Sometimes in Parliament, we get to hear from the real voices of regional Australia. Recently, the Senate inquiry into sports rorts heard from the volunteer leaders of regional sporting teams, including the Albury Thunder Junior Rugby League Club.
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The Thunder is the most southern grassroots rugby league club. When the Thunder started women's teams they couldn't believe the response, girls came out of the woodwork to join.
This rapid expansion of female participation presented a challenge - they had no change rooms. One mother even sewed a curtain to a hula hoop to give her daughter some measure of privacy. So the club developed a shovel-ready plan to renovate the Sarvaas Park pavilion.
When the federal government announced a grant program for community sports clubs, the Albury Thunder should have been first in line. But despite having a local MP who was a senior member of the government, they weren't informed about this grant. And they saw that money go towards marginal seats in the big cities and towards Scott Morrison's electoral priorities.
Keith Martine, treasurer for the Albury Thunder Junior Rugby League Club was rightly angry: "for me to read in the paper that there were all these grants and there was a bit of a hullabaloo about them, and look it's all going on, to be honest, I was quite furious".
The more that is discovered about the sports rorts scandal, the more it reveals communities that have been left behind. It's a story of a government who put their political needs ahead of the needs of volunteer administrators who put time and effort into keeping their local teams afloat.
Albury is a tight-knit, sports-mad region where community clubs really matter. And like so many regional communities, it has seen too many opportunities go elsewhere.
As Australia faces both the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis that has come with it, it's easy to overlook scandals like the sports rorts program. But as we rebuild in the wake of this pandemic, how opportunities are distributed and whose voices are heard will matter. Regional Australia can't afford to be left behind - not while businesses are closing, unemployment is rising and regional universities are bearing the brunt of government cuts.
There is so much to do to restart the Australian economy, and I have one modest suggestion. The girls of the Albury Thunder still don't have the facilities they need. Surely there can be money found to renovate Sarvaas Park.