Mr. Gerard Perry:

I will answer that question first. We have in excess of 1,400 registered for this year but the Senator again touches on a valid point in the retention issue, which I mentioned in my submission papers. A book was released in 2021 by a guy called Tom Webb, who is a sports scientist. He said there are worldwide difficulties with the retention of referees across many codes and sports, including small sports like athletics. Retention is one of the primary areas for us to address. Within refereeing circles we provide continuing professional development and the ISRS provides welfare and education, which are key. One of our initiatives is a buddy system so that for the first six months a new referee will be assigned an experienced referee and our one pilot project of that, for those who bought into it, even those it was small numbers, had a 100% success rate. We need to widen that.