The sports parasites are at it again.
Not content with receiving hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, Australia’s low-participation elite sports are demanding tens of millions of dollars more in funding. Matt Carroll of the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) this week went to Canberra to demand more money for Olympic sports, warning that otherwise “this once great sporting nation, so proud of its diversity, punching above its weight, will be confined to a few sports played by only a few and the rest will be faded pictures of past heroes. The only gold medals won will be the races to the most obese nation and social mediocrity.”
He received glowing coverage in The Australian, which normally likes to posture as some sort of stalwart of fiscal rectitude but which has a history of supporting wasteful sports spending. Its last effort was in 2012.
As Crikey pointed out then, there is zero correlation of any kind between sporting participation — which is assumed to help reduce obesity — and elite sports funding and the quadrennial sugar hit of Olympic success it buys. The 2009 review of sports funding headed by David Crawford, which recommended shifting funding away from elite sports to encouraging grassroots participation, said it “can find no evidence that high profile sporting events like the Olympics (or Wimbledon or the Australian Football League (AFL) Grand Final) have a material influence on sports participation”.
And data on Australian obesity showed how correct the Crawford review panel was; we had grown significantly heavier as a nation in the 1980s and 1990s and 2000s despite an ascent to the near-summit of Olympic sports: fourth place in the Sydney and Athens Olympics. Of course, since then, we’ve fallen down the Olympic table: sixth in Beijing with 46 medals — four fewer than Athens; 35 medals in London for eighth place and 10th place in Rio with 29 medals.
And curiously, despite the claims of Carroll, this hasn’t been linked to any gold-medal performance in obesity — as data over the last 20 years shows, growth in obesity has levelled off as our Olympic performance has fallen significantly.
So when Australia was wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on elite sport and buying our way to Olympic success, we got much fatter as a nation, but since we’ve vanished from the Olympic podium, our bellies have stopped expanding. If Carroll, the Oz and elite sportsmen and women — all of them beneficiaries of extraordinary taxpayer largesse already — want to link obesity and the Olympics, then the most sensible course would be to cut all funding and watch Australians get thin again.
Since 1990, female teacher numbers in Australian high schools have increased from 50% to about 65%. Simultaneously, Australia’s international PISA results have slumped from around 530 to about 500 (as an average across the three disciplines) since it’s beginning in the early 2000’s. What a beautiful correlation of -1.
Solution, employ more male teachers and less female teachers…? Ahh, no. Definitely a correlation but as causal correlation, there’s absolutely no empirical evidence. Which is exactly the same result as the above relationship between Olympic funding and obesity
Bernard, may I suggest a rehash on the Chi-square test; surely you must have learnt about it at Uni at some stage(?).
I think he was joking, mate.
I actually think he isn’t…
I see a error in your calculation. It’s missing the point.
Wouldn’t it be better to fund sport at the grass roots level than throw money in directions already well funded. Helping families struggling to pay everyday bills meet the cost of their children participating in sport would have numerous positive outcomes, with greater participation we would not only improve health outcomes but also possibly develop life-long participation and it could be a means to develop relationships within communities and maybe save a small town footy team or two.
Completely agree. Team sports play a large part of the social life in small communities – whether it is football, tennis, cricket or whatever. I have thought for a long time that the AIS (Australian Institute of Sport) should be self-funding. If it is good enough for university graduates to pay HECS fees why not elite athletes. Of course all graduates of the AIS do not become a massive earner like Leyton Hewitt, as only one example, but many of them earn large sums from sponsorships etc. Directing funding to schools (state) and small communities would encourage more participation in healthy activities. As for the olympics, I could’nt give a stuff – I don’t care if we win medals of not. I find the entire thing boring beyond words.
On the matter of HECS fees, and the resulting binding to repayments, for students pursuing advancement through most education and training avenues, Bernard Tomic provides a useful ‘elite sport’ comparison.
Around $1M of public funding was channelled through the AIS, so ‘Bernie’ could reach the level of a solid earner in tennis.
Weren’t no “mutual obligation” for Bernie, no ‘contract’ with the public purse, no binding to repayment, once he achieved a ‘minimum earn’.
So, on attaining the level of a solid ‘elite sport’ earner, Bernie upped stumps, and moved his (tax) domicile to Monaco.
Not a heavy taxing joint, Monaco, and certainly not one that repatriates any of the tax on income earned back to the place which financed Bernie’s ascent to solid elite sport earner.
I’m with the other Bernie on this matter.
Couldn’t agree more. Elite sport has little impact on people general health…lets start putting $$$$ into general everybody sports..lets see some targeted advertising and money for equipment etc etc go to schools (Public) and community groups. Really who cares about how many medals we get when you look at all the fatso’s in the streets dragging themselves from one big M to the next.
As a volunteer member of the board of a non-olympic sport’s national body, I certainly agree that that grass roots is where funding is most needed.
The fact is that the participants who come 4th to last pay for the support of those deemed ‘elite’. And what is never discussed is that Australia is unique in that our massive sports human infrastructure is entirely based on unsung volunteers. But virtually nothing is done by government to support and encourage the great social contribution of volunteers. The assumption seems to be that the whole edifice of Australian sport can still exist with the masses of volunteers because that is entirely ignored in public discourse and fights about who gets what funding.
Depressingly, we, as a society, provide no encouragement for volunteers in sport. In fact, what we do provide is substantial disincentives for volunteers to get involved. All sporting bodies are struggling with the rising prevalence of many participants who consider themselves entitled to attack and denigrate voluntary officials, of course facilitated by social media, often used anonymously. Then we have to waste a great deal of resources (money and volunteer time) on disciplinary procedures to sanction those against which we amateur volunteers can prove a case, resources that should be applied to the benefit of all other members.
And the final insult is that if you spend your money in the act of volunteering, that cannot be claimed as a tax deduction. That alone sends a load message of valuelessness to all volunteers.
None of these crucial issues get any public oxygen because all that is sucked up by the sporting ‘elite’ so that government can claim kudos for Olympic gold medals, world championships etc.
The obesity epidemic has nothing to do with Australia progressively becoming more sedentary. Australians are becoming obese because they’re eating too much, consuming too many calories.
Paradoxically, energy expenditure is actually fairly fixed. A moderately active individual expends about the same number of calories per day as a highly active one. A typical couch ‘potato’ expends only about 200 kcals/day less than someone who’s very active.
A physically fit person expends more energy exercising, but makes up for it by expending fewer calories resting.
Exercise has many benefits, and should be done daily, but weight loss isn’t one of them.
Australians are just eating too much fast food and junk food (as an aside, the gym I visit daily is surrounded by 5 fast food outlets, and there’s a food court in the shopping centre a few hundred metres away).
Community sports are OK, but they’re not enough.