PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE

INQUIRY INTO USE OF STATE FUNDING BY THE WEST AUSTRALIAN FOOTBALL COMMISSION

TRANSCRIPT OF EVIDENCE TAKEN AT PERTH MONDAY, 24 AUGUST 2020

SESSION TWO

Members

Dr Tony Buti (Chair) Mr Dean Nalder (Deputy Chair) Mr Vincent Catania Mr Simon Millman Mrs Lisa O’Malley ______

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Hearing commenced at 2.00 pm

Mr DEAN TURNER Chief Executive Officer, East Perth Football Club, examined:

Mr PETER ANDREW CAPES Chief Executive Officer, Subiaco Football Club, examined:

Mr JEFFREY RAYMOND DENNIS Chief Executive Officer, Swan Districts Football Club, examined:

Mr RUSSELL CLARK General Manager, Perth Football Club, examined:

Mr JOHN HERBERT DITCHBURN Chief Executive Officer, Peel Thunder Football Club, examined:

Mr PETER HODYL President/Chairman, Swan Districts Football Club and Deputy Chair of the West Australian Football League Council of Presidents, examined:

Mr MARK ANDREW STEWART President, East Fremantle Football Club and Chair of the West Australian Football League Council of Presidents, examined:

The CHAIR: Thank you for appearing today to provide evidence related to the committee’s inquiry into the use of state funding by the West Australian Football Commission. My name is Tony Buti; I am the committee Chair and member for Armadale. With me today are Mr Dean Nalder, the committee’s Deputy Chair and member for Bateman. To his left is Mr Vincent Catania, member for North West Central, and then to Vincent’s left is Mrs Lisa O’Malley, member for Bicton. To my right is Mr Simon Millman, member for Mount Lawley. It is important that you understand that any deliberate misleading of this committee may be regarded as a contempt of Parliament. While your evidence is protected by parliamentary privilege, this privilege does not apply to anything you might say outside of today’s proceedings. I would also like to advise that today’s hearings will be broadcast live on the Parliament House website. This is an unusually large group of witnesses and in keeping with the topic we will be running an interchange bench today. We have four witnesses on board to begin with, who will be replaced throughout the hearing. Can I ask that as new people come to the table, they introduce themselves? Do you have any questions about your attendance here today? The WITNESSES: No. The CHAIR: Would you like to each make a brief opening statement, or one of you make a brief opening statement? We will leave that to you, but can we keep it brief. Mr DENNIS: Yes, I might do that, if that is okay. Thanks for the opportunity for us discussing the submissions from the WAFL clubs. They were largely framed around four main key points, the first one being that there is a need for an independent governing body. Funding received from football

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 2 through the state funding agreement through the stadia facilities—the negotiations—should remain in control of football’s governing body. As the LGSC have said, sport should be managing sport; we believe football should be managing football. Thirdly, we believe the commission needs to change its modus operandi and decentralise its operations or devolve its operations by enabling and empowering its stakeholders—the football clubs, the football stakeholders—to help deliver football. We believe the role of the football commission should be governance, compliance, education, strategy, advocacy, funding—not delivery; we believe that remit should sit with the stakeholders of the game. And, fourthly, we feel the WAFL clubs are best positioned to be those stakeholders that can help deliver football. We believe they are well positioned. They have strong local footprints— metropolitan and also regional. We have every inch of the state covered through the recruitment zone system that the football commission set up some time ago. It ensures that all regional areas and all metropolitan areas are covered by at least one of the WAFL clubs. We believe the WAFL clubs have an opportunity to unlock considerable additional revenues if they have been given the remit to help deliver community football. They have largely been excluded to date. We also believe that all clubs have the ability to engage volunteers. The conduit between a state government organisation and the community are its clubs; no matter what shape or size ball you play with, it is the clubs. Now, that would be junior clubs, state league clubs and AFL clubs, but that connection with the game through to the community has to be with the clubs. That has largely been stripped away from the clubs. It has all been centralised to a very top‐heavy, bloated—we feel—and bureaucratic body that has total control about the delivery of football. We believe that needs to be devolved and given out to its stakeholders through its clubs. We think that as a result of that additional engagement, that additional connection to community, there are so many more benefits that can be returned. We also believe that the local facilities of WAFL clubs are well placed within community too, so it just helps provide another touchpoint to community. So if we are talking about participation in a sport, whether it is coaching, volunteering, playing, umpiring or refereeing, it is useful and of benefit to ensure that the sport has a strong and broad and deep footprint. The CHAIR: Thank you. Would anyone else like to speak before we ask the questions? Okay, thank you very much, Mr Dennis. If you look at all the submissions by the clubs, the consistent themes basically echo what you said. It seems that you consider that the West Australian Football Commission has become an over‐bloated bureaucracy and that they have got into service delivery where you believe that you should be the pinnacle of service delivery of football in WA and you are best placed to develop the sport at the community level. So, I will let anyone comment on that. Now, there was a submission we received not by the football commission, but by a former president of the commission, who was, I think, heavily involved with a football club—I think your football club, actually, Mr Dennis, previously—who believes that the West Australian Football Commission is the best place to run football in WA and that the WAFL clubs are too involved in being self‐interested to be having more control. So, could you answer the criticism; and, was I right in my assertion that the consistent theme throughout the clubs is this overblown bureaucracy and that you are best for servicing delivery? Mr DENNIS: To give some historical context with WAFL football, through history, the WAFL clubs have been the heart and soul of community. I do not think anyone can disagree with that. In the past, prior to the AFL coming to town, they were the big dog in town. It was like a religion what happened on Saturday afternoon at each of the different WAFL clubs. There were relatively strong connections with the regional communities as well. Thirty years ago, after the AFL came to town,

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WAFL clubs were still in control of community football talent and what became the second‐tier competition. Five years ago—well, a little after that time—community was taken away from the WAFL clubs. It was centralised and delivered through the football development trust, or the football commission. Three years ago, talent was taken away from the WAFL clubs. The WAFL clubs have largely been left with a second‐tier competition, and I think we all know that running a second‐tier competition in itself is unsustainable in the current business model that we operate in. So, we feel that the clubs, because of their local connections, are by far best suited, rather than a central, nebulous body, to connect with clubs. Volunteers and people connect with the sport through a local brand and through that it might be High Wycombe Junior Football Club or Swan Districts Football Club or West Coast Eagles Football Club. They do not connect through the WA Football Commission; it just does not happen. They do not connect through a regional development commission; it just does not happen, and so through recent history where we have had local districts that have been controlled by the football commission and they have purposely been set up with a different name than Swan Districts, for example, so they have called the districts in the Swan Districts’ area “Swans District” with a different logo. So, all of a sudden, we are competing for relevance against the central body. There is no harmony, there is no alignment in relation to all kicking in the same direction, looking for the best outcomes for football. Yes, it has been challenging times for the clubs to continue that role with connecting with community when most of their assets have been stripped for away from them. Now, that is not taking anything away from our responsibility; we need to do better. We need to be connected with community. We need to ensure that we continue to grow our relevance and our financial sustainability through a different business model, but it certainly has been hard with the modus operandi of the football commission. [2.10 pm] The CHAIR: Before I hand over to Mr Nalder, who I am sure will have some questions on talent development as well, one of the issues in many of the submissions is the view that in regards to talent development there seems to be an overemphasis on talent development purely with an AFL draft in place as the target rather than developing players and the overall development of the person; that has gone by the wayside. Can you make some comments on that, and, also, the issue about the commission now running the Colts competition? Mr CAPES: I will have a go at that, Mr Chairman. The talent model that has been around for a long while has always had a focus on AFL draftees. That has been one of the key roles of the talent pathway. But it is a pathway; it is not a destination. We have 14s, 15s and 16s, so five or six different teams in that pathway—hundreds of kids at every WAFL club. The talent funnel is quite wide and is kept deliberately wide for as long as you possibly can so that kids are captured and developed and, hopefully, not only in football, but in mateship and connection to their local clubs and all those sorts of things they are quite solid. That has always been the theory in talent. Again, there is always a focus on developing your top‐end talent, but secondary to that is developing a whole bunch of players that are going to play at your WAFL club. If they do not do that, they go and play at local amateur clubs or they are involved in football. That has been the focus. When things changed in 2017, I think there was a stronger focus the AFL funding a talented program through that Boston report. I think the focus has been an area of criticism from all of our clubs that would probably deliver talent slightly differently. Mr D.C. NALDER: One of the criticisms that has been levelled at the WAFL clubs is the inconsistency in approach across the clubs themselves. Some might be doing a good job and other clubs not. The

