One of Australia's greatest advertisements on the international stage is the continued success of the country's female athletes.
The global presence of cricketers, netballers, basketballers, footballers, summer and winter sport athletes, among others, is evidence of what can be achieved when there is a commitment to invest in sport across the gender divide.
However, with the green and gold decade already underway, building to the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games, some of sport's heavy hitters believe it is time to move into a higher gear.
Federal Sports Minister Anika Wells said the band-aid approach to women's sport was no longer fit for purpose.
"I think we've really reached a point where women in sport are, of their own manifestation, so successful," she told The Ticket as part of a panel that included Australian Sports Commission (ASC) chair Josephine Sukkar and former general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) Sharan Burrow.
"We can't continue to kind of band-aid a system built around male bodies and male sports and ask women to retrofit themselves into that."
The rise of domestic leagues such as AFLW, NRLW, and the WBBL are examples of sport taking a competition model that was designed by men for men, and replicating it on a smaller scale for women to be shoe-horned into.
"What we should do is build a system that is equal," the minister said, pointing to New Zealand's 'Women and Girls Strategy' that comes with a $10 million purse to grow women's representation in leadership, participation, and value and visibility.
"New Zealand has some good initiatives around that; they're four or five years into that process, and all the women administrators that I spoke to who led the Rugby World Cup and the Cricket World Cup over there … they pointed to that reform and said 'that's what did it for us'.
"I am trying to work out how I do that in the Australian system … that's the broader piece, but also, in the interim, there are more short-term measures that we can do.
"I'm really proud of the fact that Josephine and I oversee some research into how periods affect women athletes at the AIS [Australian Institute of Sport] at the moment.
"Just having an ASC chair and a female sports minister who are unafraid to say the word period, and to say, 'Let's work out for our women athletes how that affects their performance, let's work out how we can fund that research' – that should be part of those more short-term initiatives while we work on the broader piece."
Ms Wells reflected on her political career to make the point that creating substantial change is often uncomfortable.
"The reason that I sit before you as a minister in a government that is majority women is because the ALP enacted some strict quota rules that were not popular but paid dividends 30 years on," she said.
Historically, the mention of quotas has sent a shiver up the spine of sports' mostly male boardrooms but, having had positive results elsewhere, cannot be left out of any discussion focused on speeding up the pace of change.
Labour rights advocate Sharan Burrow said the suite of major events to be hosted in Australia over the next 10 years could be used to help bring about change on a number of fronts.
"It's fantastic to watch the growth, not just in the confidence in women's sport, but the incredible pride Australians are taking in watching women's sport," she said.
"We were told for so long there was no interest in women's sport."
Such was the demand for tickets to Australia's opening match at the FIFA World Cup in July that it had to be relocated from the newly renovated Sydney Football Stadium with a seating capacity of 42,500 to the Olympic Stadium, almost doubling the number of tickets that can be sold.
"It's fantastic, frankly, to see. Internationally it's not such a pretty story, of course," Ms Burrow said.
She said they have joined campaigns around women's rights to safe sporting environments in places like Iran and Afghanistan and identified abuse in Mali's basketball programs.
Ms Burrow said "using sport as a leverage" could lead to real change, as with changing Qatar's labour practices in the lead-up to last year's men's FIFA World Cup or dating all the way back to preventing child labour in the production of footballs in the 1980s.
"If you're a woman in sport — that's in Australia or anywhere — those basic human rights are important, but so too is the nature of the work," she said.
"How on earth do those amazing women – even in our country – go to work, manage families and play professional level sport because we failed to design a system of respect, of equal pay, of equal treatment, of encouragement that is actually there in a physical support role?"
Ms Sukkar equated it to "juggling watermelons".
Goals at the federal level very different to local sporting ambitions
With responsibility for distributing government funds and overseeing sports policy across the country, Ms Sukkar said she and ASC chief executive Kieren Perkins will be judged by how the sector looks in 2033.
"The challenge, of course, is exactly what the minister points to, which is a federated structure," she said.
Replicating Australia's three tiers of government – local, state and federal — most sports in the country have a similar structure.
Sports often confront the challenge of a national body supporting a particular strategy while state-based federations support another, leading to decision gridlock and the inability to affect change quickly.
"Really, it's all about what is sport for. And yes, some of it is around making sure we have visibility of really talented and gifted athletes to come forward and represent Australia and do well, but most Australians who participate in sport do it for different reasons and it's understanding what they are – fitness, community, friendship," Ms Sukkar said.
"Whatever it might be [it's about] nailing that and prosecuting a good case to sponsors, to local, state and federal governments, ensuring how we deliver infrastructure appropriately, and who helps lean into that — what's the role of sponsors, corporate Australia and philanthropy even?
"Right now, the government's staring into a $1 trillion deficit … we need people who are thinking hard, smart and fast because our green and gold decade is not a decade any more … it's quickly coming upon us.
"What we're trying to do is look at a structure, to say that it's imperfect is an understatement, and then try and reverse engineer a solution — versus starting from scratch."
Ms Wells said she wanted the upcoming decade to optimise the potential for sport to be truly inclusive, but there were pitfalls that could still prevent that from happening.
"We are trying to reverse engineer a thriving system that has worked for a lot of people for a lot of years. No one ever gives up power willingly," she said.
"I think the biggest thing we can't guard against, but we are trying to move through, is an institutional commitment to keeping things the same, and that change should only occur around the edges.
"These conversations are difficult. But I can promise you, Josephine, Sharan and I are robust enough for them."
The question now is, are the sports governing bodies "robust enough" to join in?
