How Anika Wells Became Australia_S Minister Of Sport

Welcome back to the Female Athlete Project.

My name's Sophie and I'm the producer here at TFAP.

Before we jump into today's episode, I'm here to let you know that TFAP are hosting our first ever watch party and we want you to be there.

We'll be watching the Women's State of Origin Game 1.

And while the game's in Queensland, we'll be meeting up at the Wayward Brewing Company in Camperdown in Sydney.

Things kick off at 7pm.

There'll be food, drinks, trivia, giveaways and more.

Head to our Instagram at the Female Athlete Project to grab your ticket now and we can't wait to see you there and watch what will be an epic game of footy.

Thank you for joining us for a special episode today where Chloe interviews Australia's Minister for Sport in the lead up to the 2025 Australian Federal Election.

For full transparency, the Female Athlete Project was approached by the Minister for Sport's office for this interview.

The Minister was not provided with any interview questions beforehand and was only briefed on the broad topics.

We wanted to discuss within her sports portfolio.

The Female Athlete Project also reached out to the Shadow Minister for Sport, who expressed a keen interest in coming on the podcast and being interviewed by Chloe.

However, at the time this episode drops, we are yet to hear back from the Shadow Minister regarding her availability, despite multiple attempts to arrange the interview.

Thank you for understanding that TFAP strives to provide you with transparency around the political side of women's sports.

Annika Wells was born and raised in Australia.

She grew up playing many sports, including netball, touch football, tennis and was even a gymnast.

While she spent the early years of her career practising as a lawyer, when her daughter was born, she decided she wanted to make the world a better place for her and ran for her local seat, Lillie.

In 2019, Wells became Australia's youngest female MP when she was elected to Parliament.

She is currently the Minister for Age Care and Sport and has a particular love for the way that sports makes you want to have it.

Chloe chats with Annika about a variety of the Australian Government's policies that affect women in sport, including Play Our Way, Sport Diplomacy and Sports Horizon.

Chloe and Annika also chat all things Tillies, Wallaroos, Diamonds and of course the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games.

We hope you enjoy this episode.

Federal Minister for Sport, Annika Wells, welcome to the Female Athlete Project.

With you, such a pleasure.

I'm really looking forward to having a chat today.

Can you tell us a little bit about the project?

Can you take us back?

You're very, very busy at the moment, but can you take us back to Annika as a little kid?

Where did your love for sport come from?

I probably couldn't pick a single moment, but I think like countless Australian families,

sport was part of everything that we did.

Dad is Victorian, so we are slightly unusual.

We were in the 80s, unusual for a Queensland household to be an AFL household.

Yes, very much so.

And he was a Carlton supporter.

They all switch when they get north of the border, so became Bears members.

So we were Bears people, Bears members before the Lions in 97.

So I have a lot of childhood memories of going to see the Bears as a family.

Yeah.

But I also did gymnastics in primary school, artistic gymnastics until I grew too tall.

And then I switched to rhythmic gymnastics in high school.

Yeah.

And one time in grade nine.

One of the girls at my school came out, saw us doing gymnastics outside the hall.

And she's like, no offence, but aren't you too fat to do gymnastics?

And like, it's one of those sort of markers in my life that I'm sure drives me in the policy settings that I try to make today.

Those girls are having those kinds of experiences every single day.

And what can we do to make it easier on girls having a crack at rhythmic gymnastics, even if they're, and I'll say it myself, crap at rhythmic gymnastics.

I had the ribbons.

It wasn't great, but I was having a go.

What else?

I grew up next door to a tennis centre, so I played tennis the whole way through.

Yeah.

I did netball probably from under eights through to probably gave it up about 15 when lots of girls, we have data that tells us there's a cliff that girls go off at kind of 14, stop sport.

That was probably me.

I did volleyball in high school.

All of those things probably stopped at around 15.

So again.

Again, it's helpful to have that experience when now I get to sit in the chair and try and make policy decisions that stop that from happening.

And that gymnastics experience, I'm sorry that happened.

It's pretty horrible.

And I think probably a common experience for a lot of young girls and young women, as we know.

If you kind of reflect back to being a young person, did you have a moment that you can remember where you thought that you wanted to do something proactive in kind of pushing back on the attitudes and barriers around sport?

Did you picture that?

Did you picture that you might one day become a politician?

No.

Well, I think there's two elements to that answer.

No, I never thought that I was going to be a politician.

I wanted to be a judge.

Okay.

And for a little while, I wanted to be a diplomat.

So I lived in France for a while.

I did grade 12 again in France.

So I speak French.

And so for a while, I was sort of on a diplomat track.

I liked the idea of being a judge.

Obviously, if you're going to go on a judge track, you can't be partisan.

You can't pick a side.

That would impair your ability to move up in the world.

But I remember when I drove over to my parents' house.

To tell them that I was going to run for parliament.

And I thought this was going to be a real mic drop conversation.

Yeah.

They just said, yeah, we're not.

We've been waiting for you to realize this since grade three.

When we took you to your first public speaking competition.

I love that.

This has always been fairly apparent to us.

So, you know, parents, I guess, see you in different eyes from how you see yourself.

So that's the politician question.

The sport question.

No.

And I think that's because I'm very average.

It's sport.

You know, I did all those sports, but I never excelled at any of those sports.

You know, if I made regional cross country once, that was a big deal.

If my netball team won, we won the McGregor Netball Association under 10s.

We didn't, you know, I wasn't off to AIS.

And so I think probably the ecosystem that I was in, in the 80s, 90s, 2000s,

was that you did have to excel to be the kind of female that wouldn't do anything in sport.

