Senator SESELJA (Australian Capital Territory—Assistant Minister for Finance, Charities and Electoral Matters) (13:15): I rise today to talk about the great game of basketball. There has been a lot of coverage of basketball in Australia in recent times, with our Boomers doing very well but, unfortunately, falling just short of a medal at the recent world championships. Of course, some of our amazing NBA and WNBA talent and our NBL and WNBL talent set the world on fire. In that context, we had a wonderful opportunity today to show our wares and to formally launch the Parliamentary Friends of Basketball, which I encourage all basketball fans to join. Tim Watts MP and I are the co-chairs. We held an event today to celebrate that and to celebrate 40 years of women's NBL. We had some great players. I'm going to tell a bit of a story. I need to set the scene a little bit because we did have some extraordinary talent on the court today. We had people like Lucille Bailey, who is a former Capitals captain, and Kelsey Griffin, who's the WNBL MVP. We also had our greatest ever, certainly greatest ever female, basketballer and one of our greatest ever sportspeople of any sport, the great Lauren Jackson, on the court today. I want to set up the talent mismatch there is when you have Lauren Jackson and Lucille Bailey and others and then a lot of us well-meaning politicians. We had Tim Watts; Senator Keneally was coaching, of course; Josh Burns, who does bring a bit of talent; Ed Husic, who brings a certain roughhouse, Balkan-style basketball, which I quite enjoy; me; and a number of others. I want to set up the talent mismatch. Lauren Jackson, if you read through her career achievements—and I won't be able to read through all of them—is an outstanding Australian, an extraordinary sportsperson and arguably the finest woman basketballer of all time from any country. She won numerous WNBL titles, first with the AIS and then with our local team the Canberra Capitals. She went to several Olympics where she won silver medals. She captained the Australian women's basketball team, the Opals, and took the Opals to world championship gold. She played in the WNBA. She's been in the all-star team in the WNBA. She's been the MVP of the WNBA. You get the picture: this is an extraordinary sportsperson. I was reflecting on my own time in basketball, which, it's fair to say, hasn't been quite as illustrious. If I think back to when I started in the under-14s—I started a little bit late—I was put in the Wanniassa Eveready under-14s Gold team. I thought it was very good to be in the gold team. I was told later by Brendan McKenna that gold is not the best or the second best or perhaps even the third best—it's somewhere down the list. I rose through the ranks to the under-16s premier for Wanniassa Eveready and teams like JJ Bazan, which had an extraordinary record in the B2 division of men's here in the ACT. This sets up the mismatch that we had in terms of the great talent on the court. I do have to share a bit of a story, because I had an opportunity when receiving the ball, with Lauren Jackson hovering over me—she's six foot six and the greatest basketballer of all time. Some would call it a fluke. I don't know. The move is called a fadeaway jumper, which went in over Lauren Jackson. That was a great moment for me. I don't tell that story for my own purposes. I want to really go to the heart of what a great sport basketball is. You may be sceptical of it, and you wouldn't be alone because I actually did send some text messages to friends and family afterwards. I said, 'Look, fadeaway jumper over Lauren Jackson, the greatest female basketballer of all time.' There was a little bit of scepticism. My wife came back, 'Don't know what that means, but sounds very good,' which is nice. I got another one from my chief of staff, Angela: 'Hasn't she been injured? Laughs emoji.' So there was a little bit of scepticism. Michael, my son, asked, 'Do you mean in a dream?' No, not in a dream. In my defence, I have to go to some endorsements from the other side of politics. Ed Husic confirmed that, when the shot was taken, he saw his 'life flash before his eyes', he was so taken by the moment. Kristina Keneally, to her credit, who was coaching our great team of hacks in the game, did confirm that and did have some nice things to say on Twitter. I say this to make a couple of serious points. One is that basketball is a great sport; it is wonderful that those of us who were never really any good can get out there and have a go. Many of us, when were kids, dreamed of NBL or NBA glory, and I encourage young people out there to continue to dream. Most of us won't make it. Most of us won't make it to the heights reached by Lauren Jackson, Ben Simmons, Joe Ingles, Matthew Dellavedova, Lucille Bailey or so many great basketballers our country has produced, but basketball gives us the opportunity to occasionally just fluke a shot against a great player. I would like to finish by saying to colleagues and senators: absolutely get behind our Opals and our Boomers, they really have done us proud. The Boomers, I've got to say, were extraordinarily unlucky not to come away with a medal, and anyone who watched the semifinal game and then the bronze medal game couldn't help but be so proud of how they represented us. There was no shortage of courage, talent and effort on display, and it was heartbreaking to lose in double-overtime to Spain and then to lose to France, having led by a whole lot. But I think Australian basketball has great things happening. The women have showed the way with their success internationally with a gold medal at the worlds, with medals at the Olympics and with great WNBA success. But we are also seeing our men doing extraordinary things in the NBA. We are seeing some amazing talent. I hope—like all Australians, I'm sure—that we will be medalling in both the men's and women's basketball at next year's Olympics. I encourage people to get behind it and get behind the great sport of basketball.