Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is directed to the Minister for the Arts and Sport, Senator Kemp. Will the minister update the Senate on recent advances in preparations of the Australian team in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympic Games? Is the minister aware of any alternative sports policies?  

Rod Kemp (Victoria, Liberal Party, Minister for the Arts and Sport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Bernardi for the question. As we all know, Senator Bernardi was an AIS student and competed for Australia with the Australian team in the rowing World Cup. In fact I think Senator Bernardi can rightly claim that he was part of an ‘oarsome foursome’ before it was ‘awesome’. Let me go to the second part of the question: am I aware of any other policies on sport, apart from the policies this government has put forward. The truth is, Senator Bernardi, that I am not aware of any other policies, apart from the policies this government has put forward. I take it as a measure of endorsement by the Labor Party of the very effective policies we have put in place for both high-performance sport and grassroots sport.

Senator Bernardi, Australia has a long and proud record at Olympic and Commonwealth games, world championships and other elite competitions. Our successes, as you know, are well noted by many other countries, and many of them have looked closely at the achievements Australia has been able to make. On the international scene we now see countries such as China, Great Britain, Russia and Germany significantly upgrading their high-performance effort, obviously to see whether they can knock Australia out of the top five on the medal table at the Olympic Games. Some senators will be aware that the United Kingdom recently announced very substantial amounts of extra funding for high-performance sport, as they move towards the Olympic Games to be held in London in 2012.

I recently visited the AIS to open a new swimming and recovery centre. This new facility is state of the art and will help us to maintain our very proud record in the area of swimming. The government has also announced, in order to meet the challenges we are seeing on the international stage, further funding for our high-performance sport. In the last budget was total funding of about $55 million over four years to help Australia to meet these international challenges. The funding package addressed four key areas—high-performance athlete development, coaching, sports science and sports excellence—to be undertaken at the Australian Institute of Sport. As I said, earlier this week I officially opened the new swimming and recovery centre at the AIS.

The Beijing Olympics are just under two years away. This may seem a little way in the distance, but for our Olympic hopefuls it is very important that we start our preparations. All of us were invited to the function held yesterday to welcome back to Australia our World Cup winning basketball team, the Opals, who are now the No. 1 women’s basketball team in the world after recently winning the world title in Brazil. I extend to the Opals the congratulations of all in this chamber. It is interesting to note that 12 of the 13 members of the Opals squad were trained at some stage at the Australian Institute of Sport. I think that is a great compliment to the institute and I extend to the staff at the institute our congratulations. (Time expired)