New South Wales Institute of Sport

Ms HARRISON (Parramatta - Minister for Sport and Recreation) [8.00 p.m.]: Since its establishment in 1995 the New South Wales Institute of Sport - or NSWIS, as it is universally called - has become the best-funded and best-resourced state-based sports institute in the country. It now represents the peak of the elite sporting pathway system in New South Wales and provides the most sophisticated and co-ordinated approach to high- performance sport ever introduced in this State. The institute became fully operational at Olympic Park, Homebush Bay, during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The move into the Homebush site and its close physical link with the biggest sporting event in the world will serve as a symbol for many years. It will serve as a beacon, shining a light to exactly where the sporting journey of both the organisation and its athletes are ultimately expected to lead.

With 21 of its 25 squad programs either summer or winter Olympic sports, the institute maintains a heavy Olympic focus with the Sydney Olympics as an obvious primary focus - the first of many Olympics for NSWIS athletes. When it was established the New South Wales Institute of Sport was generally regarded as providing the first real option for elite New South Wales athletes to remain in New South Wales to train rather than to relocate to the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra or to other States where AIS programs operated, or even to head off overseas. Institute chairman and International Olympic Committee member, Phil Coles, said that before NSWIS was established elite New South Wales athletes were sometimes overlooked for national team representation simply because they lacked the opportunities of some of their competitors. He pointed out that it was not through lack of talent.

New South Wales athletes who decided to stay in New South Wales certainly never had the same access to local sports institutes and all of the services those institutes could offer as some of their interstate counterparts. I am pleased to say that times have changed. It is important to understand what the institute does and what it has to offer New South Wales and Australian sport. As I said earlier, NSWIS was established in December by an Act of Parliament. Its annual funding of $5 million comes from two major sources: $4 million from the New South Wales Government and $1 million from its principal partner and sponsor, the Registered Clubs Association of New South Wales. In addition, some of its programs are jointly funded through the Australian Sports Commission.

The institute is governed by a high-powered seven-member board that reports to me. The board chairman is IOC member and Australian Olympic Committee director Phil Coles. Other members include broadcaster Alan Jones, Registered Clubs Association president Jack Ball, Womensport Australia president Libby Darlison, Australian wheelchair basketball captain Donna Ritchie, media executive Dee Wilson, and New South Wales Director-General of the Department of Sport and Recreation, Bill Gillooly. Located at Olympic Park, Homebush Bay, in the undercroft of the Sydney International Athletic Centre, the institute will eventually have access to the most superior sports infrastructure in the country and the greatest sports precinct in the world. Unlike the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra, NSWIS is a non-residential, decentralised organisation. That structure allows athletes to remain in their familiar and supportive home environments without compromising their access to international level coaching and world-class daily training facilities. The institute is specifically responsible for developing and assisting elite New South Wales athletes and coaches, both Olympic and non-Olympic, to be the best they can be.

Mr Hazzard: Whose idea was this? Was this your idea or the coalition's idea?

Ms HARRISON: You did nothing for seven years. The Government finally got it up and running.

Mr ACTING-SPEAKER (Mr Clough): Order! The member for Wakehurst will have an opportunity to contribute to the debate at the appropriate time.

Ms HARRISON: The institute also works with State sporting organisations to co-ordinate high performance and talent development programs throughout the State. Some 680 athletes are currently on scholarships with the institute and those athletes represent 25 different sports. Over the past 18 months the sporting achievements of those 680
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athletes have been too numerous to mention in the short time available to me. However, it is appropriate to highlight a few of the outstanding results so far in 1998. I am sure honourable members will agree that the results speak for themselves. In researching the institute's progress, success appears to occur across a wide range of programs and not only in a few so-called glamour sports or those with the biggest budgets.

This year five NSWIS athletes became world champions: swimmers Ian Thorpe and Chris Fydler and female cricketers Belinda Clark, Michelle Goszko and Lisa Keightley. Five winter sports athletes competed in the Nagano Winter Olympics in February: pairs figure skaters Danielle McGrath and Stephen Carr; solo skater Joanne Carter; speed skater Kieran Hansen; and paralympic alpine skier James Patterson. Institute track and field athletes dominated the medal tally at the National Championships at Melbourne three months ago claiming 23 gold, 15 silver and seven bronze medals. Melinda Gainsford-Taylor was named female athlete of the year.

