Value of Sport and Recreation
Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (11:31): I move:
That this house recognises the significant positive contribution that sporting and recreational facilities make to communities over and above the direct benefits of participating in the sporting and recreational activities.
It is, of course, very well known to all present the benefits of participating in sporting and recreational pursuits, and I am thinking here of physically active ones. But that is not what this is actually about; this is about trying to ensure that the house is very well aware of and supports the benefits to communities that come from the investment in sporting and recreational facilities in those communities.
This motion is very much about our entire state; it is not just about regional South Australia, as many of my motions are. This motion is deliberately about the entire state—city, country, the outback, everything from rowing courses all the way through to outback horseracing tracks or bronco branding yards.
Sport was probably just about the most important thing to me for about the first half of my life. I was a bit taken aback last night, when I was thinking about these things, that, at the age of 48, I look back and realise that I was probably at my sporting peak at 24—so a long, long time ago. That was the last year I played in the National Basketball League. I did manage to play on a premiership-winning state basketball league team, with the mighty West Adelaide Bearcats, which was a great privilege and lots and lots of fun. I played with them for a few years after the NBL. But it is not about me, it is not about participation. It is about the commercial, economic, social and community benefits that these facilities bring.
It is not just about my own thoughts, either. I have had the great fortune to have Ms Alexandra Grigg from Adelaide University do a study into these matters for me. I asked her to look into the benefits in rural areas (that is what this particular study was on) of health facilities, transport facilities, recreation and sport facilities and education facilities over and above their primary purposes.
She did a lot of very good work and presented a fantastic report as part of her internship program, which was run by Clem Macintyre, with the universities and the South Australian Parliament. Alexandra Grigg is an economics student primarily because that is what I wanted. I wanted some hard data. I did not want some wishy-washy thoughts or inclinations or ideas or concepts of how it could be; I wanted something very significant to support this. I will take a couple of quotes out of Ms Grigg's report, and I will start with section 4.2—Sporting Facilities. It states:
Investment in regional sporting facilities in South Australia results in an increase of real median weekly household income for that district by $33.61, holding all else constant. This may be due to the multiplier effects of increased population, facilitating increases in local demand and therefore services, as a resul t of the community spirit generated in these sporting facilities.
A bit further on:
As per the effects of health facilities on regional communities ' social welfare, the regression s in section 3.1 illustrate that sporting facilities have a positive influence on volunteer rates ( as a percentage of town population ), population and age spread in rural townships.
Sporting facilities in a community provide a diverse range of external benefits beyond their primary purpose. These facilities allow for the involvement and participation of residents of all ages in a community. Through this ongoing facilitation of civic engagement , town members feel directly connected to those around them, generating a greater sense of community spirit. Not only do sporting facilities directly influence the town's social welfare, these factors indirectly influence community strength through their ability to attract families to the district. Through the facilities ' capacity to provide health benefits, engage the community and foster civic engagement through volunteerism, local sporting infrastructure attracts families, further generating a sense of community spirit.
This development of community spirit promotes the cultivation of diverse support networks, in turn , growing loyalty and trust, further improving on community strength. Like the indirect effects of health facilities in regional communities, sporting facilities' influence s on social welfare are interrelated. The greater the development of these interrelations between the benefits provided by local sporting clubs, the larger the multiplier effect of investment in these facilities.
A lot of work has gone into this to actually show that this is econometrically defensible work, but these things that I have just been reading out which apply to rural communities are equally true of suburban metropolitan Adelaide, and that is why I wanted to bring this matter to the house. The benefits just grow and grow and grow. The more sporting facilities and recreational facilities we have, like bike paths and all sorts of non-team sports, is very important. I am not just focusing on the stock standards, like cricket, football etc. The non-structured, non-team, individual recreational pursuits are just as valid in this area.
I encourage the government and I encourage all future governments to think about this very hard. Mr Deputy Speaker, as a former minister for recreation and sport, I am sure that you know a lot about this and I hope you share my views on this very important topic. I am disappointed, of course, that the government has recently cut $3½ million out of the recreation and sport grants that are available to communities. I think that is a great shame because as the work of Ms Grigg shows, there are extraordinary multiplier effects. That $3½ million to South Australia has a very large multiplier effect that goes a long way towards enhancing the strength of communities.
I am also not shying away from raising Adelaide Oval in this issue as well. All sporting facilities, from the largest like Adelaide Oval all the way through to the smallest, that might be, as I said, a bronco branding yard at Marree, or another outback town, provide these benefits. I am firmly on the record here in this house and other places saying that the problem with the Adelaide Oval expansion is we actually just cannot afford it. So I am not suggesting for a second that these types of benefits do not accrue.
But the reality is with the budget situation—which we are all now very well aware of with nearly $14 billion of debt—spending over half a billion dollars on the upgrade of the Adelaide Oval, which will only get us an additional 12,000 seats over the 38,000 that already exist in the former Adelaide Oval, is an expenditure that unfortunately we cannot justify. However, I do not shy away from the fact that exactly the same benefits that I am talking about will accrue from that investment. I wish we could afford it.
I would also like to put on record my thanks and appreciation for the good work that is done by Sport SA—a very important South Australian organisation that promotes and advocates for sport in general. They do that in many ways, such as getting involved in supporting the Olympics, all the way through to small, tiny clubs, organisations and individual participants. They are very busy with clubs and leagues alike. In fact, they do some quite innovative work in this area, in terms of trying to expand and maximise the benefits that come from sport, like training sports administrators. They do that in-house. They train sports administrators so that they can contribute to the sport. These are people who may never take the court or the field, or whatever it happens to be, but they can contribute to and benefit from, and share in and expand, for the good of the whole community, the benefits that come from sport.
I will wrap up by saying that, just like there are far more benefits than just educational outcomes in investing in schools, just like there are far more benefits than the health outcomes to communities by investing in hospitals and other health facilities, and just like there are far more benefits than just the ability to transport that comes from investing in transport facilities, so it is with sporting and recreational facilities. Well beyond the benefits of participation, our communities throughout South Australia benefit enormously, both socially and economically, from both the state and commonwealth governments'—and also community and volunteer—investment in our sporting facilities.
That investment can be summarised in two ways: there is a very clear economic multiplier effect, which brings increased economic opportunities, additional local expenditure and increased local demand; and there is a very clear social welfare multiplier effect, which brings increased volunteer participation, increased local trust, increased local diversity and increased social interaction. I urge the house to support this motion and I urge this government and all future governments to take these issues into very serious consideration when they are weighing up their investment decisions.
Mr VAN HOLST PELLEKAAN (Stuart) (12:59): Thank you very much, sir. I appreciate the contribution from all members here, including the government members. I also appreciated the member for Davenport being able to correct a few financial issues as well.
All communities benefit: whether it is Wilmington (where I live) or Port Augusta, or the Kilburn Football Club, where I recently met community members on a totally different topic and was very impressed with their young club president, Dale, whose last name I cannot actually remember. However, sporting facilities create healthier communities, more prosperous communities, more cohesive communities, more successful communities, regardless of where they are in the state, and I appreciate this house's support of the motion.
Motion carried.
Comment