Like it was okay to enjoy sport.

Australians enjoy sport.

But if you wanted to be in that field, you needed to be good.

And I think when I became a sport minister, one of the first things that occurred to me

is that Kieran Perkins had just been made the CEO of the Australian Sport Commission,

the AIS, only a few months earlier than me.

So he and I would be working alongside each other in the Australian sport ecosystem.

And I just thought that was so ironic that one of our most decorated Olympians, Kieran Perkins,

who has spent a lifetime in the hyperbole,

performance end of sport, was looking after sport alongside someone who,

I started a park run in Chermside back in 2015.

Did you?

After, no, I was, I think I was trying to have my first baby.

And it was just something that was a gap in our community, a way to catch up.

Like I think park run's really great for people.

It's almost like a church that you see the same people each week.

You sort of track how people's lives are going.

You notice if someone's missing for a few weeks.

And it was a way to be active as a woman in her 30s, blah, blah, blah.

So between Kieran and I, you have the two ends of the spectrum.

And, you know, I always have a crack when people, when sports have me out to try,

you know, I've rode on Lake Burley Griffin in negative three degrees.

And I'm always rubbish and people are always nice about it.

But I hope that people watching on an Instagram or whatever go,

see, it's okay to have a crack because you can be the Australian sports minister

and you can be average and it's fine.

I love that.

And we actually chatted off it.

It's one of my favorite things.

That we've kind of expanded into interviewing people in roles in sport

that aren't necessarily the athletes.

Because I think we have a sport-loving country.

And I think for a long time there was probably this quite a narrow view

that you had to either be an elite athlete or you couldn't be involved in sport.

So I love that there's an opportunity to open up doors to say,

hey, if you love sport, just if you're not amazing at it,

there's still roles that you can find yourself in.

Yeah.

And there's so many people that surround an elite athlete, isn't there?

Yeah.

And when you think about Brisbane 2013,

which was our North Star that underpins Sport Horizon,

our national sporting strategy, when you think about, yes,

there's 14-year-olds out there who we want to go for glory in Brisbane 2032,

but there's a place for all of us there.

I always joke that when I watched Sydney 2000,

the person that I most wanted to be was Nikki Webster.

You know, I wanted to be.

But there's a place for you at Brisbane 2032, whether it's as a volunteer,

whether it's as the artistic director of the opening,

like ceremony, whether it's as a coach, whether it's as a strategist,

whether it's a data scientist.

We need everybody.

And we want people to feel like there's a path for them to get there.

Do we need to, like, give a breakdown for people who weren't, like,

around for Nikki Webster?

Oh, yeah.

You've got young people listening.

Oh, my gosh.

You just need to, I don't know, go on YouTube and watch it.

So I was 15 for the Sydney 2000 Olympics,

and I watched it on the carpet of my living room in Brisbane.

And Nikki Webster was the 14-year-old.

Was she 14?

Sydney Sider, who was plucked out of her drama school or whatever.

And she was the star of the opening ceremony.

The narrative of the opening ceremony was that she fell asleep on a beach

and then she went deep-sea diving and then she discovered all kinds of things.

And that's where I felt most aligned because I wasn't good at sport, you know.

But now I know that there were plenty of other things that I could have done,

lent my talents to in Sydney 2000.

So I sort of tried to make a point, Brisbane 2032,

there's a place for everybody.

Yes.

And we need to set all our pathways and settings up now, you know,

years and years out so that there is a track for you.

I want to take a step back.

We will get to Brisbane 2032.

I want to take a step back.

You kind of talked about telling your parents about your decision,

but how did you decide you were a lawyer?

How did you decide that you wanted to be involved in parliament?

So a couple of things happened to me in the course of my life

that changed it quite quickly.

I was trying to have my first baby.

That was difficult.

I had sort of fertility treatment to make that happen.

And I had this sort of rare experience that it awoke in me an autoimmune disease

that had never materialised before pregnancy.

Often with autoimmune diseases, they abate during a pregnancy,

but this one had been lying dormant.

And when I became pregnant, I got very sick with it.

So I went from being someone who had started a park run,

was really trying to be active.

And as in my thirties and overnight,

I was just entirely dependent on the public health system.

With autoimmune diseases, often it takes a while to get to the bottom of it.

You know, what is it?

What can you do about it?

And in my case, I had to really fail to the bottom to sort of be eligible

for the kind of significant drugs required to keep me up and running now.

So that all happened.

And my firstborn, I decided not to find out the sex of the baby.

So I...

When she was born, she was born a bit early and she was a girl.

And for some reason, giving birth to a baby girl at the time,

I sort of felt very...

Watching a lot of Mary Poppins, you know, the suffragette mum.

And I was sort of like, I felt very charged with responsibility

for what kind of world that she would inherit

and what the world would look like for her when she turned 18.

And I just felt like I'd been taking a lot of things for granted.

I'd had a, you know, middle-class upbringing.

I had not struggled for things.

In any sort of meaningful way.

And all of a sudden, I lost my health and I realised how important

the public health system was in a way that I hadn't had to feel before.

And I felt sort of charged with Celeste and her future.

And at the same time all that was happening, Wayne Swan,

who was at that time the 25-year-long serving federal member for Lilly,

which is the northern suburbs of Brisbane where I live,

had decided that he would retire at the next election.

And the Australian Labor Party has gender quotas.

Which means that basically where we have not hit 50-50 or at the time 40% women pre-selected,

you had to put women forward.

So it meant that women like me had more of a shot than ever before.

