MEMBER FOR SOLOMON, LUKE GOSLING: Morning everyone, and welcome down to Darwin Basketball Stadium. Here at the Marrara sporting precinct in Darwin. My name is Luke Gosling. I'm the Federal Member for Solomon, which is Darwin and Palmerston, and also do some work with the Prime Minister on Northern Australia stuff. And what we love in Darwin, in the Northern Territory and across the north is when we have federal ministers come and visit us, and Anika Wells, who is the Federal Minister for Aged Care and importantly for today – Sport, has been in the Territory for the last few days, not just in Darwin too, but getting out around the regional areas of the Territory. She's got a really exciting announcement to make this morning. I just want to thank all the contributing organisations, sports organisations that are here with us today and that are passionately pursuing our shared goal of topping the medal table at the Paralympics in Brisbane. We really admire and want to support as much as possible our para-athletes, and any support that they can give, and we are providing record support to power athletes, helps them to get over the barriers to training, to competing, which is so important in the lead up to the Olympics and other future competition. We're really investing in our para-athletes, who we admire so much. Anika, thanks so much for coming up to Darwin and the Territory and tell us all about it.
MINISTER FOR AGED CARE AND SPORT, ANIKA WELLS: Thank you so much, Luke. I really can't tell Territorians how lucky you are to have Luke as your federal representative. There are few more dogged people who get around Parliament House and actually use that time to deliver for the people back home. You're always in his thoughts. It is my great pleasure to be able to come and announce this particular fund with Luke here today in Darwin. This is about para-athletes. There has never been a federal government more committed to para-athletes and para sport than the Albanese Labor Government. We have doubled the funding for our para-athletes to almost $55 million. We did that in the last federal Budget, and we are always looking for ways to improve things for para-athletes to give them every opportunity to hit their maximum performance and maximum participation level, and that's why today we're announcing the Para Athletes Barrier Fund. It's a fund designed to give athletes up to $4,000 to help them overcome whatever barriers it is that is preventing them from hitting their peak in performance: whether it's technology, whether it's equipment, whether it's bringing carers along, whether it's the travel. It's designed to help them overcome those barriers and help them reach their peak, which is what we all want to see. We know that one in 4 people with disability play sport, but we know that 3 out of four people with disability want to play sport, and we want them to play sport because we have a very realistic dream of Australia topping the medal tally in Brisbane, 2032 for the Paralympics, and everything we can do along the way to help athletes have a crack, if that's what they want to do, we want to support them to do that. Luke and I are here to meet with para-athletes in Darwin, some of whom I think are already on that track, some of whom are spreading the good word about the possibilities of para sport here in Darwin, I'm grateful to them for that.
JOURNALIST: Just a question, for you, how many of these grants will be available?
WELLS: The grant round is for up to $250,000 and the fund for each athlete is up to $4,000.
JOURNALIST: Amazing. And when do these grants open?
WELLS: Today. Now.
JOURNALIST: Can you explain a little bit more about what are the barriers that para-athletes are coming up against? Just to get that level.
WELLS: I might first give the opportunity to any athletes who want to talk about the barriers. Just rather than me speaking for you, I'm happy to do it, but just give you the opportunity anyone want to speak about the barriers that you have that people might not be aware of, an opportunity to spread the word.
PARA-ATHLETE, GREG FRANKS: No worries. I'm Greg Franks. I play badminton and do athletics and coach junior soccer, and did play volleyball for Australia in a standing volleyball team, so I've got a mix of opportunities I've been to. When, when we were travelling for Australia, playing for Australia, we had to raise all of our own funds for travel, for accommodation, for uniforms, even at one point. It's a real barrier. It's a genuine barrier. You spend time away from family, you then do training away from family. You make those commitments when you're at national level though. Up here we've got some great sporting facilities in Darwin, but we've also got some not-so-good ones, badminton being one of them. So there's also those sort of infrastructure-type issues. It's really changed with the Para Futures Programme. It's given us a point of reference and some additional support we could do with extra coaching, because coaching a para-athlete is a bit different to coaching an able-bodied athlete, and there's not enough in that space either. They're just a few of the things. But we love our sport, and we make the commitment, and we're all enjoying ourselves, and we appreciate the announcement today. It's been really good to hear that.
JOURNALIST: So what does this announcement mean to you and to the people that are on your team?
FRANKS: For me, personally, I'm looking to go to the badminton nationals, which are in Melbourne. One of the things I need is to pay for that transport cost, and following some success there, and last year, I got a silver medal – so that was good. Some success there will mean I'll be going to the Oceania games, which will be this year in Bendigo, Victoria, so I'll need the support to go there. That's for me, exactly how I'm going to be approaching this.
WELLS: Any other questions?
JOURNALIST: I have a few questions for you. We heard this week in Northern Territory Parliament that the CLP government introduced a bill to scrap the portable leave scheme for people in the community care sector. I believe, including aged care, which is your long-term service leave accumulates from years in the sector, rather than from with a single employer. Unions have been outraged by this. What was your response to hearing that kind of level of support leading for aged care sector workers?
WELLS: I’ll be really honest with you, I didn't see that. We've been out and about in Maningrida and places, so the goings on of the parliament hasn't reached my ears until you. But I can say certainly, workforce shortage is the number one issue in all of us getting better aged care in this country and trying to lift the quality, lift the standard of aged care, we need more carers. It's really complex work, it hasn't got the recognition that it's deserved. That's why the federal government has put $17.7 billion into pay rises for aged care workers, and we need to be looking at everything that we can do to make working in aged care or coming back to working in aged care as attractive as possible. On the face of what you've told me, that doesn't sound like that's dovetailing particularly well with addressing the chronic workforce shortages in the industry, and we encourage everyone to be looking at what they can do to alleviate workforce shortages, in addition to the $17.7 billion dollar pay rise that we've put in and all of the other I think off the top my head. There's 14 other workforce measures we've currently got in the field to try and bring people back to aged care.
JOURNALIST: Yeah, amazing. And just on aged care services in Darwin, we've had an increase in code yellows at Darwin hospital and overcrowding, a lot of that is due to lack of aged care availability. What is being done currently to try and tackle that issue?
WELLS: I really want to give Luke a lot of credit. He has been relentless in pursuing a solution for this, where both in Canberra and here, and that's part of the reason that I'm here, we've been doing work on that. There is good news for your viewers in that we have now the support of NT Health to approach select and well-regarded providers about building those beds here in the NT who actually get that actually up and running. I look forward to having more for you on that shortly.
JOURNALIST: NT News, for Luke Gosling, do you know when the Japanese rotation force will be arriving in Darwin?
GOSLING: I haven't got the exact date for it yet, but certainly a welcome development in having yet another one of our very close partners come to Northern Territory to train where we've got the world's best training areas, both for air forces, navies and for armies.