Yep was out at a centre in SMithfield this week. They have Council FUnding, State Govt Funding, but the Feds pulled out at the last minute and that was before they went into caretaker mode.

The Feds think because they built all these 1 court and half court stadiums that their has been ample infrastructure in facilities. THE PROBLEM IS YOU CAN"T RUN BASKETBALL/NETBALL/VOLLEYBALL/INDOOR SOCCER COMPETITIONS OUT OF 1 1 court stadium you idiots. Plus the schools have no idea how to run facilities. Sporting associations and clubs should have been consulted to maximise the community benefit to this massive investment.

The Federal Govt schools stimulus was the one of the biggest wastes of money I have seen. Its a great opportunity wasted. I cannot wait to throw Labour out!

What a defeatist you are, anonymous! Do you have a better suggestion or is inaction your go?

Federal Funding is basically allocated according population percentages. The fact is there are five to six times more people in places like Victoria and NSW then there are in South Australia. That means they inevitably are going to recieve nearly 5-6 times more finding then SA folk.
Demanding more money won't change this fact.
State Governments and local councils are the ones who need to get their act together and use the money that they have wisely, not the Federal Government.

Well done anonymous. Let's take no action and wait for it to happen. Not.
Any lobbying is good lobbying to get the sports Centres for our Kids.

Astor, you are right to some extent. Its also based on the kind of seat etc. existing demographic, power of the local member etc. etc.

Rather than build 10 dodgy, hardfloor gyms in 10 different schools in an area they could have pooled these funds and built a state of the art centre on a single site. Far more user friendly, efficient. Of course the labour government are not into efficiency. They are into spending money for the sake of it, giving their cronies a gravy train and driving up inflation through lack of efficiency and economical strength. The costs of thes econtructions were balooned because of the rush to spend money and by the time they geared up on the work the economy was in recovery PLUS with a labour government contruction costs go up by around 30% to cover union action contingiency.

..as read straight of the pamphlet.

The actual program was part of the governments program to help shiel Australia from the fallout of the global financial meltdown of 2008. It may not have been administered very well, typical government program administration, but it has wored as such by protecting the Australian economy.

The reason that a gym was built at each Primary school was to enable each school to have an onsite facility for the School PE program. If they built a spung floor air-conditioned 2 court stadium at one loacation, how would that benefit the other nine locations? They are meant for benefit of the students at the individual schools, not the general community.

The State Government doesn't give a sh*t about BSA. BSA has no clout and if they did there would have been some sensible collaboration between BSA and the Federal Government on the Federal Government "GravyTrain" stimulus.

Perhaps if the former BASA hadnt proven itself to be financially incompetant, then there may have been more interest from the government.

Why wouldnt a club like NABC hook up with a local school and build a super gym capable of 3/4 courts, maybe some change rooms you can swing a cat in.

They are, sort of:

"Three innernorth sites have been earmarked by Port Adelaide Enfield council for a new multi-purpose sports complex. The soon-to-be-closed Ross Smith Secondary School and Enfield High, as well as the Gepps Cross Sports Park, are flagged by the council for redevelopment...

"[Mayor] Johanson said the area needed a sports stadium with at least six basketball and netball courts..."

"Sports clubs are pushing for Ross Smith Secondary School to be made a sporting hub for the community after it closes...

"NABC is looking to move from its run-down, two-court stadium at Hillcrest to a bigger venue to cater for its 350 players. Club President Trevor Pomery said a new four-court stadium at Ross Smith Secondary would allow the club to host international games, which they had to hold in Gawler this year."

[Source: CityNorth Messenger, 23/6/10 - Link Story 1, Link Story 2]

NABC have raised the issue with the council before [Link].

We ARE being dudded for facilities. Go and have a look at the Federal Government's own figures (Link Here)
, and you can clearly see it.
You can compare the SA versus Victoria participation rates to see the percentage of each state's population playing a given sport.

We smash the Vics in Bush Walking, Fishing and Lawn Bowls, and we have the same rate as they do for Australian Rules. Any sport requiring a stadium/facility, and they are smashing us.

If we had the same rates of participation they do for Basketball, we would have another 10,400 playing the sport in SA. AND THIS IS JUST FOR PEOPLE 15 YEARS AND ABOVE.

Add-in the numbers for 14 years and below, and I think it is safe to double it. That is 2,000 extra players per District Club, if we just had somewhere for them to play. Victoria does.

Sorry Astor, but the money does NOT get handed out evenly according to population at all -it goes to the communities who have effective representation, and who make their politicians accountable, especially at an election.

The Campbelltown Leisure Centre (formerly St Bernards) is back from the dead as at last week, when the local Federal MP Christopher Pyne announced that a Coalition govenment would fund it. (Link)

Both major parties supported the CLC redevlopment at the last state election, so it has as a result State Government funding committments. Local State MP Grace Portolesi did a huge amount of work to help make this support happen. CLC just needs Federal Labor to step up to the plate now.

If you want to DO SOMETHING about publicising this issue and demanding action, we have setup a Facebook Page so that we have a community that can share infromation and articulate these issues. If you are a Facebook user, search for "Sacommunity Sportsstadiums" and become a Friend.

Or you could go and play Lawn Bowls....