So I decided that that was my opportunity to actually do something about it,

not be complacent, not take things for granted.

And the rest is history.

Wow.

That's quite amazing.

So let's talk about...

Looking after sport.

When you become an MP, how does it work?

Do you get to say, I would like to have that portfolio?

Does it get given to you?

How does that process work?

So when a new government is elected,

so for us in 2022,

the Albanese Labor government was elected after nine years of coalition government.

The prime minister...

So the caucus, which is what we call the 90-odd, 95-odd parliamentarians

that Labor parliamentarians elected in the House, perhaps in the Senate,

they nominate 30...

Ministers to the ministry.

There are 30 ministers in any ministry.

And then the prime minister decides who gets what portfolio.

So I remember sitting in my Canberra office.

I remember turning all my phone notifications on.

You know, normally it sits on silent and I had it on vibrate.

I had it on highest volume.

I was terrified of missing this call from the prime minister.

And when he called, he said, I'm giving you aged care and sport.

And my jaw dropped open.

It just wasn't at all what I was expecting.

And...

I honestly couldn't believe my luck.

I genuinely thought it must have been highly contested.

Lots of people would have wanted to have those roles.

And I felt very grateful that he was putting that amount of trust in me,

particularly because the sport portfolio...

You know, prime ministers keep a firm eye on what's happening

because it's part of our cultural zeitgeist.

You know, Australians love their sport.

Sports also always wish the prime minister to...

So it's something that...

We work quite closely together on.

So it was a huge privilege that he gave it to me.

I also remember running into my high school math teacher on the street

only a few weeks later and he congratulated me and he said,

I hope it's not rude for me to say this,

but I don't remember you being particularly sporty at school.

And I said, that's right.

I wasn't good at sport, but I did.

I did volleyball.

I did netball.

I did gymnastics.

I did tennis.

I always competed in swimming and cross country,

even if I never played.

And he's like, that's right.

But it's just that assumption that, you know,

you have to be an Olympian to be the CEO of the ASC.

But I guess the benefit, and I would say there's 21 out there

who is in their 30s or their 40s or their 50s or whoever,

like I don't, you know, the demo of this podcast,

is that maybe you're not really good at school,

but if you come back and have a crack when you're older,

you are by definition much better because you're fitter compared

to the people that are never getting off the couch and having a go.

Yeah.

Thinking about, you know, my 5K might be really slow, and it is,

but it's still faster than everyone who's not doing it at all.

Yeah, I like that.

And I always think, like, I'm rubbish at the gym,

but I go to the gym, you know, I go three or four times a week.

Yeah.

And that's still better than not doing anything at all.

Yeah, absolutely.

Can we break it down?

Because there's, I think young people now are much more engaged

and there's great access to political information and news

and we're consuming it in different ways.

Yeah.

For people who haven't been to Canberra since their Year 6 excursion,

can we break down what sport funding looks like in Australia

at a federal and state level?

Well, firstly, I'd like to say that my Year 6 trip wasn't to Canberra.

We went to the central Queensland coal mines.

It's quite a different trip.

I kind of thought it was like a real rite of passage.

Is it not an actual thing?

I mean, I would love to go back to my state school,

West State Primary School, and say, why?

Why did we go?

Why did we go to the coal mines?

We went to Great Keppel Island, and we went to the coal mines.

Why didn't we go to Canberra?

Yeah.

We didn't.

Okay.

But how does sport funding work?

Great question.

Because it is one, it's nebulous in that Australian sport soaks into every part of public policy

in the country, because even when you aren't the sport minister, you might be the Minister

for Multicultural Affairs and Social Cohesion, and you might fund a project at a sport club

that improves social cohesion.

So that's a way that people use sport for other public policy benefit.

But that makes it look very murky when you're trying to work out who's funding what and

why.

As the Federal Sport Minister, very broadly, I look after people in sport.

So I look after the participation programs, things like sporting schools.

We fund to the tune of about $60 million a year, sports to go into state schools for

primary school kids to have a go.

Participation programs.

Participation programs look like all of the 97 national sport organizations and how they

fund grassroots.

I look after high performance.

So that's currently we're on our LA cycle.

We just put $489 million, which is sort of more than ever before, a 60% uplift for the

media and sports to give our best shot for athletes trying to make LA 28, because we

know our best shot at a great Brisbane 2032 is getting as many people as possible to LA

2028.

And things like Play Our Way, which I'm sure we'll get to where we're trying to boost female

and girls participation.

We're trying to overcome those kind of intersectional barriers that stop women and girls from

participating in sports.

So people in sport is kind of what I do alongside Kieran and Maddie and everyone at the AIS.

Whereas this is sort of clubs in life, but buildings in sport, like your stadiums, your

centres of excellence, those kinds of things, they sit under the Federal Infrastructure

Minister.

So that's your Ready Record.

So that's kind of federally, but state by state, a lot of states have that as sort of

one person because a lot of states own their own venues.

So stadiums, Queensland, for example, owns venues in Queensland.

So the Minister for Sport often is also the Minister for Trade and Tourism.

They look after sport events.

They look after the sport infrastructure and they often fund that.

Whereas federally, very broadly, it's people in sport, buildings in sport.

Yeah, cool.

I like that.

Can we take a look at the 2023 FIFA Women's World Cup?

Please.

Did you, I think we all died with enjoyment.

Did you anticipate how huge it was going to be?

And do you think from a facilities point of view, we were equipped for what it was going

to do for the country?

Yes and no.

Yes, I anticipated it.