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 4 view from the commission is that we had to get greater consistency and we could not achieve that through the WAFL clubs. Is that a fair criticism? Mr CAPES: It is clearly—what is the word?—rubbish. Is that too strong? I am sorry. I will take that back straightaway. I jumped in a bit. The footy commission oversees everything. They set policy; they set direction; and they set accountabilities. If a club or a group was not delivering what they should have been delivering or assumed to be, it is in the footy commission’s remit to sort that problem out. That is their role. It still is their role. If they do not like what a WAFL club is doing now, it is their role to fix that. I think that criticism is probably a bit not quite right, Mr Nalder. Mr DENNIS: If I can just extend on that as well, and I support Peter’s comments, it just seems to be a very easy fix. If something is not working, we will take over it and do it ourselves. We have seen this through history. It is just the wrong path. It is a little bit more difficult, a little bit more challenging, to enable and to empower, to educate, to upskill, whether it is an employee or whether it is football clubs, to ensure that they improve their delivery and improve their outcomes. Equally, you can say that some clubs that were doing it really well were penalised because they have lost that opportunity now because they centralised it all. Again, it is incumbent on the governing body to ensure more of an educational role, more of an upskilling role, rather than just stripping it away. That has been the MO of the football commission for some time now and it has left the clubs with a total change in its business model from what it has been used to in the past, and it has been quite challenging. Mr CLARK: Can I just jump in there? As a parent, my sons have come through the Claremont Football Club, even though I am at the Perth Football Club now. For the last three years, I have had two boys come through the Colts system at Claremont—one into the AFL system and one now playing reserves. By the commission taking over the Colts, as a parent, I felt completely disconnected to the Claremont football club last year because we rarely played our Colts matches either at the same ground or on the same day as the senior side because the focus is all on talent, it is all on drafting and talent scouts being able to go to one venue. We probably played five games on the same day, I think, that would have been at Claremont Oval as a home game out of the 10. There was a disconnect. I did not actually renew my membership to Claremont last year because there was no value in it because I was not going to the ground in the days the league side was playing. I certainly felt, as a family, a real disconnect from the club as a parent of a player. Now it is a little bit different feeling disconnected because he is over there and I am at another club. But, certainly, in my view, you did not feel part of the WAFL club. Mr D.C. NALDER: Just digressing a little bit, but more on the overseeing by the footy commission of the WAFL, how often would you guys collectively meet with the football commission? Mr TURNER: It is probably fortnightly. We are set for a CEOs meeting fortnightly. The football managers meet as well. They have regular meetings. Our presidents have regular monthly meetings. As far as with the football commission, it is really mainly the CEOs with their fortnightly meeting. Mr D.C. NALDER: I assume there were meetings that were held around concerns about the inconsistency of developing young players and therefore needing to actually strip them out from the WAFL. I assume those sorts of processes were in place for a consultation period. Mr DENNIS: There was. As a result of the Boston Consultancy Group report, there were discussions with all the clubs. It was sold to us that it was critical that the football commission centralise the talent operations in order to attract additional moneys from the AFL. We put forward very strongly to the football commission in these discussions and negotiations that a founding principle of any agreement would be that the model be designed in a way that there is perceived ownership from the clubs into this new model. The reason why that was very important for us was because we had

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 5 to create a sense of belonging and connection to the talent kids. They had to be connected to our clubs, even though we were not running the program. The football commission had centralised it and was running it themselves, but the kids needed to feel as if they belonged to the WAFL club. As we know, there are very few kids that end up going to the AFL draft. The majority of them remain with the club. It is incumbent on us as clubs to ensure that we retain those kids in the football system and, if they go to the AFL and they are not successful, as we know a lot of kids are not, they have a place to return—they have a home to return to. It is critically important, and so we were very strong on that. But it came within a few months of the operation; again stripped at every turn. The football commission returned back to its old remit of centralising everything and, “We will control it all and we will run it all by ourselves. You can voice your opinion, but we ain’t going to listen to it.” The downfall, we felt, is what it has got to right now—an environment where some of those kids, not with all clubs, but some clubs, have disconnected from the club. Mrs L.M. O’MALLEY: Just quickly, on that, in those consultations, was player welfare raised as part of that? Mr DENNIS: I cannot recall that. It was certainly raised on our behalf in relation to protection of the player. The reason why we were strong on it is that we have more of a wraparound service. A lot of that was volunteer‐based because of the nature of where our business models were at, but we have more of a wraparound service with all of our players. Our younger kids, as they are progressing through the talent pathway—14s, 15s, Colts, reserves and league—they have that broader connection to the club through its players, through its support staff, coaching staff and supporters of the club. Through that, we believe there is welfare connected to it. As we have continued as clubs, some of the clubs have actually started their own welfare program. We, for example, have a chaplain for our men’s program and we also have a chaplain for our women’s program. All the clubs, I think, engage with Outside the Locker Room, providing education to all of our players. There are those wraparound services. We are disconnected from what happens in the talent program. We do not get involved with our talent kids. They are not a part of anything that I have just explained to you. It is all in the remit of the football commission. Mr TURNER: If I can just add, to address your concerns, if we go back two years when the clubs were managing it, we actually had an MOU in place. The point of the MOU was if a club was not delivering the expectation of what good looks like, that was put back on the club to lift their game. You had to, through all the processes, actually deliver on the MOU agreement. The CHAIR: Do you see at the moment that the West Australian Football League is considered to just be part of a competition, so there is the West Australian Football League competition, that is your remit from the West Australian Football Commission, and that you are the territorial owners of players in your zones, but you are not to have any responsibility in the development of those players? [2.20 pm] Mr DENNIS: Correct. And the challenge we have, I suppose, is that while there is an expectation that we will be involved with developing players in the higher end, after they finish with the Colts, and reserves, because there are a lot of mature‐age drafts that get picked. This is not picked up within the football commission’s talent program; it is picked up within the WAFL clubs. WAFL clubs do not receive any funding for that. It is just a part of us working together to try to get the best opportunity for our kids, because they are; they are our kids. So, if you were to ask the question of how does the football commission see the WAFL and the WAFL clubs, I see that the picture would be as a poor distant cousin.

