Despite pleas for the third largest city in New South Wales to be included in the Greater Sydney Sports Facility Fund, the Minister for Sport, Stuart Ayres MP, has rebuffed the call leaving Wollongong sporting groups with no funding opportunities to improve their facilities.

Wollongong MP, Paul Scully raised the freezing out of Wollongong sporting groups from funding opportunities with the Minister in a recent letter, following a number of speeches in which he mentioned the issue in the NSW Parliament.

The Minister this week responded to Mr Scully’s correspondence stating:

…it is not possible to extend the local government areas under the Fund to include Wollongong.

The Minister instead tried to claim he was doing something for sport in Wollongong telling Mr Scully that the Government was developing a Regional Sport and Active Recreation Plan for the Illawarra and Shoalhaven with a draft of the plan currently on public exhibition for comment until 19 July 2018.

In the meantime, Wollongong sporting groups remain ineligible for any funding under the Government’s regional sporting programs and the Greater Sydney Sports Facility Fund.

Comments attributable to Paul Scully MP:

“Local sporting groups are already outraged that they can’t even lodge an application for any funding to improve their sporting facilities because the Berejiklian Government has shut the gate on eligibility.

“Now the Minister has confirmed that local sporing groups will remain locked out of funding opportunities and he doesn’t intend to lift a finger to change the Government’s decision.

“Instead the Minister points me to a draft plan currently under development, which has absolutely no funding attached to it at all.

“A plan without funding opportunities to implement it is nothing but a piece of paper.

“It is totally unacceptable that sporting groups in the state’s third largest city have been blocked by the Berejiklian Government from any funding opportunities open to all other sporting organisations in other parts of NSW.”