In April institute divers won four of the five gold medals in the women's competition at the Australian Diving Championships, and two athletes, Matthew Spinelli and Krystle Delaforce, were named junior divers of the year. Nine NSWIS swimmers were recently selected as members of the Commonwealth Games team. Seven senior and eight junior kayakers have just been named as members of national teams. In the last fortnight 26 senior and junior rowers were selected to represent Australia at the upcoming European circuit and World Championships. Wheelchair athletes Louise Sauvage, Fabian Blattman and Christie Skelton have been named in the Sydney 2000 Paralympics preparation program.

Six NSWIS baseball players have received professional contract offers from American baseball league teams and five basketball players have signed contracts with National Basketball League teams. In cycling, three riders are preparing for the Junior World Championships in July and another three for the Commonwealth Games in September. At the National Track Championships in March, NSWIS cyclists won 11 gold, 13 silver and six bronze medals, taking home the trophy for the best State for the second year in a row. The institute's senior women's rhythmic gymnastics group qualified for the World Championships, a first for an Australian team. In soccer, six NSWIS men have been offered semiprofessional opportunities with United Kingdom teams and the institute's women's squad won the National Ansett Australian Summer Series.

Eight female softballers from the institute played for Australia at the South Pacific Classic. Five of those players have now been named in the Australian team to play in the world championships in Japan next month. The list goes on, and only five months of the year have elapsed. While the institute aims to maximise the sporting performance of its scholarship holders, it also offers a wide range of services to complete the personal development of its athletes and coaches. The New South Wales Institute of Sport is, by design, not simply a grant organisation.

Though many athletes have their attendance at national and international competition completely funded, there is no wholesale handing over of large sums of money. Instead, the real value of the NSWIS experience often lies in the support services available to the athletes and coaches. Those services include career support, education guidance, counselling, personal development, psychology, and sports science testing. Many of those services were never previously available to the athletes, certainly not at such an advanced and targeted level. The institute aims to assist in the development of well-rounded and balanced athletes.

As honourable members can imagine, the competition for and the final selection of both squad and individual athlete scholarships is highly structured and extremely rigorous. It should be acknowledged that NSWIS is at the summit of elite sport in the State, and those who participate in its programs should be highly regarded by the people of New South Wales. I strongly believe that in establishing an institute New South Wales is behind the other States in timing only. Although the institute is only 18 months down the track in its organisation's operational history, NSWIS is considered by many to be leading the way and setting the standards in servicing and supporting high-performance athletes.

Given that other States have more than a decade's experience behind them, one may well ask how that can be. There are many reasons for the success of NSWIS. Those reasons include the leading edge in technology and equipment the institute boasts, the commitment to innovation and success, the generosity of sponsors and the enthusiasm of key partners like State sporting organisations. When they are combined with perhaps the largest elite athlete talent pool in the country the potential for sporting excellence at both national and international level not only becomes desirable but, more importantly, achievable. So too does the institute's vision to lead Australian sport into the twenty-first century. [Time expired.]

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Mr HAZZARD (Wakehurst) [8.10 p.m.]: The New South Wales Institute of Sport is one of the success stories of the New South Wales coalition. The Minister, like all good members of the Labor Party, particularly the right wing of the Labor Party, likes to rewrite history. No matter what the Minister said, the New South Wales Institute of Sport was a vision of the New South Wales coalition. Indeed, in the 1994 report of the New South Wales Department of Sport and Recreation, Chris Downy, the former Minister for Sport - an excellent Minister who was involved with sport, understood it and was committed to it - made the announcement that as a result of winning the bid for the Olympics, another coalition initiative, the coalition would move to establish the New South Wales Institute of Sport.