And it was actually one of those things I think that helped me build clout in Canberra

because I was still coming in as a young female minister.

It was only my, I'd only been in parliament for one term.

The Prime Minister had shown great faith in me, but I needed to,

to earn the respect of the rest of the sporting community.

And from 2022, when we came in, I was saying,

this is going to be a very big deal.

And it was.

But I still think we could have made more of it.

And I try to learn those lessons when we think about the World Cups,

we still have to come, the ball and the rugby girls still coming.

It was brilliant.

We all miss it.

And I want to make sure that we give the diamonds,

their Matildas moment, the Wallaroos, their Matildas moment,

because of how much good it did.

And I think what people said to me, and again,

I was too young to experience this at pubs for Sydney 2000,

but what people said was the way that it sort of stopped the nation and people

wanted to view it as a collective experience.

People wanted to go to the fan sites,

the activation spaces or the pubs to view it on the big screen because sport

makes you want to hug strangers and people were chasing that feeling and the

Matildas gave it to them.

Yeah.

So how can we,

give that to all of our female sporting teams now that we've had such a recent

example of that?

Were we equipped?

No.

And you know,

not to be a Debbie Downer,

but we just inherited government from a coalition government who'd spent nine

years not investing in the future.

And obviously sports rorts was a hallmark of that previous government.

And we had a lot of work to do to restore faith in the system and to give

people sense that sports infrastructure decisions would be made with good

governance in mind,

according to criteria that they could work methodically through and not just on

a colour coded spreadsheet.

And if we look at play our way,

what does that look like across grassroots sport and communities?

So play our way.

I mean,

again,

it was something that I was hoping to make possible and the world cup mania got

us there.

We,

it's the single largest federal investment in women and girls sport ever.

It's double what had previously been ever,

ever attempted.

And because we'd had sports rorts,

what I did as the minister was set aside my ability to pick and choose the

winners.

And I set up a elite athletes panel,

highly respected female athletes like Lauren Jackson,

like Liz Ellis.

And they made decisions around which projects.

And the other thing we did was made very clear that we were not just going to

fund new change rooms out of this.

We wanted to see cultural change.

So what we asked people to do was to pitch us how,

how funding their project would generate cultural change in their clubs.

So examples were like,

are you going to guarantee that the girls teams get the same premium space on

your best fields at the best times?

They're not going to be trapped at dusk with no lights or in the cut up field

whilst you prioritize,

you know,

your,

your best men's team.

You tell us what policies and practices you're going to put in place if you

get this money.

And so we were hoping it would really turbocharge culture,

cultural change.

And the other thing we,

we tried to do was to say,

well,

you're the experts.

You tell us like,

what is stopping women and girls from coming to your club?

Is it that you are in a regional area that's not has,

that doesn't have public transport and you need a bus to pick people up and

bring them and take them home again?

Is it that you don't have lights and you would be able to double the amount of

field time for people if you had lights?

Is it that actually you don't have a female change room and you need a female

change room?

So that's,

we,

we announced,

we announced the,

the round in December.

Those contracts are being rolled out.

Some of them have already finished.

Like I,

I was just at Melbourne storm yesterday.

They have a program that's already finished its first round.

Yeah.

Wow.

Um,

and they,

I think they said they've had 34 female refs come through as a result of the

play our way funding.

And for us,

that's a big problem because our female coaches,

we're still at less than 20% of coaches who went to Paris were female.

Yeah.

Despite the fact that our female athletes dominated the middle tally.

Yeah,

they did.

So,

um,

we want to make sure that those kinds of things are being prioritized back in

our,

um,

sporting ecosystem here.

Yeah.

And that,

I thought that Melbourne storm one was really interesting because again,

it comes back to this bigger picture of sport.

It's the,

the funding for athletes and their facilities is obviously very important,

but I think pathways and opportunities for women to be involved in,

in roles that aren't just as the athletes are so vital,

right?

Yeah,

absolutely.

And another one I was at,

um,

a different part of Melbourne,

but,

um,

they,

their play our way money is funding,

um,

migrant women to learn to swim.

A lot of people come to this country,

not from,

you know,

places where you needed to swim.

They've now got kids growing up here.

The kids are getting lessons.

They're not learning to swim,

but you know,

if their kids run into trouble,

they're still going to throw themselves in the pool to try and save their kids.

So,

um,

to do that in a way that was culturally appropriate,

they sort of close off the pool on a Sunday night,

allow people to wear culturally appropriate dress,

or just be in a women's only space,

teach them to swim.

So these are the kinds of things that,

but for play our way,

um,

wouldn't be happening in the numbers that we're seeing.

And hopefully that then drives more participation forever.

Yeah.

When we talk about sport,

there's obviously kind of the,

the big codes with AFLW,

NRLW,

um,

we've got the A-League women's and obviously off the back of the Matildas and the World

Cup.

That's,

that's a big part of that discussion.

How do you address when there's these smaller,

potentially more niche sports and how do they get funded compared to these big,

big name codes?

Yes.

So,

um,

the Australian Sport Commission,

which is how the federal government,

federal taxpayer funds sport,

um,

in the country looks after 97 different national sporting organisations.

And that takes you from archery through to weightlifting.

And we fund that according to sort of a criteria.

Um,

and that's how those sports live exist.

Essentially the pro codes obviously have their own commercial streams and,

um,

you know,

it's like Football Australia.

They would receive money through the Australian Sport Commission because they have huge

grassroots soccer contingent and we love that.

Um,

but they're also,

you know,

the A-League obviously is entirely separate and has sort of well-documented,

um,

commercial funding,

um,

challenges.

