Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I present the report of the Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts References Committee, About time! Women in sport and recreation in Australia, together with the Hansard record of proceedings and documents presented to the committee.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I seek leave to move a motion in relation to the report.

Leave granted.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

As a historical aside, this will be the final report by the Environment, Communications, Information Technology and the Arts References Committee, and it is about sport. The reference was made on 29 March this year and it is being tabled today, 6 September, so that is a fairly tight time frame to have an investigation into issues surrounding women in sport and recreation. Despite that, this is a substantial and substantive report, and credit must go to all those who were involved in bringing it together. That includes, of course, the many people in the general public who showed interest in this issue.

The committee received 81 submissions, conducted three public hearings, heard from 35 different witnesses in those hearings and, through the report, makes 18 recommendations for further action. This report does not exist in a vacuum; it builds on a large body of work over a couple of decades in addressing the various challenges and issues facing women in sport and recreation. A whole lot of those are listed in appendix 1 of the report. Towards the end of its inquiry, the committee also wrote to state and territory departments of education, asking a number of questions in relation to the number of physical activity programs in schools, and the responses that came in from the various departments prior to the report being finalised are also contained in an appendix within the report. They will be available on the committee’s website, as will be any future responses that do come in.

I think it is worth reading from the summary at the front of the report, because it does encapsulate quite well some of the key issues, even though it covered a wide range of areas, as inquiries always do. There are three important points that the committee believes are useful to express and to highlight as an introduction. Firstly, to emphasise:

… the challenges faced by women are not challenges they face alone. There are great health benefits for all Australians that come with being physically active, and there is a need for everyone—women and men, boys and girls—to be more active, and for governments and sporting organisations to play roles in facilitating that activity. There are hurdles that elite sportsmen and women both face in their efforts to compete at an elite level. Outside the sports that have the lion’s share of media coverage, and which are financially strongest, most elite sports people—

men as well as women—

are working hard with relatively few direct financial rewards.

1.10  Second, the solutions to the challenges faced by women’s sport are not for women alone to implement. It has to be a partnership of women and men working—

across the community—

together to create change.

We received evidence from men and women alike about various sporting endeavours and recreational activities and ways they can be enhanced through enabling equal opportunities for women to participate not just in playing but in the coaching, administrating, officiating and governance roles, where the role of women is just as important. And:

1.11  Third, all sportspeople have a part to play in ensuring everyone can enjoy their game or activity and all parents have a part to play—

and the community more widely—

in ensuring their boys and girls stay active and healthy.

In addition:

Everyone in the media, male or female, needs to take every opportunity to give the diversity of sports the coverage they deserve.

As the title of the report aptly says:

It is about time that women have enhanced opportunities ...

It is also of course a lack of time that leads to many women not being as involved as they would like in sport and recreational activities. The report also addresses some of those issues. It covers a range of areas—as I said, it is a substantial report—including the broad health benefits of participation in sport which, it should be emphasised, save governments and the public a significant amount of dollars in health budgets. Encouraging physical activity and participation in sport and recreation is, perhaps, one of the cheapest and most efficient forms of preventative medicine. It also has flow-on social benefits.

There is a chapter in the report dealing with grassroots participation, thereby building community healthiness and reducing isolation. Elite participation also gets some coverage in the report, as does the important role of leadership and governance by women in women’s sport and general sports. It finishes off with a chapter on women’s sport and the media. That is often where a lot of the focus is. That is understandable because, while there are a fair few of us involved in sport and recreation and physical activity, a much greater number of us are involved in just sitting back and watching it on television or reading about it in various ways. It is therefore no surprise that there is often a lot of focus on how much media coverage there is of women’s involvement in sport, as well as the nature of that coverage.

This chapter is an important one. I received some feedback from the public about this inquiry when I put various things about it on my website. People said, ‘It just doesn’t rate as well’—all the sorts of things that we hear all the time—‘people just aren’t as interested in it and people should just accept it.’ The chapter on this issue commences with a couple of fairly typical reports by a couple of journalists basically dismissing women’s sport as just something of interest or great widespread entertainment value for media coverage. But the fact is, as is said in this report, that is not always the case by any means. The 1999 Netball World Championship final, for example, between Australia and New Zealand outrated the Bledisloe Cup rugby held a few months earlier in New Zealand. We all know—it is a matter of great legend; anybody with a beer or a Bundy rum in their hand could tell you—how much New Zealanders and Australians love their rugby and, between them, how much they love their Bledisloe Cup. But, apparently, they love their netball championship finals even more.

One may say: ‘Don’t believe everything you read in the media about these things.’ There is interest in the community and a lot of it depends on how it is portrayed and, as with any of these things, quite frankly, how it is hyped. If the hype or the focus or the genuine interest and participation that is reflected in the community is portrayed in the right way then the interest is there.

There are 18 recommendations, as I said. I will not go through them all. I was pleased in a way because they certainly reflect my view that you cannot just regulate and force all media to show 50 per cent women’s sport. I think those sorts of approaches, whilst perhaps appealing on a surface level, are unlikely to work and in some circumstances could be counterproductive. However, the committee made some recommendations that I believe are likely to benefit and improve the situation. I think it is the sort of area where, once you get some momentum, once you get a shift in mindset, then a lot of it can look after itself. It is just a case of overcoming the barriers. It is not so much forcing people to do something they do not want to do as just removing some of the barriers and making them realise what is there in front of them all the time.

I would like to put on record the work of other senators in this inquiry. Senators Lundy and Ronaldson in particular did the lion’s share with regard to the conduct of this inquiry and the pulling together of the report. It should be emphasised that it is a unanimous report. Senate committees can pull together across party lines unanimous reports that are constructive, that produce strong recommendations and that, if taken seriously, will lead to positive improvements. I would like to take the opportunity to urge the government to do a bit better than it has done many times in the recent era by responding to the recommendations reasonably promptly. The report took only about three or four months to put together. It would be nice to have a response in that time frame.

I also thank the secretariat for their involvement and their very hard work in pulling the report together in that very tight time frame. I thank the secretary, Ian Holland, and particularly Peter Short and Dianne Warhurst with regard to this inquiry. As this is not only the final report from the references committee but will be my final formal act as chair of the committee, I should also thank all the other members of the secretariat who assisted me during my time as chair: Jacqueline Dewar, in particular; also Jacquie Hawkins, Robyn Clough and probably some others. It is always the people behind the scenes who do most of the work; it is the chair who comes along at the end and just drops the report in the Senate. I thank also the other senators on the committee who made it work quite effectively and cooperatively. It is a good example of how Senate committees can work effectively. It has been a privilege to serve in that position and it is good to finish with this particular report. (Time expired)