I remind the Minister that it was because of the extraordinary management skills of the coalition that New South Wales won the right to stage the next Olympics. The Minister may believe that is another Labor victory, because the Minister for the Olympics walks around all the time thumping his chest and saying we cannot get along without him. The news is, that in fact we can all get along without him. In fact, most of his side of politics gets along without him. Indeed, the coalition will have no problems at all in taking over what it started, that is, looking after the next Olympics. We will be doing that from 28 March next year.

As the Minister correctly observed, with the winning of the bid to stage the Olympic Games the spotlight in New South Wales turned to elite sports. Unfortunately, prior to the vision of the coalition for a State institute of sport, New South Wales sportsmen were forced to attend the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra or go overseas to train. There is no question that the birth of the New South Wales Institute of Sport was a necessary advent for sport in this State. The Minister correctly noted that there have been some major achievements in the sporting arena as a result of its establishment. However, before I turn to that let me say a little more about the Minister for the Olympics. In the past few days he has claimed that he is needed to manage the next Olympic Games, that without him there can be no Olympics.

Mr Fraser: They need someone to collect the tickets.

Mr HAZZARD: That is right. He is qualified to be there at the gate, as the honourable member for Coffs Harbour says, to collect the tickets. But in the big wide world, the business world and the community, no-one believes he is doing a good job. No-one particularly likes the way he is running the preparations for the Olympics. That is the strong message that is coming back to the coalition. We have no doubt that this side of politics has the skill and expertise to carry on the job.

Mr Fraser: Richo told us that.

Mr HAZZARD: Yes. Graham Richardson actually told me just recently -

Mr Fraser: And he never lies.

Mr HAZZARD: No, he never lies. He only does whatever it takes. I am sure he feels the same way, that the Minister is not the man for the job, and that he will support us, if he is still in his present job. The New South Wales Institute of Sport has had many successes. The various athletes the Minister referred to earlier are but a small selection of the athletes who have passed through -

Mr Fraser: Name them.

Mr HAZZARD: A large number of athletes have passed through the institute and have done very well, and I will name but a few of them: Ian Thorpe and Chris Fydler from swimming; Bradley McGee and Sean Eadie from cycling; Joanne Carter from ice skating; Alyson Annan, who was the subject of a bipartisan notice of motion before the House today which asked the House to note the magnificent play by the Hockeyroos in Holland during the past few days when they beat the Netherlands in the World Cup; Matt Shirvington from track and field; and Louise Sauvage, a disabled athlete who stands out as being one of the institute's greatest success stories; Louise McPaul from track and field; Melanie Roach from softball; Boden Hanson from rowing; and, of course, our own local girl from the northern beaches, Melinda Gainsford-Taylor.

There have been a host of successes, and no doubt the Institute of Sport will continue with those successes because there is bipartisan support, as has been demonstrated during this debate, for the continuation of the institute. The coalition is certainly looking forward to greater development of the elite programs to guarantee the successful participation of our athletes in the 2000 Olympics. The New South Wales Institute of Sport is fortunate to have Michael Scott as its director. Michael was appointed in March 1997 and took up the position in about June 1997. He had served for three years as the head of the Department of Sport and Recreation in South Australia and prior to that spent three years in Victoria. He came to the job with all the necessary skills and he has done an excellent job.

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Ms Harrison: I am pleased to hear you say that.

Mr HAZZARD: The Minister obviously agrees with my bipartisan comments. The institute needs more government support. Funding for the Institute of Sport has not been increased for the past three years. Fortunately funding of around $800,000 from the Federal Government has been added to State funding. That may come as a surprise to the Minister, because only a few weeks ago she was jumping up and down in this House and claiming that the Federal Government does not put any money into sport. It does, and it has put $800,000 into the Institute of Sport. The House should acknowledge that the balance of the funds, $1 million, comes from the registered clubs. The registered clubs are very concerned about what the Government has been doing to them with an increase in the poker machines tax, but they are nevertheless at the forefront of community sport - doing their bit for New South Wales and doing it well. The clubs contribute $1 million a year to the New South Wales Institute of Sport. On behalf of the New South Wales coalition - obviously, I cannot offer thanks from the Government - I thank the Registered Clubs Association for its support.