So I think that the,

the difficulty is as sport minister,

it is rare that I get a pitch that is unworthy.

You know,

everyone's trying to do good things in sport.

Everyone,

if they got,

I mean,

people still come to see me about sport infrastructure,

even though it is Minister King's decision.

Um,

everyone's got an idea that would make their club better.

And sports clubs are like little towns,

you know,

they like that they're their own community.

And particularly in regions,

um,

they're the lifeblood of community.

So it's rare that you get pitch something that is unworthy,

but we don't have infinite dollars.

And,

um,

even though we are landmark sport funding,

we funded almost a billion dollars for Australian sport last year,

which looks like,

the $200 million play our way,

which looks like the $489 million high performance and the $250 million in revitalizing the AIS.

Um,

which we just have to do because there's an equity argument that,

you know,

you're a kid from any part of the country and the AIS is your pathway to high performance.

If you don't happen to live in inner city Sydney with access to the best facilities nearby.

So we did all those things because that's what helps us get to a best possible,

outcome for everyone at Brisbane 2032.

Whilst those kinds of individual projects that always crop up are things that we can fund further in the,

in the sequence.

But we had to get those kinds of essentials right now.

On that billion dollars,

we get comments.

They're rare because we've got a quite an incredible community with the female athlete project.

We get comments from some people who kind of will see this amazing announcement that we might share of funding in different sporting streams.

And people say,

well,

what about the cost of living crisis,

sorry,

and the housing crisis?

Why?

Why are we putting so much money into sport?

I know as an athlete,

why sport is so important and the work that we do at the female athlete project.

I'm such a huge believer in the power of women's sport in particular in shaping attitudes.

But what do you say to people like that about the power of sport and why it is so important to invest in sport?

Well,

I think we've got a great record of sport funding this term.

The prime minister has been so supportive of driving women's sport in particular,

and you can see that in the funding outcomes that we've achieved.

But I think that's right.

And whenever people come to,

come,

complain that we haven't funded their centre of excellence or their home of whomever.

So say like it is a question of what federal taxpayers are prepared to pay.

And you would have seen massive stash over venues for Brisbane 2032.

Yes,

that's a question of how much taxpayers are prepared to pay.

And like you say,

with the cost of living crisis,

people have been saying they want money directed elsewhere in a world where there's never enough money to spend on all the things that we would like to spend money on.

I mean,

there's obviously economic benefits out of sport,

but I think,

and I know the prime minister shares this view.

There's a huge preventative health benefit in sport,

and that's why sports sits under the Department of Health.

And that's why I'm the aged care and sport minister,

because sport and aged care are the two junior portfolios under the health ministry.

Mark Butler is the senior health minister.

So I started this term as the junior minister in charge of aged care and sport under health.

But in January this year,

the prime minister promoted me to the cabinet.

So currently sport is back at the cabinet table.

Mm hmm.

Let's chat Brisbane.

Twenty thirty two.

And there has been a lot of public discussion around the stadiums.

Where does that where does that sit now?

Well,

the I mean,

I think it should be worth it's worth noting that since Brisbane twenty thirty two was bid for and succeeded,

we have now been through two governments at state and two governments at federal level.

So just that in itself creates an inertia.

And the.

New.

The newly elected state LNP government,

the Christopher Lee government has now handed down its new venues plan.

Mm hmm.

And the reality is we are we are out of time.

Look, we don't have any more time to re prosecute relitigate.

And I would say we've now been through three versions of venues plans and each have their merits and each have their flaws.

I don't think we've seen any of the three plans through now that have been considered flawless.

Mm hmm.

I don't know the nature of the game,

but it just takes a long time to build these huge pieces.

So we have to get going.

And I think everyone appreciates that.

And the other thing,

I guess,

is that there's a huge pipeline of people who want to use Brisbane twenty thirty two to do other good things.

And we really can't turn our minds to those things until all the foundation pieces are bedded down.

So the other thing is that the the the Christopher Lee government's venue plan got handed down on federal budget day.

Uh, which for us was busy and somewhat that was Tuesday.

And then the prime minister called the federal election on the Friday and we entered caretaker.

So, um, a caretaker convention for aspiring as poor people listening.

Um, it means that you can't make decisions as a government that would be binding on a subsequent government.

So, um, it just means that we really can't do anything meaningful until a new ministry is sworn in, be it a second Albanese ministry or be a done ministry.

So, um,

at the moment we've just asked for a bunch of information because the sort of the specifics weren't available, the details weren't available.

And we need that to be able to make sure that it is value for money that federal government is contributing.

I mean, it's almost twenty billion dollars when you put together the twelve point four billion for transport infrastructure, which is games related, but obviously just flat out beneficial transport infrastructure for Queensland venue infrastructure, which is three and a half billion.

And then the almost a billion dollars that we've put in the sport.

Ecosystem for the people that we're trying to get to the game.

So it's a huge, huge contribution that by contrast, Sydney 2000, I think the feds put in two hundred and fifty million.

It was carrying, it was born by the state government.

Yeah.

So, um, and that's because we, you know, we, we love Brisbane 2032, but we want all Australians, no matter whether you live in Carartha or Condamine to feel a sense of ownership and like they have a stake and that they will receive some dividends.

And when I talk to state sports ministers about that, I convene a national sports ministers meeting where we all get together and I sort of said, you know, what do you need at Brisbane 2032 for your people to feel like it's a success?

The consistent answer is we want the biggest ever Tassie delegation or, you know, we want the biggest ever gold medal hall for West Australians.

