Mitch Fifield (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for Communications) Share this | Hansard source

Fox Sports broadcasts the largest amount of women's sport in Australia, so they're very well placed to do more. I'm pleased to let colleagues know that Fox Sports will provide enhanced coverage of sports from 13 codes in 2017-18. For the year, it's expected that Fox Sports will broadcast over 1,300 hours of live coverage, and just under 4,000 hours of coverage in total, of women's niche and emerging sports. This represents an 18 per cent increase in the amount of live coverage of these sports in 2017-18, compared with 2016-17, and an 11 per cent increase overall. I think that's good news. The government, in the context of the last budget, decided that this would be an appropriate way to support under-represented sports and their broadcasts. As I've already mentioned, the ABC could do something with the $1 billion plus a year that they receive and SBS could do something with the $270 million a year that they receive, so this particular funding grant is fairly modest in comparison.