Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Government Services and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the North Sydney Bears, a team which has had a very important role in the history of rugby league in Australia and in the electorate of Bradfield. The Bears were established in 1908 and were a foundation club of the New South Wales rugby football league. For decades, they were a powerhouse in the competition, supported very widely across the North Shore and beyond. North Sydney Oval, the home of the Bears, was a den providing players and fans alike with a first-class spectacle.

Sadly, as history records, the North Sydney Bears played their last season in the National Rugby League in 1999 due to the league prioritising financial considerations over community sentiment and depth of community support. Since that time, the North Sydney Bears have been an active participant in the New South Wales Cup competition, and they continue to nurture talented players. But over the last 25 years, debate around the club's re-introduction to top-flight rugby league has been continuing, vigorous and lively, with a range of different proposals canvassed but ultimately, to the great detriment of the game and its fans, rejected.

Therefore, I joined in the excitement of many of my constituents when it was reported in August that the North Sydney Bears had signed a deal with a consortium of WA business people, including the Cash Converters founders, the Cumins family, on an agreement to lodge an application for the Western Bears to enter a team in the 2027 NRL season—an arrangement which would see the heritage of the North Sydney Bears returning to the NRL and, of course, drawing on additional community support in Western Australia. There are hurdles which need to be overcome before this long awaited goal can be achieved, but, at face value, this certainly looks to be good news.

It's important that North Sydney Oval be maintained as a premier sports venue—not merely maintained but upgraded. In my view, North Sydney Oval should absolutely remain a venue for elite sporting contests and somewhere that is, of course, easily accessible to people from across northern Sydney. I must say I have been troubled to see proposals from some North Sydney councillors to go in the opposite direction and downgrade North Sydney Oval. I strongly oppose that proposal.

It is my view, and it's a view shared by many in my community, that bringing back one of the original NRL teams will be seen as a highly appropriate move by all who love rugby league. It will strengthen the NRL by adding a new team and a team which will be able to draw on strong support across a large part of Sydney in addition, of course, to the new support that will come in WA.

I do want to acknowledge the impressive feeder program that the Bears have, including the Asquith Magpies. Magpies Waitara, located in my electorate—sadly, I'll lose it following the redistribution, but for the moment it's in my electorate—is an important and much loved community institution. If the Bears return to the NRL, it will have flow-on benefits for community sport on the North Shore and will over time foster a new generation of rugby league representatives from the North Shore.

I attended a lunch at Norths Cammeray on Friday organised by the Bears, and it was a significant event. I must say that I was very concerned to see comments from Peter V'landys over the weekend and again this afternoon suggesting that the bids received by the NRL, including the Western Bears bid, were not sufficiently financially strong. This is a troubling development, and I hope it is simply a piece of negotiation. It would be a tragedy if the NRL were to miss this opportunity to tap into strong community support—to love—of the Bears. It would be a tragedy if that opportunity were missed—if the NRL were to make the same mistake as it made in the late nineties when the Bears were excluded to once again exclude a club which has strong community support on the basis of these vaguely described financial considerations. So I call on the NRL to get on with it, do the right thing and back the Bears, and there will be very strong community support if the NRL does that.