Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak in celebration of Australia's netball team, the Australian Diamonds, on their renewed title of world champions. Sunday's gold medal match at Sydney's Allphones Arena was, without a doubt, a hard fought match and an intense clash, with the Diamonds conquering the New Zealand Silver Ferns 58 points to 55. The victory secured the Diamonds' third successive world championship title, their 11th overall, and has shown all Australians and, indeed, the world just how brightly the Australian Diamonds really do shine.

Led by coach Lisa Alexander and captain Laura Geitz, our Diamonds showed tenacity, strength and sheer brilliance to emerge victorious once again. I congratulate Caitlin Bassett, Erin Bell, Rebecca Bulley, Kimberlee Green, Paige Hadley, Renae Hallinan, Sharni Layton, Natalie Medhurst, Kimberley Revaillion, Caitlin Thwaites and Julie Corletto, who played her final match for Australia and retires on a great high.

The Netball World Cup is held every four years and is the premier international competition in netball. For the second time Sydney hosted the event, bringing together 16 nations in a tournament that showcased the world's best. The Netball World Cup was previously held in Sydney in 1991 and in my home town of Perth in 1967. The 2015 competition was truly global in nature, with qualifying teams from Barbados, England, Fiji, Jamaica, New Zealand, Malawi, South Africa, Samoa, Scotland, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Wales and Zambia.

To support the engagement in netball and the World Cup, the Abbott government invested $3 million to assist Netball Australia to deliver the sport's ultimate event. The government also invested $3 million towards one of the two host venues, Netball Central, ensuring another legacy from this great event. A further $2 million was allocated to support high performance in netball through the Australian Institute of Sport. The government also provided additional funding of $300,000 to support the participation of qualified teams from Zambia, Uganda, Sri Lanka, Malawi and Samoa.

During the Netball World Cup we have been continuing to encourage school children to get involved in our new $100 million Sporting Schools program, which aims to boost participation in sport. Minister Sussan Ley has been driving Sporting Schools to get our nation's children more active by giving primary schools across the country grants to access to accredited coaches and programs, with the aim of creating healthy habits that last a lifetime.

And more than 700 women from 31 different sports have been funded to assist in reaching their leadership potential through the Women Leaders in Sport program in the past year. It supports women in all levels of the sporting industry, including coaches, administrators, officials and board directors.

I am also pleased to note that a number of world records were broken during the 2015 world cup. We had the world's biggest netball clinic, which was held during the cup and included more than 555 schoolchildren from 40 schools along with teachers and qualified coaches. There were record crowds at a number of games, culminating in the gold medal match with almost 16,849 in attendance at Allphones Arena. Nearly 100,000 people attended a match at Sydney Olympic Park over the 10 days of the competition, and·FanFEST—the ultimate activity hub for fans—saw 65,292 people throughout the tournament.

I would also like to take this opportunity to congratulate former player, umpire and national coach Ms Joyce Brown for her ascension to 'legend' status in the Netball Australia Hall of Fame as announced at the Netball Legends Memories and Milestones Lunch. Joyce is one of the most respected and admired members of the netball family and was unanimously chosen for this honour by the board of Netball Australia.

Importantly, I also want to commend Netball Australia and the World Cup organising committee for all the hard work that made for such a successful and memorable event, with INF President Molly Rhone saying that 'the 2015 Netball World Cup in Sydney is the best one ever!'

Netball, as we know, has the highest participation rate of any women's sport in Australia, with 350,000 registered players and an estimated one million players nationwide. It is enjoyed by many more Australians who spend their evenings and Saturday mornings standing on sidelines around the country, cheering on friends and family. Netball is part of the sporting and social fabric of almost every community in Australia and is particularly popular in our country towns. It is truly a grassroots movement with approximately 80 per cent of all netball being played at local and state clubs.

Netball teaches young girls and women how to be assertive and to always play fair. It teaches them how to be gracious in success and in failure and to always be a team player. The sport helps young women understand their potential and to learn how to lead. Despite it being the leading participation sport for females in our country, netball has only recently become a large spectator sport. The Australian government recognises the contribution organisations like Netball Australia make in encouraging women and girls to actively participate in sport within their community. They are also pivotal for helping young women to understand their potential and for developing and promoting positive role models for future generations. So I want to pay particular tribute to Netball Australia for over half a century of teaching young girls these important life lessons.

Our Australian Diamonds are exceptional examples. They show what can be achieved through hard work and determination. They give girls the confidence to be successful in any arena they choose. I hope that in hosting this World Cup we are helping all women's sport claim the attention it so rightly deserves.

On the subject of women's sport: it has been an absolutely fantastic week for Australia. The men might not be lifting their weight and living up to expectations, but certainly our sporting women are bathing in green-and-gold glory. I also pay tribute to our Southern Stars. On Friday the Southern Stars cricket team decimated England by 161 runs to win the one-off women's test, edging closer to regaining the Ashes. The Southern Stars now lead the series by six points and are firming as favourites to beat the Brits in England for the first time in almost a decade and a half. The 161-run victory was more than double the entire number of runs the men's team scored in the final test a few days prior, and they did it with more than five hours of play to spare.

Of course there is also the women's basketball team, the Opals, who set the scene for a great weekend for women's sport when again they defeated the Kiwis on Saturday by a magnificent 20 points. They have now beaten the New Zealanders at every Oceania championship since 1974, which equates to 38 wins to zero.

As our Prime Minister has stated, 'Women's sport matters.' I am so delighted, like all of us here in the Senate, that Australian sportswomen are finally on the front cover of our magazines and our national newspapers and are gaining the attention and the accolades they so richly and rightly deserve.