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Mr D.C. NALDER: I am trying to understand what the vision is for football in the future and WAFL’s involvement in that. It is sort of sounding like there is not a future. Mr DENNIS: Well, I think there is, and what we have done is the WAFL clubs have worked very closely and have been united in recent months, especially in recent months, in relation to trying to map out our future, because we know we have to have change, we know we have to influence the football commission to embrace that change, and so we have more of a role to play. That started with the innovation strategy, which we managed to get the football commission to help fund. As a result of that—I think the report has been provided to you all—there was a new community model and a new talent model. There was quite a lot of work done behind it. It shows the roles the WAFL clubs can play in helping to deliver community football, helping to deliver talent football and provide far better, far greater returns together with more efficiencies, helping to reduce costs as well— better returns for WA football. Mr D.C. NALDER: Do the WAFL clubs have a consistent view over something like drafting age and whether or not that is too young? I would just like to get a perspective from the clubs, if I could, on that issue, because the commission has indicated to us they believe it is too young, and it is a view I have held personally for a long time, and I would like to understand where the WAFL sits on this matter. Mr CAPES: I think it has been a very strong agreement between all the clubs that the draft age has been too young, for 10 years. And that was always the footy commission’s position as well. They supported that and had always made that voice known to the AFL. So I do not think that policy has changed for a long while. It is just that, with the opportunities that exist right now, it has become a bit of a stronger opportunity, a possibility of that happening, with COVID and less money and smaller lists and things like that. Mr D.C. NALDER: I would have thought those arguments you were making before about development and creating a home for them to come back to would be far stronger if they have had a couple of years, and the rest of the world looking on at the talent would actually give a high profile back into the WAFL if you could get another couple of years where these kids are actually being developed. Is that not something that you guys would be fighting strongly for? Mr CAPES: Absolutely, but, at the same time, I think if there is a player that is 18, and they are an outstanding player and they are ready to play AFL football, then no‐one is wanting to hold them back, if they meet the criteria, if they are mature enough to handle the distance from families and those sorts of—no‐one is trying to stop any of that. But what you suggest is exactly what we think is very important: that players that would play for another year or two with either senior teams or whatever, and they are exposed to different coaches, and that belongingness. Mr D.C. NALDER: Yes, but it is like the NBA. If Kobe Bryant is good enough, he can go straight in, but 90 per cent go through the college system, and so the college system is the pool from which—unless you are an outlier. There are always going to be outliers, but you should not make rules around the exceptions. You actually create the exceptions. Mr S.A. MILLMAN: Because these kids get on these AFL lists and they sit on lists. Not everyone is Sam Walsh getting in and playing 20 games in his first season as an 18‐year‐old. You are going to have all these kids who are sitting on the list as AFL players, sitting on the AFL list for two or three years before they get their first game. The CHAIR: They are not like a Jordan Clark, either, are they! Mr CLARK: Yes! I am a little conflicted on this one, because knowing my son and the chance he had last year, he played 18 games as an 18‐year‐old, but my last 10 weeks have been really, really tough

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 7 as a parent, where he has been injured or missing selection. Yesterday was a much better conversation because he played. But seeing what he has gone through as a 19‐year‐old this year and how much he struggled with being away from family, being away from home and not playing, it is much different to when you are running around playing with all your idols every week. But I look at his year that drafted to Geelong, and there were seven boys drafted. Darcy Fort, who is a 26‐year‐ old, has played; Tom Atkins, who is a 24‐year‐old, has played; and Jordan, who is an 18‐year‐old, played 18 in his first year; but young Kreuger, Kennerley, Jarvis and Tarca, who were all taken the same draft, have not played. Luke English from our club went to Richmond; he has not played. They come back. Their first year back, they are a bit of a mess because their whole world has been turned upside down. They had this dream of playing AFL and making all this money, and suddenly they are back home and the dream has gone. We have got kids like Gordon Narrier and Brennan Stack who are not even playing WAFL footy after they were delisted. You know, they are 20 years old, and 21 or 22, and they are just lost. So, it is a lot harder than people think, and particularly for these young ones. Even these kids this year, if they are a second or third round draft pick, they are on $80 000‐odd. That has been halved down to $40 000, and they are living in a hotel room, staring at the wall and they are not even playing. I question the talk around they grab them this young to develop them. If you know anything about what happens, if you are not in the ones, you are actually a witch’s hat at training. You have to stand—it is all about the ones, so you do not even get the ball that often. Another example is young Jason Carter, who was moved from Claremont down to Peel to fast‐track his development, and three years later he is delisted after two games. Mr D.C. NALDER: My understanding is the stats are something like 50 per cent of kids that get drafted do not even play a game. Mr CLARK: That is my understanding. Mr D.C. NALDER: And the average life of an AFL player is about 30‐something games, so that is about one and a half seasons of total playing. That in itself sounds almost like an indictment on the system, if we are pushing 17‐year‐old kids that we still expect to be finishing their schooling into a system where, on average, they will play one and a half seasons or half of them will not even get a game. Would you agree? Mr TURNER: When a kid gets drafted, he becomes full‐time, does not have an occupation, does not have a skill set, and, to your point, gets turfed out. And that is where, again, the WAFL clubs do stand up. You know, we have got a lot of wonderful supporters that offer these kids jobs and actually start the process to get them into careers. What probably amazed me is that players we have had back to our club that had become full‐time, they did not have résumés, so we have had to start and do résumés for these kids. So I think the system is failing in that particular instance, but it just enhances more why you need that connection to your WAFL club and building that through the Colts competition. Mr D.C. NALDER: This is flipping it a little bit, but saying before it was taken away by the commission, you guys had the connection with these, and they still were not coming back, were they? Mr CAPES: Knowing that you might ask this question, since 2000, we have had 38 drafted at Subiaco; 15 of those have played less than 10 games, and all of those 38 people are back involved in footy in some way, shape or form. They have either come back to our club, gone to another club, or they are playing amateur footy, so none of them have been lost to football in that particular instance. But I know it does happen, and it is an indictment on the relationship people have with their players before they go. That does not always happen; I understand that.

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Mr D.C. NALDER: Do other clubs have statistics as to what the retention rate has been of kids coming back out of the system? Mr CLARK: I do not have stats. As I said, Narrier and Stack are playing football, but in country or amateur level when they are good enough to be playing senior league football. Mr S.A. MILLMAN: I want to ask a question on the point Jeff Dennis made about influencing change. Mr Dennis, you talked about the united front that the WAFL has got going to the footy commission to try to influence change. Is that hard, given that your representation on the commission, or the representation of the WAFL on the commission, is not commensurate with how important you are in footy in WA? You seem under‐represented on the footy commission. [2.30 pm] Mr DENNIS: I am not quite sure about that. I just strongly feel that the football commission management, possibly as an extension of the board, see the role of the WAFL as not being important. Sorry let me rephrase. Yes, it is important, but there is quite a specific role, and that role is a second‐tier competition Mr S.A. MILLMAN: And that is coming back to the Chair’s point before. Mr DENNIS: I am not quite sure whether it is structurally that it is holding it back, but there is certainly intent. The reason I say that—I am sure my colleagues would agree—I have been very, very strong with regards to the football commission in relation to this change. Our club really is on the cutting edge of community connection. I do not think anyone in the football commission would disagree with that. I do not think anyone in the football commission would disagree that our club has the capability and capacity to deliver everything that we have put forward in that community delivery model, yet the counter I always get is that the other clubs cannot do it. So, my counter back to that counter is, “Well, it needs to be your responsibility to ensure that we can upskill the other clubs.” Mr S.A. MILLMAN: Should they not be trying to lift every club up to the best standard? Mr DENNIS: That has been an ongoing and very strong frustration of mine. What we have done recently, we thought, “Okay, well, we can’t control where the football commission is at. What we can control is our own destiny.” That is why we have got together and done this modelling. Our club, together with all the other nine clubs, are very united in that. We are sharing a lot of information. We are sharing a lot about what we do in our regional areas, with Peter and the Kalgoorlie area. We have shared a lot of what of what we are doing in the metropolitan areas, with East Perth and Perth, to ensure we are lifting everyone up. But it just makes it difficult if you do not have the resources provided to you. I am talking minimal—absolutely minimal, if not nothing—has been provided to us in order to help us to get to where we are. What Swan Districts has done has been self‐made. But in saying that, we have done it in a way that our club is financially sustainable. Our club has a bright, strong future. But the future of our club is the future of the WAFL and we have to ensure that we have nine very strong, financially sustainable WAFL clubs. Mr D.C. NALDER: A question I did not think to ask the footy commission. Do you know how much they are now spending on the talent path program? Mr DENNIS: I think they said $5.9 million. If I can just put a point across, I suppose, in case there is some misinterpretation, because they did indicate that $3 million was allocated towards WAFL programs. We do not receive $3 million. I just wanted to make sure that is clear. We receive $55 000 each for accommodation rental because they use our facilities and our training venues. That covers lighting and rates. It covers a lot of overhead costs. That was part of the agreement we had with them at the beginning.