So that means that we need our participation and our high performance programs schmink now so that those athletes have that shot.

It's quite crazy to think it's what, seven years away?

Are we at seven years?

I was chatting to Soph, my producer ahead of this interview, and she was like, yeah, they're going to be teenagers now.

A lot of the athletes will be competing in Brisbane.

And I was like, so.

I don't know if it's like 10 years away.

I was like, no, it's a lot sooner actually.

It's seven.

Yeah, no pressure Gout Gout, but Gout Gout.

Oh my gosh, Australian athletics at the moment, that is, they are on fire.

But what haunts me is that, I mean, Gout Gout, he and his team are doing everything that they can, obviously, but who else is out there that we don't know about because they live somewhere that they haven't been, you know, past the eye of someone who can, you know, help them on their way.

Yeah.

And we just want to.

And we just want to catch that as much as we can and give those kids, because you're right, like the average Olympian, I don't know about 20, I think a bit older for the Paralympians, but the average Olympian is 23.

Yeah.

And if we're seven years out, that means they're 16.

And how do you approach that in your role?

Those, those pathways for those teenagers who we hope will be competing at Brisbane.

So we boosted funding to sporting schools again, because that gives people the chance to dip their toe in the water at school.

And we have, like I said, record funding.

We have record funding for participation and for high performance, huge boosts to individual sports to, to give them that shot.

When we chat Brisbane 2030 to the Paralympics are obviously a very, very big part of that.

Earlier this year, you announced the Para-Athlete Barrier Fund.

Can you tell us what this is?

Oh, this was, I'm really, really proud that we were able to do this one.

We doubled the funding for Paralympians.

So obviously they have the same cycle, four-year cycle as Olympians, but without nearly the funding traditionally.

And it's still not equitable.

And let me be the first to say there's still a long way to go, but it shifted it to much closer to equity.

And I think the, we know that three out of four people with disability want to play sport, but only one out of four do.

And, you know, it helps us all if we can change that.

And in Sydney 2000, we actually topped the Paralympics medal tally in Australia, but we came eighth in Paris and we should get back to number one for Brisbane.

There's, there's no, there's no reason why we can't do that.

And I want to be part of the public policy solution that, that got us there.

The Paralympians, they're one of our most beloved sporting teams.

And they have had a huge uptick in come and try days and participation since Paris.

And we want to back them.

You, from what I understand, you surveyed the athletes before this.

What was some of the biggest barriers that were identified for these para-athletes?

Well, I think you need a support crew to do, I mean, particularly when you think about some sports like boccia, which, you know, some of our most profoundly disabled athletes participate in things like boccia.

Do you live near somewhere that's offering the chance to come and try boccia?

So firstly, there's that opportunity.

And unlike...

I mean, you could probably make this argument both ways, but obviously we've got the AIS.

That is the National Centre of Excellence for Paralympics, as it is for Olympics.

But it's harder for you if you are someone with a disability and you rely upon a support team to, to do what you need to do day to day, to then pick up a loan and move to Canberra for that, or to pick up your whole crew and move to Canberra for that.

So it just looks more decentralised, which means it's harder to fund.

Yeah.

It's harder to support, which just means we need to do more to help them because we all benefit when it goes well.

You touched on the equity of funding.

So according to the ASC, total amount of funding given to sporting organisations versus disability sporting organisations was 210 compared to about 20 million.

So we know the great progress is being made, but how do you continue that in the long term to narrow that gap?

That's right.

I mean, I hope I have the opportunity.

I hope that the Albanese government is...

I hope that the Albanese government is re-elected and I hope if we are re-elected that I have the opportunity to stay on as the sport minister and that we can keep pushing this agenda because I think it's such good public policy outcomes for the public policy enthusiasts among you, but also it just lights the fire.

Sport makes us want to hug strangers.

Athletes give us those experiences where we can find ways to fund them and where there is good value for federal taxpayers in doing it, we should do it.

And if people...

People need to be convinced, and I don't think they do, but if they do need to be convinced, if you look at what the Japanese government did ahead of Tokyo, they really invested in their Paralympic side and they saw huge outcomes.

So we have that to point to as well.

Yeah.

I love that.

Sport makes you want to hug strangers.

I need to put that on my T-shirt.

I've hugged so many strangers in this job.

I love that.

A quick look.

I'm conscious of time, but a quick look at Sport Diplomacy 2030.

Oh, sorry, 2032 strategy.

Are we 2032 strategy?

Is that right?

Yeah, we updated it from 2030 to 2032.

Yes.

To encapsulate that it's our new North Star.

Great.

So it's about creating pathways for world-class athletes domestically in Australia.

An example is probably looking at the Tillies, and we know they're so incredible as people and as athletes, but so many of them are overseas.

If we look at the A-League women, we've got some big names who are in the A-Leagues.

I know Kaya Simon, Tamika Yallop are playing in the A-Leagues, but how do we get more Matildas players playing in the A-Leagues as an example?

And then I guess some of them did and then went overseas.

I mean, I would hesitate to speak on this when you yourself sort of are the exact kind of person who sits in that sort of semi-professional world where you get some funding, you don't get enough funding, you sit in that grey area.

So I welcome you and your listeners' thoughts about what more we could do in that space.

But where I have the power to make change, we've significantly increased the Deus funding.

That's kind of individual athlete funding that we give people to help them with their expenses whilst they're having a go as a high-performance athlete.

We've taken that from $14 million a year to $20 million a year, so a big boost percentage-wise.

But it's also about changing the culture to recognise the value of what our female athletes give us.