We as a basketball community have to make sure we do everything we can to get better facilities for our kids...it is not a club thing at all. It would be great if Norwood can secure a home...maybe then money will flow for other facilities in other areas. Many of the stadiums clubs call home are certainly a trip down memory lane...and we have long memories!

Sign the petition, ring your local member and lobby for better. Doing nothing will get us nowhere.

Don't sit back and complain, be proactive so the next generation of basketballers will have better than we have now.

No matter how 'accountable' you're local politician is, it doesn't change the fact that there is only so much money which the Government has allocated to funding sports facilities. The reality of the situation is, like Ushiro has said, is that the allocated money is being spent on creating school facilities. You're going to have a hard time convincing you're local MP to tell the school systems to "go shove it" and start spending money on huge sports complex's instead..

And quoting participation rates in Victoria is pointless. No matter what the facilities are like, SA will never get the same participation rates as Victoria.

JuliaSpillard..? More likely is your name Tony?

You talked about 1 court stadiums - for basketball they aren't great, but i can tell you my school's gym is chocka full of kids at lunch, and is used after hours 3 or 4 nights a week, with each night generating income for the school to improve facilities.

PS - Shout out to Ushiro, "My Hero! :)

Astor,
You have completely missed the point ("And quoting participation rates in Victoria is pointless. No matter what the facilities are like, SA will never get the same participation rates as Victoria.").

We DO have comparable participation rates to Victoria -but ONLY if you are talking about sports which do not require stadiums or reasonably sizeable investments in facilities.

You seem to be arguing that we should just accept what we get from our governments, and that SA Community sports are well funded.

We do not accept either proposition.

If you want better community-based sporting facilities, you have a very simple choice. You can either be part of the problem, or part of the solution

Haha
But you've pointed out the problem for yourself SACommunitySportsStadium - why on earth would the South Australian government spend millions upon millions of dollars developing an area of sport which does not have spectacularly high participation rates? For every basketball complex that they make, they could afford twice as many tennis courts, or walking tracks, or outdoor netball courts whatever sport you fancy that doesn't require the architecture and manpower that stadiums do.

What makes the sport of basketball so special that the government should focus all of its attention on only it? If you want better community-based sporting facilities that will be used and appreciated by the maximum number of South Australian residents, then the choice is simple. Don't waste your money on the minority sport.

Haha
But you've pointed out the problem for yourself SACommunitySportsStadium - why on earth would the South Australian government spend millions upon millions of dollars developing an area of sport which does not have spectacularly high participation rates? For every basketball complex that they make, they could afford twice as many tennis courts, or walking tracks, or outdoor netball courts whatever sport you fancy that doesn't require the architecture and manpower that stadiums do.

What makes the sport of basketball so special that the government should focus all of its attention on only it? If you want better community-based sporting facilities that will be used and appreciated by the maximum number of South Australian residents, then the choice is simple. Don't waste your money on the minority sport.

Actually these same indoor faciities are used for a multiple range of sports, not just Basketball, just look at the markings on the floors. The same venues are used for Netball, Volleyball, Badminton, as well as diverse non court sports such as Karate, Tae Kwan Do, Bocce, Indoor Soccer, etc, etc.

The problem is that over the past 20 years or so, a lot of very average venues have been built, instead of fewer quality venues. What is needed is more quality venues such as the Golden Grove complex which is shared by a multi-school site and the community. I have never been into Starplex but I believe that is a similar situation where it is shared with Trinity College.

Then again, I used to play School and Church basketball outside in the rain, played on the old cement Number 2 court at Forrestville for a season or two, trained and played at Marion Stadium when it was a real tin shed, and the list of the 60-70s venues goes on. I did have one season of playing at the newly opened Appolo Stadium so it wasnt all bad.

The only one of these venues that had any Government support was .... well actually none of them. So don't blame the Rann Government or the current Federal Labour Government, it has been the same for 40 years by both parties. The only real funding assistance was for The Dome, when the Government needed an additional stadium for the 1998 Commonwealth Games bid and even then, it was only a loan guarantee.

Astor - basketball is the #3 team sport in Australia, with 675,000 participants, behind only Netball (#2 with 686,000) and Football(Soccer) #1 with 880,000. Hardly a minority sport.

Ushiro is spot-on in several respects:
1. It is not just about basketball -the facilities required are the Multi-use, community-based ones. The CLC project will be funded in part by Squash SA and Swimming SA. It is already used extensively for Futsal (Indoor Footbal), Martial Arts Baskteball and Netball. ICLC already also provides a wide range of activities/facilities for Seniors, with meeting areas, Gym and Dance etc. The proposals Local Messenger (posted above) referred to also have a community or multi-sport focus.

2. It is also not about bashing any political party. The two biggest supporters of CLC are a Liberal (Pyne) and a Labor (Portolesi) politician.

The whole argument revolves around priorities. We have all seen proposals to spend upwards of $400M to tart-up Adelaide Oval. Federally, we see reports that we will or have spent $36M to bid for the World Cup, with a $2M grant announced today for an elite surfing academy.

The argument is that if that sort of money is to be tipped into sport, then it should preferably go towards community-based facilities which all people can USE for sport and recreation, in preference to elite-only or sit-on-your-bum-only expenditure.