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Mr D.C. NALDER: That is when they took over the—okay, but they are spending how much money? Mr DENNIS: It is $5.9 million. Mr D.C. NALDER: Before they took it over, how much were they allocating to you? Were they allocating that $5.9 million to the WAFL clubs to run it? The CHAIR: I think it was $1.2 million. Mr D.C. NALDER: So they quadrupled the spending around the talent program after they had centralised it? Mr DENNIS: Yes. But what they have said is that as a result of the Boston report is that if they did centralise it, they would receive additional moneys from the AFL. So, they received additional moneys that they did not have previously. That was their justification for centralising it. We work closely with them to ensure that football would not receive those additional moneys on the premise that the WAFL clubs would have this perceived—I say the word “perceived” because we do not own the talent program; it was going to be centralised—to ensure that it was a partnership to ensure that the kids had a home. Mr D.C. NALDER: Is there a viewpoint of the WAFL clubs that the BCG report was written for a predetermined outcome? Mr CAPES: That is what we just wrote down on our notes before we came in. Yes, absolutely. Mr DENNIS: We did, and it was a shame. I think it was evident through their selling process in order to sell a lot of the strategies within that report. It was very evident. The CHAIR: In regard to the Boston Consulting Group report, is it true that since 2017, in your collective view, that the centralisation of operations from the West Australian Football Commission has increased significantly? Mr CAPES: Yes, Mr Chair, that is true. The CHAIR: Can I go on, Mr Dennis, with regard to your submission from the Swan Districts Football Club. You mention in your submission under “Leadership”, and I am quoting here from, I think, the fourth paragraph where it states — It is of great concern to our club that a WAFC Executive Manager would tell their staff that this enquiry is “a dog and pony show” and that “the State Government cannot tell the Commission what to do”. I have another quote that I want to relay to you in a minute. In regards to that comment you made in the submission, do have you any comment? Mr DENNIS: Yes, I do, other than it was reported to us through our staff who were at that meeting. Our staff has contacted other people at that meeting. Everyone he has contacted has indicated yes, that was said, but there is the fear of reprisal in this system. I am sure you are well aware, in relation to taking it any further, it is difficult; it is very challenging. That fear of reprisal covers all of us. It covers all of our clubs as well. It has got to a stage where we think: okay, we need to put a line in the sand here. We need to stand up and be heard. The CHAIR: We really do appreciate you coming today. We understand the situation. I did put that to Mr Simon Moore‐Crouch at the hearing. Is that the individual that people were referring to? Mr DENNIS: Correct. The CHAIR: This next quote from your submission —

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It is also a concern that a WAFC Board member recently canvassed our club’s CEO in a meeting and subsequent email, and also Board members at a home match day to not provide a submission to the PAC. The Board member suggested that football should only have one submission to the PAC, being from the Chairman, Wayne Martin. Do you stand by that? Mr DENNIS: Correct, and I have that in writing too. The CHAIR: All right. Thank you. Mrs L.M. O’MALLEY: I come back to your opening comments around unlocking opportunity in the community, particularly revenue and volunteering. Acknowledging the massive growth in female participation in football, now that I have you here, how do you see the role of women in your club’s future directions? Mr DENNIS: I might drop in first if that is okay, because this is a number one priority for our club. Mrs L.M. O’MALLEY: I mean participation at all levels. Mr DENNIS: Absolutely. With the priority as it is, we have managed to source additional funds from the federal government in order to build a new women’s football change room. We resource our women’s program quite considerably and that is a growing investment. There are not the returns that pay for that yet, but we see it as a wonderful opportunity to speak to the half of the population WAFL clubs have been traditionally very bad at speaking to. That wraparound, strategic priority is not just about getting girls down to Steel Blue Oval to play football; it goes far deeper than that. We do connect very strongly with our junior clubs that play women’s football. They come along to our games; they have training sessions at the games. We get them to play in front of our WAFLW home games, so it is more of that community connection. It is that deeper sense of strategy than just trying to get a team to win a premiership. Mrs L.M. O’MALLEY: I am glad to hear that because it could be viewed as occasionally being a little bit tokenistic or that it is simply about attracting funding. Given that women make up 50 per cent of the population or thereabouts, as you mentioned, unlocking those opportunities, particularly through volunteering, committee participation and these sorts of things, it is good to hear that in your view that is an important part of the future strategy of WAFL. Mr DENNIS: It is not just the commercial reality, so all of a sudden you are tapping into this untapped market that we have not been good at tapping into in the past, but it also brings a tremendous atmosphere around the club—that camaraderie, that collegiate sort of feel that a lot of the men’s programs that I have seen at our club really do not have or have lost a little bit. All of a sudden we bring the women along and have these joint presentation evenings and it is just a wonderful sense of community. There is only uplift. There is still a long way for us to go but we certainly see it as the number one priority for our club. [2.40 pm] Mr V.A. CATANIA: On community involvement and participation, when it comes to country football and the lack of emphasis by the commission on country football, what role does the commission say that you, as WAFL clubs, play in terms of igniting country football—providing that support and seeing what talent is out there in the regions and also your ability as clubs to financially go out to regional towns to be able to showcase your sides but also have those discussions with aspiring local football talent that wants to make it to the AFL or WAFL one day? Do you have in place some sort of fixed goals to be able to go once a year out to the regions? What financial support does the

