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Robin Poke . Photographer: Peter Hislop
by Robin Poke, Robin Poke rower, administrator, journalist and author
Presented at Manning Clark House Weekend of Ideas "Australian Passions, the Arts and Sport", 14-15 March 2009
I'm sure all of us here today are aware of the seemingly perennial debate between the arts and sports sectors about their worth within the Australian culture. We in sport are certainly more than familiar with the argument by the artistic community that more people attend libraries, museums and art galleries each weekend than go to the footy ' which is probably correct ' while that same community remains in awe of the funding allocated to Australian sport. That, too, is understandable.
That is why, when I learned of the title allotted to this particular panel, Going for Gold/Achieving Excellence in Sport, my mind turned first to the Gold Medal Plan devised by the Australian Olympic Committee when Sydney was awarded the 2000 Olympic Games, and to the current, fairly impassioned campaign by the national sporting community about the future funding of Australian sport, the catalyst for which is the London 2012 Olympic Games. Then only yesterday came news that the Australian Olympic Committee and Paralympic Committee had completed a detailed High Performance Plan, which they had presented to the Prime Minister and Sports Minister, and called for an urgent increase in funding for Australia's Olympic and Paralympic athletes.
I thought I'd therefore re-visit these campaigns, discuss the reasons, based on cost-benefit analyses, for seeking such funding, then toss in an idea about the political administration of sport. In doing so I hope to complement the remarks I know to be coming from Jim Ferguson and Brent Espeland, two of the top sports administrators in Australia.
It's probably common knowledge that Australia's poor performance at the Montreal Olympic Games in 1976, when we went for gold and came back with none, was the catalyst for a major re-think at both the sporting and political levels about the structure and funding of sport in Australia. This led to the establishment, in 1981, of the Australian Institute of Sport, and the setting up, in 1984, of the Australian Sports Commission as the government's sports funding arm.
At this time, of course, Australia and the rest of the world were competing for sporting superiority against, on the one hand a state-funded Soviet Bloc of nations and on the other an American college and university scholarship system that enabled athletes in those nations to train and compete full time. It was in the face of this opposition that, later in that momentous decade, the Federal Government Inquiry into Sports Funding was held, the result of which was a further massive infusion of funds.
Then came the announcement in Monte Carlo on the night of 23 September 1993 by the President of the International Olympic Committee, Juan Antonio Samaranch, that 'Syd-e-ney' would host the 2000 Olympic Games. It sent a nation already satiated by sport into, it seems, paroxysms of unbounded, jingoistic joy.
For the Olympic Movement in Australia, however, came the sobering reality of having seven years to organise the biggest sporting event on the planet: 28 world championships being held in the same city within just over a fortnight. The result was a comprehensive and extremely calculated campaign, led by Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates, for Australia, as host nation, to enter for the first time in Sydney a full team, and to win as many medals at those Games as possible. Thus was born the Gold Medal Plan.
The Plan identified the need for $284 million in additional Commonwealth funding over six years in order for Australia to win 60 medals in Sydney. However, the AOC secured a $60 million contribution from the NSW Government for preparation of the 2000 Olympic Team and the target total was revised down to $180 million. John Coates and his deputy, Peter Montgomery, then lobbied Prime Minister Paul Keating for the funding, which Keating pegged at $135 million. The Commonwealth also re-branded the 2000 GMP the 'Olympic Athlete Program' and included Australia's Paralympians. I might note here that while the arts community considered Paul Keating one of their own ' and he was ' he was also open-minded and astute enough to realise, despite having no real passion for sport, the benefits to Australia if Sydney was awarded the Games, and particularly in the final stages of lobbying and voting proved immensely valuable.
A major feature of the Gold Medal Plan/Olympic Athlete Program was its inclusivity. Even before the Monte Carlo announcement, each of the national sporting federations who would be responsible for preparing teams for the Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000 Olympics had drawn up provisional plans and budgets, the major features of which were the acquisition of elite coaches, athlete development and pre-Games international competition. Invitations were then extended to State governments, institutes of sport and academies of sport to assist the Australian Olympic Committee in the task of preparing those Australian Olympic Teams. The Federal Minister for Sport, State and Territory Ministers and the Chairman of the Australian Sports Commission were invited by John Coates to help him oversee preparations, while a management committee was formed comprising Coates, directors of the Australian and State/Territory institutes of sport/academies, the Executive Director of the Sports Commission and the Secretary-General of the AOC.
The rest, as they say, is history.
For seven years, carefully monitored by all those stakeholders, Australia's international sporting performance improved across the board. The Australian Olympic Team improved from winning 27 medals at the 1992 Barcelona Games to win 41 at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, and in Sydney won 58 medals ' 16 gold, 25 silver and 17 bronze, just two shy of the target. This enabled Australia to claim fourth place on the medal table, behind the United States, Russia and China. Analyse that result closely and you will surely recognise it as an immense achievement. Australia had a population at that time of just on 20 million. The population of the United then was just under 300 million, that of Russia 140 million, while China's population was one and a quarter billion people. For those among us interested in gender balance, of the 16 gold medals, nine were won by men or men's teams or crews, and seven by women, while overall the ratio was 34:24. The cream on the cake was that at the closing ceremony Juan Antonio Samaranch uttered to Sydney and the world the immortal words: 'I am proud and happy to proclaim that you have presented to the world the best Olympic Games ever.'
