QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Ms WELLS (Lilley—Minister for Sport and Minister for Communications) (14:51): I thank the member for Mayo for her question. The federal sports ministry delivers just over $500 million worth of sport funding to various programs, grassroots through to high performance, across the country. Usually we work hand in hand with the minister for infrastructure through thriving suburbs or regional funding, where regional sport infrastructure is required.

And I also work closely with our state sport ministers, who usually have carriage of both sport and sport infrastructure funding through, for example, the Queensland Gambling Community Benefits Fund to make sure that the priority projects across federal and state levels are funded appropriately. The $200 million Play Our Way program, which the Albanese government pioneered last term, was the most significant; in fact, it was double the amount of funding that had ever been provided to regional sporting community infrastructure.

I note and agree with you that we had fivefold the number of requests that came in for the pot of money that we were able to give out within budget constraints. So let me agree with you that there is demand there. It's really important for social cohesion.

We as governments, both state and federal, use sport as a mechanism to help lots of other policy areas, be it social cohesion through to things in the regions, and I will always continue to advocate for more funding to do great things in sport, from grassroots through to high performance. So stay tuned, because this will always be under consideration as we go through the usual budget processes.