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 11 commission play in assisting you? Do they also push you as a WAFL club to be able to go out to the regions? Mr CAPES: First of all, I think every WAFL club acknowledges the importance of country football. We have all got lots of country players on our lists and acknowledge that our roots are fairly deep when it comes to the country areas. It is a bit difficult. It sounds like we are picking on the footy commission, but when they took over the talent model, effectively they took a lot of our stronger links with country areas. Younger kids, with their families, are moving to Perth to play football. That is part of the journey they make. That was where you get strong connections back to your country areas. All clubs—I will just speak about ours: we have a talent squad that operates in Kalgoorlie. We work in conjunction with our talent manager, who is a football commission–paid employee. He delivers that and does a great job doing that. Again, our role is to encourage that, to have links with the key people in that country town. We have people that go to grand finals, to best and fairest nights, to maintain those types of relationships going forward. Even though we do not get any funding for that, because that is wrapped up in the talent pathway and funding those people to do that, it is still the club’s responsibility to maintain links. In addition to that, the football commission have paid full‐time employees—in our case, in Kalgoorlie. I think there are seven or eight full‐paid employees in different country towns. We are hoping, with the innovation project that Jeff has been talking about, that WAFL clubs would have a stronger role with coordinating what those people do and how they get involved in football, and working back through with community and with talent and doing a one‐stop shop type thing that they are currently out doing now. Mr V.A. CATANIA: When it comes to places like Kalgoorlie, Geraldton, Bunbury or Albany, it is quite easy to be able to get your WAFL teams there, but in terms of your areas like the Gascoyne, Kimberley, Pilbara, often it is — Mr DENNIS: Price inhibitive. Mr V.A. CATANIA: — price or you are relying on your sponsorship, whether you have got BHP as one of your sponsors or what have you, to be able to provide some of that financial assistance to go out to those regional areas. I notice, from my perspective, we have not had a WAFL match in Carnarvon—I think South Fremantle is our area, we are part of the South Fremantle catchment area. The CHAIR: Aren’t you Claremont, Carnarvon? Mr V.A. CATANIA: No, no, South Fremantle. We have not had a WAFL match there for about six years, if not longer. Mr CAPES: There used to be funding, of course, to do games. Each club would have, every three years, an opportunity to go and play. They would choose which part of their country zone they would play in. Mr V.A. CATANIA: Who would fund that? Mr CAPES: The Department of Sport and Recreation and—what are they called?—Communities. They would fund it. From memory, about $100 000 a year went into a fund that enabled three teams every year to play a country game or to go to a country game. Of course that does not go very far if you are going to Port Hedland. That sort of funding was more for local. Mr V.A. CATANIA: The situation I see of not having that WAFL involvement in certain country areas leads to your association, where it is the Gascoyne Football Association, they end up suffering because of the lack of involvement or the aspirations of people wanting to play football and moving up the ladder, or having someone to come and watch them play, which also leads to the lack of

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 12 volunteering that is occurring all over the state, but particularly in regional areas where it is difficult to attract those volunteers to be coaches or part of the administration. Then there is the added burden of having to be hundreds and hundreds of kilometres away from your footy match. Everything is working against country football in certain areas. And then the lack of participation by the commission, or the lack of funding that is actually filtering down to the country football leagues, we are really seeing country football, in my mind, really disappearing. Other areas, whether it be soccer—women’s football is gaining momentum—but other sports are starting to now leapfrog AFL in our regional towns. Mr CLARK: Having lived in Albany for five years, the ability for Claremont to jump on a plane and fly down for $128, go and do clinics in town and jump back on a plane and go to Perth, for an hour’s flight each way, captured 95 per cent of their zone in the great southern. Perth, we have got Quairading, Kellerberrin out to Dowerin—it is far harder to service a region of that size, with each of us having no funding to do that. The issue is we have four academies out in our regions and now I have got to set up through our talent manager that rely on dads at those towns to run those clinics so these boys can—and the club supplied all their training uniforms and those sorts of things for them so they could feel more part of Perth. Our biggest regional town is Northam, with about 9 000 people in it. It is a little bit harder for us to service the size of our region than it is to fly into Geraldton or into Bunbury or whatever. It is very much different. Mr TURNER: If I can just build on your point: we are very fortunate. We have Busselton, Margaret River, Dunsborough, so we have got a fantastic—and over 55 per cent of our Colts players are in the region. Every region is going to be different. The thing that a local WAFL club that may help your area is when these young kids come down, the employment opportunities, which may not be up there where you are. But again, it is different. Every local community is different. That is why a decentralised model, clubs with zoning, is the best option. Mr V.A. CATANIA: I am glad you mentioned decentralisation. Much like the AFL expands all over the country, do you see the WAFL having the ability to really be a Western Australian football league by perhaps having a team in the north west and spreading their wings? Mr CLARK: With the current level of funding! Mr D.C. NALDER: It is hard enough running it at Peel, is it not? Mr V.A. CATANIA: No; but when you do have companies like BHP who do put a lot of money into the Eagles, I would imagine—we have got resources companies up north, plus if you were able to be a truly Western Australian association for football, and the amount of talent that comes out of the north west, for example, or down in the great southern, surely into the future one of the aspirations and visions is to be a truly Western Australian competition and spread those teams around Western Australia. Just a comment. Mr D.C. NALDER: I do not think it is their responsibility! Mr DENNIS: Can I just put a slightly different lens on the regional connection? Our club is slightly different than other clubs. We have around 15 staff in the Pilbara. We have a very well‐resourced program of football. It has just got nothing to do with football because the football commission have taken that from us. Let us wind the clock back seven or eight years ago; we were running that. We were providing our staff, we were providing that service for the football commission, but again it was centralised and taken away from us. We have staff in Onslow, Port Hedland and Newman. We have strong partnerships, not only corporate partnerships but partnerships with all those LGAs— East Pilbara, Port Hedland and Onslow. We are exploring opportunities to expand into other markets within the Pilbara. We have boots on the ground. We have the capability and the capacity to be able

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 13 to deliver football right through the Pilbara. Instead, it is centralised and there is a person in Karratha who very, very rarely gets out to those communities. But we have people in those communities. Yes, we do still play a role in football because we are there, but we are not paid for that. We do not receive any resources for that. So, if it was aligned and it was decentralised, devolved, into our responsibility, we could provide better outcomes with more efficiencies. [2.50 pm] Mr V.A. CATANIA: And I must say hats off to V Swans and the Stephen Michael Foundation in Carnarvon, who do plug quite a few holes, especially when it comes to volunteering and organising our associations. Without those two, we probably would not have a football competition at all. The CHAIR: Mr Millman has to leave now, but he did ask a question about your voting ability in the voting of commissioners on to the West Australian Football Commission board. As you would very well know, the Fremantle Football Club has 20 per cent, the West Coast Eagles have 20 per cent and the existing commissioners have 20 per cent, so that is a 60 per cent voting bloc. West Australian Football League clubs have 30 per cent, and then there is 10 per cent of the affiliates. Do you see that as an issue? In one of the submissions—I think it might have been Swan Districts—you mentioned that you did not think the board members should be members of the Australian Football Commission. Mr DENNIS: Correct; I just think that is a little out of the normal. If it is a member‐based incorporated body, the members, the stakeholders, need to be members of that body and they need to have total control about who is elected on to their board. The way this has been crafted, where the board members have self‐imposed membership to the incorporated body, I just do not think is fair nor reasonable. It is probably designed that way through history. When the football commission first started 40 years ago, there was probably a need to have control about who was going to be on the board. I get that. Forty years later, if football has not sophisticated itself enough as a sport in order to allow the members to control who gets on to that board, I think some questions need to be asked. Yes, I think having the football commission as a 20 per cent vote of who gets on that board should not be there. The CHAIR: In your submission, Mr Dennis, you also mentioned that the WAFC undertakings in the reappointment of Murray McHenry in 2019 was unconstitutional. How so? Mr HODYL: Back in the election process, there were some significant failings in procedures via the constitution where it specifically outlines the time line as to when applications are called for nominations. Then there is a specific time line for when those applications have to be received and then how they are presented to the members of the West Australian Football Commission; they are normally members. At that time, Mr McHenry had already completed his ninth year, and that generally was the maximum you could go. Then, from there, unless there is a special circumstance— at that time, there was no‐one, I do not think, that the West Australian Football Commission had identified as an acceptable replacement in their own eyes. Mr McHenry then nominated to continue under that extraordinary circumstance for one more year. However, the date of Mr McHenry’s application was post the date within the constitution as set out. That was brought to bear at the special general meeting. I presented that to the members, who acknowledged that, but voted to continue that and approve that position anyway. It was acknowledged that it was outside of the constitution arrangements, yet the WAFC executive and board elected to pass it through anyway, so that was the outcome of that.