The Games, played out for the most part under the dazzling blue skies of early spring, were said to have had touched something extraordinarily deep in the Australian soul. The veteran and venerated doyen of US sporting journalists, Bud Greenspan, in narrating the International Olympic Committee's official video of the Sydney Games, declared that: 'For 17 days in Sydney in September, the world was a better place.' And so it was. Those among you who attended either the Olympic or the Paralympic Games there will recall an extraordinary ambience and sense of goodwill.
In Athens in 2004 the Australian Olympic Team maintained its fourth position on the medal count with a total of 49, but in Beijing was fifth. Even before Beijing, though, the Federal Government had foreshadowed new directions for Australian sport. In May 2008 it released a paper aimed at meeting the emerging challenges in sport and maintaining Australia's status as one of the world's greatest sporting nations. Significantly, the Government aimed to ensure that sport and physical activity played a key role in the nation's preventative health agenda. Immediately after the Beijing Games Sports Minister Kate Ellis announced the appointment of an independent sports panel to investigate the reforms required. The panel would look at sport at both the elite level and at the grassroots community level, as part of a top-to-bottom examination of Australian sport, and would search for better ways to run, promote and manage sport in Australia. The panel would be chaired by highly regarded businessman David Crawford, who had previously modernised and driven change at the Australian Football League and Football Federation Australia. The panel's terms of reference were to ensure Australia's continued elite sporting success, to better place sport and physical activity as a key component of the Government's preventative health approach, strengthen pathways from junior sport to grassroots community sport right through to the elite and professional arena, maintain Australia's cutting edge approach to sports science, research and technology, and identify opportunities to increase and diversify the funding base for sport through corporate sponsorship and the media.
In February this year, at a two-day high performance sports forum in Sydney, more than 100 of the top thinkers within Olympic, Paralympic and Commonwealth sport met in a bid to develop a more efficient and effective high performance system. Among them were representatives of the AIS, the state institutes and academies of sport and the Sports Commission. Top of the agenda was what was referred to as sport's 'frankly conservative financial requirements through to 2018'.
Then, less than 24 hours ago, came the Australian Olympic and Paralympic Committee's announcement about their High Performance Plan and the renewed plea for an increase in funding. John Coates and his counterpart at the Australian Paralympic Committee, Greg Hartung, who is also nowadays Chairman of the Sport Commission, said they would ask the prime minister to allocate the extra funding in the May Budget. In an accompanying media release Coates said the Plan indicated Australia's medal performances were in decline at a time when its direct competitors Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy were significantly outspending us.
All these developments, but particularly the appeal for an increase of more than $100 million in high performance funding, have naturally generated increased debate about the merits of sports funding, and indeed about the worth of sport overall. Let me therefore lend a sports historian's eye to the debate.
It is argued by some in the community that it is not the arts or sport but war, and in particular Gallipoli, that has shaped this nation's sense of itself, a contention with which I have trouble agreeing, especially where sport is concerned. Without wishing to impinge on anything David Headon might address in his Dymphna Clark lecture this evening, I believe it is sport, a fundamental part of the Australian culture ever since European settlement, which first provided Australia's sense of nationhood. Our first world sporting champion, Ned Trickettt, who by happy coincidence was a sculler, won the world professional sculling championship by beating England's J H Sadler on the Thames in London in 1876 ' a year, incidentally, before the first cricket test between England and the then colonies, six years before the famous Oval test after which the Ashes came into being, and nearly 40 years before Gallipoli. Trickett's successors, notably Bill Beach and Henry Searle, were among a series of Australian scullers who held the world title for some 30 years, and in that time beat, to the great delight of the colonial population, mainly English and Canadian opponents. It was these achievements and those of the cricketers, I contend, not an inglorious military defeat in 1915, which first shaped a sense of nationhood among Australia's early generations. But this, perhaps, is a debate for another time.
Kate Ellis, too, has discussed the tangible and intangible benefits of sport. She opined recently that sportspeople are the custodians of something incredibly powerful in a sports-mad nation like Australia, and that we can add great value by tapping into those benefits. Our iconic sporting champions, she pointed out, some of whom will no doubt feature in tomorrow's debate, have an ability to inspire, to promote important causes and to raise much-needed funds. Over the summer, for example, we have been witness to the important work of the McGrath Foundation, named in memory of cricketer Glenn McGrath's late wife Jane, in fighting breast cancer. There are countless examples of sport uniting communities and breaking down racial and cultural boundaries, witness the sporting boycott of South Africa which turned the world's attention to the apartheid policy there. The marketing of sports events helps boost tourism, trade and economic development, while encouraging people to take up sport helps fight obesity and preventable disease. Within the education sector sport encourages the promotion of teamwork, discipline and commitment, while national sporting triumphs, particularly at the Olympics, create national pride and confidence. So sport doesn't just entertain us. It educates, inspires and enriches us.
Finally, I'd like to toss in an idea that has been exercising my mind for some time relating to government administration of sport.
Ever since, in those dark days of the late 70s, sport was recognised as worthy of political attention, it has almost invariably been attached to what appeared to be second tier or 'also ran' portfolios, notably tourism and, until recently, the environment. Those in the arts may consider they have been accorded similar status. At a time, however, when, on the one hand, we worry about the so-called obesity epidemic and on the other the massive cost of Australia's health budget, it is surely time to at least consider a place for sport within an overarching education and health portfolio. It is surely imperative if we are to develop a healthier nation that a healthy lifestyle be encouraged from a far earlier age than is presently the case, and that far greater emphasis is placed within early school curriculums on the pursuit of physical activity. Do this, and in time it will surely prove enormously beneficial in offsetting what is presently a massively debilitating national health bill.
Thank you for your attendance and attention. It is much appreciated.