Mr MOSSFIELD (10:37 PM) —I would like to go back a couple of weeks and talk about the other great sporting events, the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games. I would like to inform the House about the achievements of athletes from my electorate. Seven athletes from the Greenway electorate competed, three at the Olympics and four at the Paralympics. I am proud to be able to say that they brought home a total of five medals and two Australian records among their other achievements. The Olympics started well for our Greenway athletes on day one of competition, when Mehmet Yagci of Seven Hills broke two Australian records in the 56-kilogram section of the weightlifting competition. Mehmet eventually finished 17th in the competition, behind a world record lift, but we should all be celebrating his Australian record in the clean and jerk and the overall total of 235 kilograms.

The other two Greenway residents in the Olympics, Melanie Roche of Stanhope Gardens and Fiona Hanes of Quakers Hill, brought home bronze medals as members of the Australian Thunder softball team. Melanie was backing up from Atlanta bronze. Let us hope they can go a couple better in the year 2004. I took great pleasure from watching the softballers in action, just down the road from my office at the world-class softball venue that was built in Blacktown for the games.

Let me now turn to Greenway's Paralympians. Four athletes were competing in three different sports and they all performed with credit and inspiration. Nicholas Moroney of Lalor Park was a member of the Boomerangs, the basketball team for the intellectually disabled. But he was not just any member: Nicholas was Australia's top scorer in the competition, the Andrew Gaze of the ID basketball team. Nicholas also received the 1999 Variety Club Young Sportsman of the Year Award. As he is 22, there are many more years of international basketball ahead of Nicholas and I look forward to following his career with interest.

Troy and Kerrie-Ann King of Seven Hills were our representatives in the sport of goalball. Indeed, Kerrie-Ann was the captain of the women's team, a great honour. Unfortunately, the tournament did not go according to plan. The men finished ninth while the women finished eighth. We have heard a great deal about funding for our elite sports men and women during and since the Olympics and we have also heard about funding for our Paralympians. Goalball seems to have been forgotten in all of this. I was lucky enough to go to a training day for the goalballers in Blacktown a month or so before the Paralympics began. These training days can only be held every three or four months because the team are scattered around the country and cannot afford to do it more often. Indeed, the Blacktown Police and Citizens' Youth Club will not even store the goals; they have to be stored at the home of one of the coaches, so goalball has no home and no money. While international competition is easy to arrange in Europe, even domestic competition is very difficult here in Australia. Goalball does not have the profile of other sports and suffers badly as a result. This is a pity because it is a great game to watch and I am told it is a great game to play, even for the non-visually impaired. I would urge the minister, when deciding future funding, to at least look at the sport of goalball. Goalballers need a home and some means of developing a domestic competition. I am sure the international results will follow.

I would like to finish on a high note. That note is Alicia Aberley of Riverstone. While the focus of the media was on Siobhan Paton in the S14 swimming class and Siobhan was the star of the meet, Alicia quietly went about her business, picking up two silver medals, two bronze medals and a host of personal bests behind Siobhan. Alicia won silver in both the 100-metres freestyle and 200-metres individual medley and bronze in both the 200-metres freestyle and 50-metres breaststroke. As Alicia is just 16 years of age, there are many more swim-meets ahead of her and—who knows?—by Athens she might just catch Siobhan. I am very proud of all of the Australian athletes but there is a special spot for the locals from the Blacktown area who performed so magnificently at both games. All I can say is: roll on Athens. (Time expired)