I thank Mr Jack Ball, Alan Jones and Libby Darlison, mentioned by the Minister, and all board members for the fantastic job they have done in the institute's establishment phase. Twenty-five sporting programs are carried out and many activities are undertaken for the sporting elite of the State. The New South Wales Institute of Sport has a specific charter for the development and support of elite and internationally competitive athletes and has a series of programs in line with its directions. The institute supports Australiawide initiatives to reduce the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport, a major issue for Australia as we move towards the 2000 Olympics. The success of the institute will to a degree be measured at the Olympics.

The amazing work the institute is doing with elite athletes and in encouraging the many regional sports academies should be acknowledged. New South Wales now has academies of sport for the northern inland region, the western region, the Riverina, the Illawarra, the north coast, the Hunter region, western Sydney, the far-west region and south-west Sydney. I thank those at the New South Wales Institute of Sport for the hard work they are doing and I look forward to continued relationships between the coalition and the institute as we move towards the 2000 Olympics.

Mr ROGAN (East Hills) [8.20 p.m.]: I support the remarks made earlier by the Minister. The contribution made by the honourable member for Wakehurst was positive overall - obviously, as shadow minister he has to make some comments that might appear to be damaging to the Government. The honourable member for Wakehurst, understandably, wanted to claim credit for the coalition for the idea of a State sports institute. The honourable member talked about vision. I point out that one can have vision but for success one needs talent, money and drive. That has been achieved by the Minister. The Minister has an impressive record in her portfolio and I am delighted to be able to record my support for the work she is doing, support which I am sure would be shared by all honourable members even though Opposition members may not want to express their support publicly.

All honourable members would applaud the rapid and impressive progress of the New South Wales Institute of Sport. The honourable member for Wakehurst mentioned contributions made by the club industry. Wearing my other hat as a director of a licensed club, the Revesby Workers Club, I am delighted to note how proud that club is to be one of the major clubs making a contribution to the community, in this instance to the development of young athletes. There is no doubt that, despite the relative "newness" of the organisation, the phrase "catch up" has no relevance whatsoever to its operations. Although the New South Wales Institute of Sport is much more than a medal factory, there is perhaps no greater illustration of the impact it is having than in the results being obtained by our young athletes - and honourable members have just heard the Minister for Sport and Recreation list a few of those results that have been posted this year.

The results speak volumes for the calibre of athletes on scholarships with the institute. The athletes are not only the best at what they do in New South Wales - many are the best in Australia and some are the best in the world. But there are many talented sportspeople playing in Saturday afternoon competitions right around the State, and all honourable members would be able to testify to that. It is the opportunity, the support and the backing that elevate State champions to Olympic champions. That is where the New South Wales Institute of Sport can have and is having a huge and unprecedented impact on elite sport. It is worth noting that the institute is in no way arrogant enough to claim full credit for how fast our athletes can run or how high they can jump. Where it can
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claim credit is in giving our athletes the very best opportunity to reach their full potential through access to world-class training environments, international-level coaching and the latest sports science and medical-testing facilities and programs.

The way in which athletes are admitted to the New South Wales Institute of Sport programs is worthy of comment. In partnership with the various State sporting organisations and in line with national and international standards, the institute has developed a sport policy framework to ensure consistency and transparency in the admission of sports and athletes to the institute programs and in the allocation of funding and other resources. Central to that framework is performance-based prioritisation and allocation of resources and support to programs across a three-tier structure. As the Minister has said, the current framework has a Sydney 2000 focus. Generally, athletes on the institute's books are representatives on junior or senior national teams who are internationally competitive and, in the case of individual athletes, are ranked in the top 10 in the world.

The honourable member for Wakehurst has mentioned some of those athletes. I single out Ian Thorpe, who is a swimmer from my area. In my capacity as local member I well recall making presentations to Ian when he was winning junior swimming titles. Locally we are very proud of him. I also pay tribute to swimmers Grant Robinson and Shelley Taylor-Smith; track-and-field stars Melinda Gainsford-Taylor, Matt Shirvington, Louise McPaul and Jane Jamieson; and skaters Stephen Carr and Danielle McGrath. I have a long list of people I could name. In this debate we acknowledge our great athletes. [Time expired.]