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The CHAIR: And there is no provision in the constitution that would allow that extraordinary appointment to take place? Mr HODYL: Can you say that again? The CHAIR: Is there any provision in the constitution that allows that extraordinary appointment to be ratified? Mr HODYL: No; the only one that I am aware of was you could go an extra year in the case of an extraordinary circumstance. All the members still had to vote to endorse that appointment and it was carried, so that is where it pretty much ends. You say, “Okay, it was a natural process”, but it was still against the guidelines of our constitution. The CHAIR: What is the commission doing right? Mr CAPES: I think quite a few things. We are not here to drag them down. I think broadly the participation type of work they have been doing for a long period of time has shown some increasing numbers. I think their reported numbers that are playing football in the junior space and things like that are reasonably impressive. How you count them I think is really up to anyone’s guess, but it is a national perspective and I think their numbers are really good in that respect. Certainly, in women’s football, they have done a great job on that. There are those couple of areas, I think. And engaging with LGAs about facility renewal and improvements, I think we would give them a tick with that, even though we are still waiting for a lot of those things to come through the system, but they have all been identified and worked on. There are a couple of things that they do reasonably well. The CHAIR: The WA Football Commission told us that they commit $10.5 million on an annual basis to the WAFL clubs, $5 million in cash distribution and $5.5 million in its own operating costs. Does that seem correct to you? Mr CAPES: No, Mr Chairman. I do not know where that number has come from. Their own figures are at $7.98 million, even though we have asked quite often what that actually is about. The WAFL clubs get approximately $4.5 million distributed between the clubs, so in my maths that leaves $3.48 million that we are unsure about what gets spent and on what—and we have asked. The CHAIR: And you have not got an answer? Mr CAPES: No. Mr D.C. NALDER: One of the things that has come out of this in the number of meetings we have had is transparency. Can we just talk about that for a sec? I want to go both ways on this: one is transparency of the relationship between the WAFL clubs and the commission, but then also the transparency within the WAFL clubs and what they are doing. I will just stick with the commission first; this is just financial matters. Are you able to elaborate more on this transparency issue and your views on it? Mr DENNIS: I suppose there is an ongoing concern that we, the WAFL clubs, have had, and this is something that is chatted amongst the WAFL clubs ad nauseam—just trying to get all the information, the detailed information. We understand that some things are under privilege and cannot be released, but there is a whole lot of information we feel that could be released. If we are all working off actual data, real data—not hype, not spin, and not, as was put forward, promotional figures—we are in a far better place to come up with a co‐design approach to deal with challenges. That is an ongoing issue that we have, trying to get information—even information feeding into the recent innovation project. We came up with the modelling and we are trying to get the validation of some of the numbers put into the financial modelling inside those models. It is very, very difficult.

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Mr CAPES: Just to add to that, if I may: all clubs have an issue and have had that discussion with the football commission about a lack of trust between the two parties, and the lack of trust, I think, stems largely from the accountability issues, the transparency of numbers, the transparency of roles and all our expectations. Probably a bit of that goes both ways—I acknowledge that—but we have been quite clear in the fact that there is a trust issue between clubs and the football commission, and I think it stems from a lot of those types of things. [3.00 pm] Mr D.C. NALDER: What is being done to try to resolve that from both sides, from your position? You know, there is a lot of chatter, but is there action being taken? Are you guys working together to try to resolve that with the commission? Mr DENNIS: I think evidence of that is the recent modelling that we have done, and we have put those project models in front of them recently in the last two weeks. That is generally trying to develop a co‐ design in how do we best facilitate a model or create a model that could improve delivery of football in both talent and WAFL? The paper does not say, “We want you just to transfer all responsibility of running those programs to us”; it is indicating a co‐design principle. I think that is a start. Mr CAPES: In addition, when Mr Martin was in the other day—the chairman of the football commission—he spoke that the footy commission were willing to entertain a devolution of programs. We were really heartened to hear that. I know they had probably spoken about that behind closed doors and that before, but that was quite open. He spoke about clubs having the capacity, the willingness, to be monitored, service levels to remain and monitoring financials and things like that and not helping clubs win premierships. That seems to be then underwriting lack of trust in clubs in devolving things that they will somehow use that devolution of power to assist in winning games. Mr D.C. NALDER: Go and buy a player or something like that. Mr CAPES: That type of thing. To be fair, I would feel, and we all sort of work quite closely, that I think clubs are well past that. Mr D.C. NALDER: One of the things that is coming out of this is about the survival of the WAFL itself. I get that there is a unified—but, how much trust is there amongst each other within the WAFL? How much do you openly share with each other as to what you are spending, what you are raising and things like that? I understand there might be confidential sponsorship arrangements, and I get contracts that need to be kept in confidence, but how much do you guys work together in actually going, “You know what? It’s tribal and we want to beat you out in the field, but behind, we want us all to succeed”? I just want to get a sense, you know, of the transparencies amongst yourselves and whether that is existing. Mr CLARK: If I can jump in on that one. Obviously, East Perth, Swans and Perth have worked extensively together over the last eight to 10 weeks on the innovation project for our metro district because we share the same district. Through Swan’s generosity and sharing how they have gone about their community models, Perth Football Club has now secured three new partners that total $120 000 per year in real cash as partnerships in our community, and it will create two employment spaces in the Indigenous sector—one to work with our young Indigenous players in our club and the other to work with the Banyjima people and their leadership program with their people who are down here in Perth. We want to beat the Swans in two weeks’ time out at Bassendean and hopefully secure a finals berth for the first time in 23 years, but off the field, Swans have been fantastic in what they have shared with us, and the same thing with Dean at East Perth. I think we realise nowadays that you

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 16 try to win on the weekend and flags are important, but premierships do not necessarily top up your bank account for too long. The money is out there in the partnerships with the community. We feel we have lost a bit of our connection with our community. We want kids to aspire to play for their local club, aspire to play in our junior talent programs, aspire to play colts. As I said to our futures and our colts the other day, we want you to aspire to play for the Perth Football Club, and then hopefully go to the next part of your dream, but first and foremost here. We have worked really well together, I think, for a time. I have only been back in football for six months, but certainly, it has been really pleasing the results that our club has got out of sharing from Swan Districts. Mr STEWART: I am the president of the East Fremantle Football Club; I am also the chair of the council of presidents. Just to add in to the comments there, part of my role has been getting the presidents together—we actually have a meeting tomorrow night—but also meeting with the CEOs on a fortnightly basis. To answer your question, they are working very closely; however, there can be frank conversations. There can be a CEO who might chip at another CEO and say, “Hang on, this is not where we’re going; this is how we’re doing it.” There will be a president who might chip another president and say, “Hang on, this is not where we’re going, this is how we’re going.” Amongst the clubs, there is at times frank and honest conversations behind closed doors. Mrs L.M. O’MALLEY: A quick question just on reporting. There is the public year‐end report that the football commission provides. Do the WAFL clubs get to see beyond that? Do you get access to additional information about participation, financial performance, cost staffing, that kind of thing from the football commission’s report? Mr CAPES: There are some detailed figures provided at times on, sort of, participation numbers. That is very accountable, I think—all those sort of numbers. Mrs L.M. O’MALLEY: This is beyond what is publicly available? Mr CAPES: Yes, I think, that we provide. I know there is information available, say, for every district and whether the kid plays footy or not, what residents are at—there is a whole range of information. Intelligence is available through that process that enables—that is deeper than just an annual report, I think, yes. Mrs L.M. O’MALLEY: What about on financials, staffing and that kind of thing? Mr CAPES: No; financials is closely guarded. The CHAIR: One of the areas that obviously, you know, beneath the WAFL club we have all the affiliates, which of course are very important for you. You get some of your talent from there and some of your players end up in the affiliates. They only have a 10 per cent stake in the voting of the commissioners. Do you have a comment on that? Mr DENNIS: Yes, I do not think that is representative. Clearly, that is not representative, but the question that our club has was that 20 per cent with the football commission. There is scope to readjust the distribution. The CHAIR: There is a funding agreement between the state government and the West Australian Football Commission. You have not been privy to that, have you? Mr DENNIS: No, and I have requested that information and clearly, with commercial‐in‐confidence, we could not receive the details behind it. The CHAIR: What I am about to say now was disclosed in a hearing. There is a clause, obviously, in the agreement that states that around $11 million that the state provides—I mean, the footy commission says it is football money, whatever, but in the end it is the state that has agreed to that money to be given to the football commission, to be used for development of community football

