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2009 AIS Athlete of the Year

I acknowledge the traditional owners of this land, the Ngunnawal people, and pay my respect to elders past and present.

And I welcome:
- Australian Sports Commission Chairman Greg Hartung and Deputy Chair Alisa Camplin
- Australian Sports Commission Board Members
- Australian Olympic Committee, Secretary General Craig Phillips
- Sport industry colleagues
- Athletes
- Coaches
- Staff
- Ladies and gentlemen.

As Minister for Sport it's always a great pleasure to attend this night-of-nights - the AIS Annual Awards.

Tonight presents a moment to reflect on your achievements over the past year - and the highlights have been remarkable.

In the past 28 years the AIS has nurtured many of Australia's most successful athletes and 2009 has again seen some amazing performances by AIS athletes.

And that's why we're here tonight  to recognise the hard work, sacrifice and dedication of over 100 athletes.

The awards are a chance to celebrate the achievements of our most successful athletes and inspire those who will soon follow in their footsteps.

This is also a great opportunity for me to thank the amazing staff of the AIS and the Australian Sports Commission for the hard work that you do. In my many dealings with you, I am frequently astonished at the professionalism, dedication and hard work that you put in and I thank you for that. You do a great service for us all.

It's my view that tonight is about celebration and recognition, not the night for soapboxes - but if I can just address the elephant in the room very briefly, I can inform you that the "Crawford report" and its findings will be released next week.

Following that release we will have the opportunity to discuss and debate its contents and the Government will then respond.

If I can drop just one bombshell for you tonight& I'm happy to talk to you about one thing the report does not contain. There is absolutely no recommendation to cut funding to sport by 15% or any other amount. It's not there. It doesn't exist  it's total rubbish.

And I'll tell you something else  even if it was recommended, and it isn't, we would rule it out point blank. Our Government has said on the record on many occassions that we intend to remain strong financial partners with Australian sport. The Prime Minister has made clear that he values our partnership with our Olympians.

We have absolutely no intention of walking away from that- instead we want to strengthen our sports sector- and that is why we've undertaken this process.

But there'll be plenty more time to discuss that.

That said - back to the reason we're all here  to celebrate the achievements of our sportspeople  and firstly to our up-and-coming stars.

The AIS Junior Athlete of the Year award, which this year is supported by Nestle.

Past winners include NBA basketballer Lauren Jackson and cycling champion Michael Rodgers  making this award something of a good omen.

I'm sure that we'll all watch tonight's winner carefully over the coming years.

The list of nominees this year is long  reinforcing the depth of Australia's junior sporting talent and the role of the AIS in nurturing the next generation of sporting stars.

So let's now take a look at the finalists for 2009.

And the winner of the 2009 Junior Athlete of the Year is & we have two winners:

Jack Bobridge from Cycling and;
Amy Steel from Netball.

And the winner of the 2009 AIS Athlete of the Year Award is & again, there are two winners tonight:

Emma Moffatt from Triathlon and;
Brenton Rickard from Swimming

Congratulations to our incredibly deserving recipients.

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