Ms HARRISON (Parramatta - Minister for Sport and Recreation) [8.25 p.m.], in reply: I thank my colleagues for their generally positive contributions to this debate. I note that the shadow minister, despite his contribution being mainly positive, said that the institute was a coalition initiative. I recall that when I was a runner, which was a very, very long time ago now, it was said that a State sports institute was needed. Nothing ever happened; all we had was talk about it and planning for it. If the coalition had a vision for establishing an institute, it was very blurred or tunnel vision because no provision for an institute was included in forward estimates, which was very disappointing and showed that there was no real commitment to an institute. Every week I receive news from the institute about yet another success of one of our athletes or one of our institute teams. When I have the chance to recite them one after another, as I did just a while ago, I am always amazed and proud at the inroads being made in this area.

Just two years ago the New South Wales Institute of Sport existed on paper only, yet today we are realistically considering fielding a large slice of Australia's Sydney 2000 Olympic team. I was particularly delighted at the success of our track and field athletes, who finished the national championships with 23 gold, 25 silver and seven bronze medals. Traditionally, Victoria has been New South Wales main rival at these events. At the risk of "doing a Jeff Kennett", I shall compare New South Wales results with those of the Victorians. In the open men's competition, New South Wales had 11 victories to Victoria's two; in the open women's competition the institute had nine victories to Victoria's five; and in the junior combined competition - that is, boys and girls - the institute had 18 victories to Victoria's eight.

In addition, New South Wales won the Richard Coombes Shield, which is awarded at these championships to the State or Territory that wins the most open men's titles. The last time New South Wales won the shield was in 1958 and that is 40 years ago! In the past New South Wales has had to bear criticism from a number of quarters for failing to pull its weight on Australian sporting teams. Per head of population, this State lagged behind the other States in quality and size of representation, and despite our pool of talent failed to capitalise on what many regarded as a head start.

But just as the momentum of any sporting event can change quickly, so can the State of play in the wider sporting community. What causes such a change? I believe that when the players step up, the coach motivates harder, the commitment level rises, the atmosphere changes, the supporters applaud louder and the performances are better. These are the dynamics which have helped NSWIS move from just an idea to an ideal. As I mentioned earlier, the bulk of the institute's funding comes from Treasury - a fact that was just overlooked by the shadow minister. The Government is actually putting $4 million a year into the institute.

The institute also has a generous principal partner, the Registered Clubs Association of New South Wales, which supports our best athletes to the tune of $1 million per year. I take every opportunity to congratulate the registered clubs of New South Wales on their contribution, and I thank them. The combined financial commitment, together with additional funds from smaller but equally valuable sponsors, sets NSWIS apart from all other State-based institutes around the country.

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The commitment means that we can attract international level coaches to come and live here in New South Wales and we can fund more, and better prepared, athletes to national and international training and competitions. We can back our winners on the way to the top, rather than when they reach it. And above all, we have a greater chance of retaining the State's high performance athletes at home, when previously the lure of the Australian Institute of Sport, other State institutes or even the American college system drew them like moths to a flame. Certainly some of the runners I used to run against went to those places.

The funding also has a major psychological effect on the health of the State's sport system as a whole. The concept of an athlete and coach career path has been introduced. Through the Department of Sport and Recreation and State sporting organisations, the opportunities for children to participate in sport are greater than ever. Talent development programs are well-developed and proving their worth in identifying potential champions. Now another goal or light at the end of the tunnel - a scholarship with the State's peak elite sports agency and the prospect of international competition and Olympic glory - is in sight.

Athlete-focused and coach-driven, NSWIS has the systems in place to help our best athletes complete their sporting journey. They are now on a level playing field with Australian and international competitors. That is a major achievement in itself. The institute and its athletes will be expected to mirror, and improve upon, that sporting success in the months and years ahead, and to dominate national team selection well into the future. For the first time in the State's sporting history, I feel confident about that happening.