see that in one generation we have seen tremendous growth in women's cricket, where our Australian team is well known and our WBBL teams are attracting great crowds and sponsorship money.

It was fabulous to see the emerging talent from the shire's cricket association, both boys and girls, on the weekend. Australian fast bowler Maitlan Brown joined us, which was greatly appreciated, particularly by the many female players in the room. You cannot be what you cannot see. Her presence on the day and her feats on the field have inspired countless budding creditors and provided great encouragement to those players at the awards day. So congratulations to the association in all of its forms: the players, the parents, the scorers, the managers, the coaches and the administrators.

Koalas are an iconic but endangered Australian native. I have healthy colonies of koalas living in my electorate of Hughes, in Heathcote National Park and around Sandy Point. However, about 10 per cent of these koalas are being killed each year on Heathcote Road, and the government response on this has been nothing but Utopia. The koalas cross Heathcote Road in mating season, and this season is about to begin again in September. The solution is simple: we need a fence urgently built around Deadmans Creek. This will prevent the koalas from crossing the road. They can then cross under the creek. I have written to the federal government, the Minister for the Environment and Water and the Minister for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, and what have they done? They have kicked the can down the road and said it's the New South Wales government. I have now written to the Premier of New South Wales, as well as the New South Wales department of transport, calling on them to simply put into practice a report that has been sitting on the desk of the department of transport now since 2001. It is not an expensive spend at this stage; we're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, not hundreds of millions of dollars. So I call on the state and federal governments to urgently fund this project to keep our koalas safe into the future.