Thursday, 24 March 2022

Shepparton sports and events centre

Ms LOVELL (Northern Victoria) (18:29): (1851) My adjournment matter is directed to the Minister for Tourism, Sport and Major Events, and it concerns funding for the redevelopment of the Shepparton Sports Stadium. The action that I seek from the minister is for him to accompany me on a visit to the Shepparton stadium to see Greater Shepparton council’s plans for stage 1 of the planned Shepparton sports and events centre and also to commit funding of $20 million as the state government’s share of the cost of stage 1.

The Shepparton Sports City precinct in North Shepparton is home to world-class facilities for many different sports, including soccer, netball, BMX racing, hockey and athletics. The quality and high standard of these facilities allow Shepparton to host national and international sporting events, injecting millions of dollars into the local economy. To complete the sports city precinct, Greater Shepparton City Council are seeking to transform the Shepparton Sports Stadium into the Shepparton sports and events centre. The current stadium opened in 1972 as a two-court facility with only one major upgrade occurring in 1994, with the construction of two additional basketball courts. Appropriately, the redevelopment of the stadium is a high-priority infrastructure project for the City of Greater Shepparton and is now well and truly on the radar of the federal government.

I congratulate the Liberal candidate for Nicholls, Steve Brooks, who saw the importance of the project and recently invited the federal Liberal Minister for Sport, Richard Colbeck, to Shepparton to visit the stadium and hear about the project firsthand. It was wonderful for the minister to see the potential major events that the new sports and events centre will bring to Shepparton and the Goulburn Valley region and the boost such events would have on our local economy. It is estimated that the redevelopment will create 235 new jobs during construction and additional events hosted at the new centre would generate an additional 24 000 visitors to Greater Shepparton each year.

I have called on the state government for funding for this project for nearly five years and last raised its merits with Minister Pakula on 10 February, but he failed to respond. Steve Brooks’s invitation to the federal minister to visit the stadium has now put the project in the spotlight of the federal government. This will aid council’s advocacy for federal funding of $20 million towards stage 1 of the project. The planned Shepparton sports and events centre is a game changer for sport and entertainment in the Goulburn Valley, and now that the project has attracted attention at the highest levels of the federal government I call on Minister Pakula to commit the state government’s share of the funding to the project.