Tuesday, 13 May 2025

Nunawading Basketball

Nick McGOWAN (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (19:14): (1611) Minister, it is that time of the evening again. I have come back to the chamber, and I am completely reinvigorated. I am pleased to be here after five weeks of hard work and labour – labour, I would have to emphasise to you, is L-A-O-U-R or thereabouts. I was never great at spelling, but there you go. I had a fantastic five weeks.

We are back in the chamber. We are back at Parliament, and what I want to advocate on behalf of is my beloved basketball association, Nunawading Basketball. I know that this is also something dear to the President’s heart. Today I had the good fortune of meeting with a number of community-minded and dedicated people who do their best to support our club, the Nunawading Spectres, including of course the chair Robert Green, the CEO Mark Hallett and the representative from Basketball Victoria as well Jake Keogh. Anyway, the club are very fortunate that over the course of the election they were the recipients of a future grant in the order of $45 million. That is not small change; that is reasonably significant, I would say. In addition to that, they also have received a commitment from the local council for a further $35 million, so that brings them up very near to their total.

What they still need of course is an additional $25 million. They will be seeking that from this state government. In fact they would have had meetings today – and if not today then certainly they will in the days to come – seeking assurances from this government that they do not have to wait two long years for that support. It would be very, very wrong indeed if that were the case. Two years is a long time to activate that significant investment that already sits on the table. That period would deny the local constituents in my area the work opportunities that they would have for this next two years, so I would implore this government to take a very close look at what the Nunawading Basketball club are trying to do. I suspect that there is not going to be money in this year’s budget; that is probably self-evident. However, there is one more budget before the election. This project should not be delayed until an election – basically the end of next year – thereby making the people of Nunawading wait two whole years before they activate that money.

When the minister is at the cabinet table talking with her colleagues, I hope that she implores this government in the next budget, before the end of next year and before the election is due, to commit the extra $25 million, which unlocks the $45 million given from the federal government and the $35 million promised in the local government and gets the shovel in the ground for local jobs, basketball and kids in sport.