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 17 and also talent development. You basically said it, but what do you actually see? What actually is community football? Mr DENNIS: I think the football commission would see that as participation. I think their key metric is participation. I do not think they are unreserved with that. It is participation. Swan Districts Football Club see that through a different lens. We see that its personal, community and social impact is the big driver. That is what frames who we are as a club. It is not the output of participation or draft picks. That plays into, that feeds into that logic model that we have and it is important to us too—broader participation, community participation—but it goes through to outputs, outcomes, impact, and the impact that defines who we are is a sense of belonging, a sense of self‐worth and resilience. That is a fundamental driver with everything we do with our senior football programs, and we have a wide variety of community programs, whether Aboriginal teenage girls, Aboriginal kids at risk, we have just youth at‐risk programs, we have programs with working with people with disability, partnering with schools, we have funding from the justice department, disability WA, a wide range of regional as well as metropolitan LGAs, schools. We have a real strong connection with what we do. If we can deliver those impacts really well, we will pick up all the participation. Everything else will come, but we have got to have that strong connection, a broad and deep connection, through to our community. The football commission, I think, is driven by participation. I think it falls short. The CHAIR: Peter, you have outlined and I think Perth outlined about how many players that got drafted then come back to your club or are still in football. Do all the clubs keep track of their former players or players in their zones that have been drafted and if they do not make the AFL or every type in AFL or delisted, where they end up going? Mr CAPES: I think intuitively they would. As an example, I think East Fremantle currently have on the list five or six players that have come off AFL lists maybe in the last two years. If a club is not following up on the players who got drafted from their club and where they are now and what they are doing, they lose the opportunity to have some reasonable players at their clubs in the first place. I imagine everybody does that reasonably well, I would think, yes. [3.10 pm] The CHAIR: One of the concerns that has developed over the hearings so far is this issue about the young players who are drafted who either do not make it or its two or three years and then they are out. They are not just lost to football; in many respects, they are lost to society or they become marginalised. What is the answer? Mr CAPES: I did not say everyone did that well, by the way. They all have a go at it. Look, it is very difficult because I think there are different parts of the system. They come out of your club and go into a talent academy that someone else is running and then they might go to an AFL club that again someone else is running, and there are cracks in between each one. Someone thinks they are leaving this particular thing to go somewhere else and someone else will pick it up. I guess the issue that most WAFL clubs have always had is that when they come out of an AFL system, they are not always aware of exactly what is going on in their lives. Player managers play a big part in it. If you are lucky enough—well, not lucky enough. If you have followed up and still have contact with that person, you are aware of where they are in their life, and then you are there to assist them to move on, but that does not always happen. Mr HODYL: If I could just add to that, Mr Chairman. I would be very surprised if any WAFL club did not keep a very close connection with their players, as they are drafted at 17 years of age. We have followed them, we have guided them and we have got them to a certain point. The evidence is there; we know very few of them are going to stay on board. I know our people are in continued

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 18 contact with all these young fellows who might be drafted off to Brisbane or somewhere else without their families. Our football people keep close contact with them. Inevitably, though, when their dream evaporates, they come back and their only real chance to be back involved with football is to go back to their home, back to their clubs, because they are now out of that talent pathway system. But then we can keep them moving through—a lot of players get a second opportunity at 22, 23 or 24 years of age—and that is what all the WAFL clubs drive to do. Hopefully, then, if they do not get that opportunity, then they will play 100 or 200 games for our local WAFL clubs and then maybe go back and coach juniors or whatever. Strong connections—we all know how famous Nic Naitanui is. Nic has an enormously strong bond with the Swan Districts Football Club, yet he has not played with Swan Districts since he was drafted. However, the continued connection with Nicholas over his whole football journey has always been there. Even the guys who are gonna play 300 AFL games, and we hope—I am sure Nic will come back at some point when his career is finished and he will contribute a bit to our younger people coming through as well. The CHAIR: What is that famous street that they all — Mr HODYL: Busby Street. The CHAIR: Have you got a development officer living there? Mr HODYL: We have—no, we do not. The great players always find their way to the biggest stage. We can provide them with an opportunity, but the cream always floats to the top and those people get there eventually. Mr STEWART: In East Fremantle’s case, we would take a group of people—the CEO, possibly myself, the coach, the football director—to Melbourne each year. All the players who are playing in Melbourne—Harry Taylor would be an example, we might go down to Geelong and catch up with him. Then we might shoot over to Sydney, catch up with our East Fremantle people over there; Aliir Aliir would be another example. Then we might go to Brisbane. Each year, we would do that sort of thing to stay connected with them to look at the career path going back. The challenge for us is that you have players, say, from Geraldton and you want to keep that connection. Mr D.C. NALDER: The problem often is not with the guys who have paid 150, 200 or 300 games. They are the ones who every club get back because they are the mentors for the young people coming through. What worries me is those who are destroyed and they have never played a game of AFL; their dreams have been shattered. Look, I understand the difficulty of that. There will always be some who fall through the cracks. I just worry that because we draft them so young and there is so much churn in that system, that there is too many who are lost to the system altogether. Mr STEWART: In our case, whether they have played or not, if they are on the list, we would still engage with them and catch up with them. The CHAIR: And there is also those who do not get drafted who think they are going to get drafted. They would maybe get a second chance but a lot of them will not. Mr HODYL: Further to your comments, Mr Nalder, the draft age is not set by the West Australian Football Commission; it is a national body. To be quite frank, their interest is in being a corporate entity designed to be the biggest and the best at what they do, and they will do whatever they need to to remain at the pinnacle of where they are. Mr D.C. NALDER: I would like to clarify, from a government perspective, we are not here to tell football how to run football, and we should never be there. But as a government we are there to represent the broader community of Western Australia and as a government we put considerable