And I know when I talk to them, like when I go and talk to the AFLW players, they often say they feel or they're told we have to provide better content.

You need to provide high-quality content.

You need to provide the eyeballs.

But it's not just down to you on the pitch to make that happen.

That comes down to what broadcast is offering, when the times, like when the games are played.

There's lots of elements that go into that, which makes it tricky to solve.

Like it's not a silver bullet, but it means that we all have to push on the door when we have the chance.

Yes, absolutely.

Taking a look at the Australia Pacific Sports Linkages Program, women and girls with Pacific heritage contribute so much here in Australia in particular.

We've got a really diverse group of women.

Women and girls that play sport, which is amazing.

How do we continue to make sure there's opportunities that are culturally relevant as well for these women and girls?

Yeah, I think that was something that when we did Play Our Way, when we said, you tell us, we were trying to sort of have that discussion, have people feel empowered to come forward and say,

do you hear the intersectional barriers that we're up against that might not be articulated in your policy handbook down in Canberra?

And I think we are seeing the benefits of that.

Some of the women that I met yesterday who've just completed the female referee and coaching program.

Were women of Pacifica and they were talking about, you know, their favorite NRLW players as being women from their own country, like Tonga.

And that's great that they can see that success now and work towards it.

In the para space, I think the Pacific is really important because we did a ceremony at the para village where all the Pacific nations in Australia got together.

And one by one, they sort of spoke to their experience coming to the game.

And Australia really is a linchpin to all of that.

We fund a lot of it and they rely upon our resourcing, but also just the collaboration required, the planes required, the logistics.

I think it's a real opportunity for us in Brisbane 2032 to think holistically about our place in the world and our island neighbors.

Because if you're in the Pacific, let's not rule anything out, but Brisbane 2032 might be the closest you ever get to hosting a games.

And we want them to feel.

We want them to feel that ownership.

So what can we build in now with seven years to go or what can we work towards with seven years to go that will give everybody that piece of Olympic and Paralympic glitter when the moment comes?

Yeah, I love that.

I might go to some questions from our community.

We put a question box on our Instagram story.

So I'm going to pick a few.

There was heaps actually that came through.

I'm going to pick a few out.

This one we've got, how do we get free to air channels to broadcast better quality content across all codes?

Spoken about this already, haven't we?

I think we keep putting pressure on them.

And that looks like putting a question to me on the Female Athlete Podcast.

So thank you for your service, whoever wrote that in.

People like me, when I meet with broadcasters saying that's what we want to see is a public policy outcome.

And then I think the proof's in the pudding as well, because when they do it well, it goes berserk, doesn't it?

So all of those things.

Can local small sporting clubs be held to D&I policies to ensure equality in their sports?

Yes.

The answer to that depends on which particular club this person's thinking about within the Australian sporting ecosystem.

Our national sporting organisations are funded by federal taxpayers through the Australian Sport Commission,

and the Australian Sport Commission works with individual sports about policies to comply

with what we mandate at a government level.

For example, I have put in place governance quotas, which means that from 1 July 2027,

the National Sport Organisation...

...will need to have 50-50 gender equity for their chairs and on their boards.

Now, the particular ins and outs of that is getting worked through for each sport with the ASC,

and I would hope that there is a trickle-down effect and that we will see more women in more leadership roles

across all sports because of this measure.

But I think people shouldn't be afraid of quotas.

Quotas simply make you look for talent where you haven't looked for it before.

Talent is out there.

It is not being given every opportunity.

This is a measure that helps people look for talent where they haven't looked for it before.

How have you seen that rolled out so far ahead of 2027?

Some people hit it the first hour of day one, and I think we should highlight that more.

There are great organisations out there.

There are great sports that are very forward-leaning on this, that already had 50-50 in place because

it was the right thing to do.

We are now working through it with the more recalcitrant...

I was like, what word are you going to use here?

And look, you know...

...the very...

...various different reasons and various different validities of those reasons.

But that's right.

We work through it all, and there'll be really good outcomes.

I think the proof is in the pudding.

You see that women making decisions for women helps more women succeed.

It's a good thing.

I love that.

Why does she take trained professionals correcting her gym techniques so personally?

I won't name the handle for giving him away, but that is my husband.

What a stitcher.

Friend of the podcast.

Hot.

Loves her work.

I love that.

So what he's saying is that when we go to the gym together, which we do, it's one of

the few things we get to do together, I am very reluctant to accept feedback on my technique

from the trainers.

I feel that I get a lot of feedback in my job, and sometimes when I'm turning up to

the gym, turning up is the victory.

You know?

It's a mental health outing.

It's not a, we're going for PBs today.

Mm-hmm.

And every time I am reluctant to accept that feedback, Finn shakes his head.

So that is my answer to that.

I have a lot on, and sometimes I don't need more feedback.

I respect that.

It's kind of your switch off time.

Yeah, and I have girlfriends that I only see when we're at the gym.

So when you're doing, like we sort of work in a CrossFit-y type, it's FitStop, we're

at FitStop, so, you know, sometimes there's a station where it's like, A, exercise, B,

exercise, C, exercise, recover.

We take the recover part quite seriously.

It's very important.

Finn takes the other bits seriously, and that's his choice.

I love that.

Shout out, Finn.

Thanks for being a fan of the podcast.

I'm here for that.

I love that.

We're going to stick on a slightly humorous theme.

Does she kick a footy better than Dutton?

She sure does.

I like that one.

As for an AFL household, I wouldn't be allowed to sleep inside if I could not kick a footy.

I would.

An AFL footy.

But I would also say, as someone who has been the sport minister for three years, last campaign,

Scott Morrison took out a child.

Yes.

This campaign, Peter Dutton has taken out a cameraman.

Can I please get a little bit of credit for going three years incident-free without maiming

a child or a cameraman?

It's a low bar.

It's not that hard, fellas?

It's a low bar, isn't it?

All right.

Can you please explain why netball is so poorly funded?

Number one female sport, $4 per person.

I imagine they've worked it out based on participation and funding numbers?

Well, this, like we've covered earlier in our pod.

Let me try and do this concisely.

We fund netball through the Australian Sport Commission.

We fund all sports according to the same criteria around participation.

And we can't wait, 2027, 100 years of netball in this glorious country.

I really want the Diamonds to have their Tilly's moment.

We're putting a lot of thought into how we create the settings to have that happen again for all of us next year.

We could always give every sport.

We could always give more money.

It's always the case that there's more that we could be doing.

And it's a question of how successful we are at fighting against all the other competing priorities.

What are we going to do about the scary sport dropout rates of girls in high school?

Yes.

So, Play Our Way was specifically designed to combat that.

And I hope that we'll see after $200 million worth of funding across 160 odd projects across the country,

that we will see those dropout rates ease, if not stop altogether.

Obviously, it's one of those intersectional things where there's a lot going on at that time.

But we want anything that we can help with to be something that we do address.

And we've done that with Play Our Way.

How do you handle the misogynistic barriers at work?

At my work?

At your work?

Gosh, this is its own separate podcast.

It's been a wild ride.

We've already mentioned my husband, Finn.

One of the first things that happened to us when I got made the sport minister,

actually it was the Tillys.

We went to see the Tillys.

This is 22.

And after the game, we went onto the pitch.

We've got three little kids.

We've got twin boys and a girl.

And they were gambling around.

They wanted me to come and do a piece to camera for their doco that came out.

And when the moment came, someone went over to Finn and said,

Minister, if you'll just come this way, we're ready for you now.

And Finn pointed across at me.

Hauling these two twins on my hips across the pitch and said,

She's the minister.

We've had so many instances of that.

Wow.

I mean, there's lots.

But I think the other thing that happens a bit is mansplaining,

which I'm sure you've experienced in your time as well.

One of my faves of the genre was someone who was in all other ways

completely welcoming, excited that I was at his particular sport event.

And he was explaining blah, blah, blah.

The WADA testing site.

Sorry, WADA is the World Anti-Doping Agency.

They police doping in sport.

I sit on the executive committee of WADA.

So I just nodded politely.

And then another time he's like, blah, blah, blah.

When the AOC comes through.

Sorry, the AOC is the Australian Olympic Committee.

I'm talking about John Coates.

John Coates is.

I'm a vice president of Brisbane 2032 Olympic Committee alongside John Coates.

But there's a bit of that.

Mostly it's best just to let it wash over you.

But sometimes if I feel like it's malevolent, I'll push back.

But mostly it's easier just to smile.

You've got to pick and choose your battles sometimes, don't you?

That's right.

That's a better way of putting it.

I'm going to finish with two questions for you.

What advice would you give to a young person who might want to follow in your footsteps?

My advice?

My advice would be show up, know your stuff, don't back down.

And finally, a question I ask everyone is what is your favourite failure?

So Finn, my husband, who is a dedicated listener, warned me that you would ask me this.

And I'm glad he did because I hate failure.

So I wouldn't call it my favourite.

But I listen to Marley and I sort of think she's on the right track talking about what you got out of it.

When I first got elected in 2019,

I was taking over from Wayne Swan.

He had a 5% margin.

The 2019 election wasn't a great one for Labor.

And on the night, my seat was too close to call.

There'd been a big swing against us.

And it took, I think, 10 days in count back for the outcome to be decided, which was a very long wait.

So for 10 days, I had to sit in my own political mortality, fearing that I had lost this seat.

And to me, as I'm sure many women listening to this will identify with,

I'd let everybody down.

I'd been entrusted with this great task and I hadn't met it.

And it felt awful.

In the end, we clung on by 1,229 votes, which in an electorate of 130,000 people is not very many.

And it made me such a better representative because for the next three years between 2019 and 2022,

you know, not a blade of grass moved in my electorate.

Without me knowing about it.

And we worked so hard to prove to people that they had made the correct decision in entrusting me with their vote in the seat that,

I mean, even I just, I was laughing about this.

I was door knocking a couple of weekends ago and it was the same street that I'd been at three years before.

And I knocked on the door and I said, are you guys, are you new to the area?

And she said, oh yeah, we just moved in a year ago.

I'm like, yeah, it was a different car in the driveway.

And she said, you know, every car in the driveway.

I don't know.

Every car in the driveway.

But to give you a sense, it has made me so dedicated to being a good representative that that never happens again.

That has made me better overall, even if it was a difficult, difficult time.

I like that.

I really like that.

Thank you so much for your time today and what is a very, very busy period for you.

Such a pleasure.

It's been really great to talk to you.

I've met you at multiple different sporting events.

But never for long.

Yeah, it's always been very brief.

Yeah, I'm really appreciative of your time and your honesty.

And I really love that.

Firstly, you're a woman, a woman in this role.

But I love the way that you are so passionate about sport.

I think it's, I think it's awesome for our country too.

Passionate babbing, average at sport.

That's on a T-shirt too.

I love it.

Thanks.

Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for listening.

If you got something out of this episode, I would absolutely love it if you could send it on to one person who you think might enjoy it.

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