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 19 funds into football, whether that be through the infrastructure, like a stadium, or whether it be the money that is handed over to the WA footy commission. We have a responsibility on behalf the Western Australian community to ensure that that is being invested in a way that the community expects. There are some question marks that have been raised through this process, whether it be submissions through yourselves or other people or comments that have been made through this hearing. For us, it raises the question of whether or not it could be done better. Mrs L.M. O’MALLEY: Finishing off the Colts conversation. The Colts are registered with the different clubs, but the program is fundamentally being run by another body—by the commission. Is that an additional barrier to tracking where they go and where they go after or does it not really impact? I am just curious. Mr STEWART: I suppose there are a couple of things in all of that. I am sure these gentlemen here will add their comments. From an East Fremantle perspective, let us take Geraldton and the midwest. You could have a team that has a bye, so the ability to maybe grab one of those young fellows—let us say Brigades is having a bye, let us grab one of their Colts to play in the East Fremantle Colts this week. The complexity of going through the commission to deal with that to make that work and to then get approved is where a club should be in control of doing that to develop that young person and create the pathway. The CHAIR: One of the biggest changes seems to be, since 2017 and Boston Consulting report, the Colts now being run by the commission. Have there been any advantages in that change, in your view? Mr CAPES: Yes, there has been. I think Mr Nalder might have mentioned before some standards across the competition. I think they are probably better. The talent managers certainly look far more collegiate in how they go about business. They meet regularly their interest is about trying to improve what they do. I think those are two big advantages. If they see someone else doing something better, they are well aware of it. I think those two things have been done reasonably well. The whole system comes down to the personality who it has employed. That is not a structure; it is a personality game. If everyone gets on well with the person who is appointed by the football commission, it is all beer and skittles. But when it all falls apart, it falls apart pretty quickly. The CHAIR: We are running out of time soon, and some of the interchange might want to come back on board. What would you like to most change about WA football? Mr DENNIS: To decentralise the football commission’s operations for them to enable and to empower, upskill, train or whatever is required to ensure we maximise efficiencies, we reach more people, we connect with more people and as a result have more people connected and engaged with our game. We see the WAFL clubs being best positioned to do that. Do we all have the capability and capacity at the moment? No. But that is where the opportunity lies. If it is played out well, there is a tremendous upside not only in the outputs of participation and AFL drafts; the powerful outputs on impact—personal, community and social impacts. The WAFL clubs can go back to where they were 30 or 40 years ago, and be powerful community influencers. Sport 30 years ago, as I have said before, was the hub of community. In the last 30 years, I think, across all sports, there has been a systemic focus on talent—on how to produce the next AFL player; how do we produce the next Olympian? The root nature of sporting clubs in the past was building community, connecting with people. Sport has largely been losing that because it has been focused on talent development programs, coach development programs, producing the next AFL player or the Olympic athlete. I would like to think that we can still do that, but we can also return to our roots. The WAFL clubs can be the heart and soul of the communities to which they belong in both metropolitan and, absolutely equally, regional communities. It is of critical importance. We have to

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 20 create an opportunity that any kid—male, female, whatever race or religion—has the same opportunity as any other kid no matter where they live around the state. [3.20 pm] Mr CAPES: I can only just support Mr Dennis’s words there. Again, I think someone might have said that it did not look all that positive for WAFL clubs. On the contrary, I think with the work we have done, we are all very, very positive about our future going forward, where there is devolution of programs that we can all work together on to make sure that we are making use of all the expenditure that is available in footy and to make sure there are not different pillars, but that we are all working together on football as a whole, and the community. I think that is the great strength of the thing we are proposing. The CHAIR: Anyone else like to make a comment on that? Mr STEWART: We have to use this opportunity, three, four or five years from now, to actually look back and say, “Hey, football is the sport that is best placed to look after the community.” I think we have to move away from a dysfunctional relationship to how we can be honest and have trust, as we talked about earlier, so that the community can look upon football as a solution to a lot of the social problems in society. Mr TURNER: I am only really echoing what Jeff proposes. What I would love to do with footy is get clubs running footy again. I think the strength of the footy commission is its governance, its management and all those sorts of things to help clubs be better. We have a situation at the moment where I hear things like, “They’ll only get the money and pass it on to the players.” Well, you cannot do that because there is a salary cap and governance models. Some of those things are in the past; they are 10 or 15 years ago. I think there is a connection to community, led by Swan Districts, and clubs can now realise connection to community, not only within a football framework but using the football link to become really, really strong in the community. I think that is where most of the clubs we spoke to are. Every club will be different; that is a strength. You cannot expect East Perth to be like Claremont, because that is just not the way the demographics work; sometimes there are differences. But as long as clubs are getting great outcomes for football and footballers, not just East Perth Football Club, but clubs in our area like Ellenbrook Football Club, Mt Lawley Football Club, Mt Hawthorn Football Club, and Coolbinia Football Club. It sounds ironic, but East Perth is following Coolbinia because Coolbinia is taking the lead on disability and the women’s side and doing great stuff, so just let clubs be clubs again, and I think that would really help the future direction. Mr D.C. NALDER: If I were to summarise the general sense of what has been contributed today by the WAFL clubs, would it be fair to say that, through the influence of the AFL, the West Australian Football Commission is not leveraging the potential of the WAFL as much as it could be? Mr DENNIS: Correct. Mr CAPES: Correct. The CHAIR: Could I just follow that up? We talked a lot about development. The WAFL clubs’ involvement in junior development has been severely diminished. You still have some participation in that area at the moment. Does the commission give you funding for any of that development? Mr DENNIS: We have participation in that area and we have worked for the last three years quite closely and invested reasonably heavily. We have also brought in new commercial partners to help us fund the delivery of some of those programs as well. We do not receive anything from the football commission—or, if we do, it is very, very minimal, in order to do that. As I said to the guys earlier today, it is almost at the stage where the football commission now has an expectation from our club that that is what we will do, but we do not need to do that. It is not in our remit. We do it because it

Public Accounts Monday, 24 August 2020 — Session Two Page 21 is the community club we are. There are other drivers behind that. If there was financial support from the football commission, we could quadruple what we do. There is so much more we could do. The CHAIR: Do the other clubs concur with that? The WITNESSES: Yes. The CHAIR: Okay. John, do you have any comments before we close up? Mr DITCHBURN: I thank my colleagues here; I think they have done a wonderful presentation. I will comment on a couple of different areas. Lisa, you commented on the girls’ program. We have taken the girls under our wing. Only two years ago they were part of a different competition. We have taken them in‐house now, and our game day looks like two girl games, two boy games, and they have become an integral part of our footy club. We are spending a lot of time with all the junior girl competitions, which have grown at a massive rate in the Peel region. We are a regional club, as the committee knows—the only one in the WAFL—and we are a little bit unique in some of the things we do, but unlike Swan Districts and some of their community programs, we have taken a bit of a different line in going down the recycling, the Containers for Change scheme in particular, because of the massive unemployment in the Mandurah region. You probably heard today that it is, I think, now 18 per cent unemployment. We have trained 60 people from the Jobactive and disability schemes to work in that program, and obviously that is going to give some players, particularly those who come back out of the AFL system and do not have any skills at all because they go at such a young age, many opportunities through that scheme. We do not know what the future of funding looks like going forward, so we have to come up with our own financial sustainability programs to make sure that we can follow our motto, which is Building a Stronger Community, and that is certainly part of it—the talent program. We are different in that we do not have a university, so a lot of our kids move to the city. The fact that our zone is locally zoned, some of them would prefer to live in Perth or maybe Mandurah, or the Bunbury guys move to Perth. We have different challenges, but we all look at it differently and our main aim is to make sure that we can retain kids in our region to play football for us, and they all come back. I follow everything that all these guys have said today, and we look forward to a favourable outcome. The CHAIR: Thank you very much. Thank you all for your evidence before the committee. We will forward a copy of this hearing to you for correction of transcription errors. Please make these corrections and return the transcript within 10 working days of receipt. If the transcript is not returned within this period, it will be deemed to be correct. New material cannot be introduced via these corrections, and the sense of your evidence cannot be altered. Should you wish to provide additional information or elaborate on particular points, please include a supplementary submission for the committee’s consideration when you return your corrected transcript of evidence. Once again, thank you very much for coming in today. We really appreciate it. Hearing concluded at 3.26 pm ______