Well done Australia! Paris proves bipartisanship actually works

Government funding for sport over the decades has been money well spent, as Alan Austin reports.

THE PARIS OLYMPICS have been Australia’s greatest ever.

At the time of writing, Australia has won 18 gold medals, 19 silver and 16 bronze for a total of 53. That places Australia fourth on the gold medal rankings and fifth on total medals won.

Impressively, Australia is beating proud sporting nations France, Great Britain, Germany, Italy and South Korea all of which have two to three times Australia’s population.

Strategic government funding

Australia had never been among the leading sporting nations until Melbourne hosted the 1956 Olympics and milked every drop of the home-ground advantage. With 13 gold medals and 35 in total, Australia ranked third on the scoreboard behind the Soviet Union and the USA with 37 and 32 gold medals respectively. But it was downhill from there. (See table below.)

The performance improved slightly in Moscow in 1980 and lifted again in Los Angeles in 1984. But ranking remained well outside the world’s top ten.

This was one motivation for the Hawke/Keating Government in 1985 to establish the Australian Sports Commission and beef up funding for the fledgling Australian Institute of Sport. Olympic results since then have been encouraging, but never as impressive as in Paris this month.

Medals won in Barcelona in 1992 and at the seven games since then, pre-Paris, vindicate the spending. Australia has enjoyed top ten status on gold medals in all Olympics since Seoul in 1988. In those eight Olympiads, Australia has collected 332 medals — nearly three times the tally at the eight previous games.

Benefits beyond the elite

Funding local sporting facilities across the country has encouraged participation at all levels. Plenty of research proves that sport builds self-confidence in children, including troubled teenagers and young offenders.

Sports funding has greatly benefited remote Aboriginal communities and unearthed some notable talent. More than 70 Indigenous Australians have represented Australia in the Olympics since Tokyo in 1964, including 11 now in Paris.

Between Tokyo 1964 and Tokyo 2020, 43 First Australian men and 17 women competed. Women won 11 medals, men four.

Olympic sprint medallist Cathy Freeman is probably the most famous. She left home in rural Queensland and received professional coaching at an international boarding college thanks to a scholarship from the fledgling Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission in the 1980s. Freeman became Young Australian of the Year in 1990 and Australian of the Year in 1998. She won a Commonwealth Games gold medal in 1996 and Olympic gold in Sydney in 2000.

Bipartisanship in sports funding

It has been well documented that virtually all major nation-building initiatives in Australia since World War Two have come from Labor governments.

It has also been well-established that since Tony Abbott became Liberal Party Leader in 2009, the Coalition has abandoned the cherished traditions of bipartisanship in foreign affairs, defence, border control, Indigenous affairs and other portfolios.

While true that the initial burst of enthusiasm and funding for the Australian Sports Commission came from Labor, this area has actually enjoyed substantial cross-party support — except when Abbott was PM.

Hawke and Keating allocated $19.6 million to the Commission in 1985-86, which they increased steadily, reaching an impressive $87 million in 1995-96, Labor’s last year.

The Howard Government maintained this level for its first three years then invested much more later. In the Coalition’s last full financial year, 2006-07, Commission funding had reached $193 million.

The Rudd Government boosted this to $223 million by 2009-10, despite the ravages of the global financial crisis. Julia Gillard increased allocations further, lifting it to $269.5 million in 2010-11 and keeping it at or near that level through her term. (See chart, below.)

Funding then stagnated under Tony Abbott who was poorly served by two successive duds as sports ministers, Peter Dutton and Sussan Ley. Allocations then fell until 2018-19 when the Turnbull Government, in 2018-19, boosted support to an impressive $374.3 million.

This was largely prompted by the decision to back Queensland’s bid to host the 2032 Olympics, which was announced as successful in 2021.

Funding then declined under Scott Morrison in 2020-21 – arguably due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic – and is now being restored by the Albanese Government.

Aussie antics in the swimming pool pure gold

Bazza drops a bomb of Olympic proportions during a catch-up with mates at the pub.

Upbeat media at last

This column frequently laments the profound disservice the news media continually perform by not acknowledging that Australia’s economy leads all nations under Labor administrations and seldom recognising other world-beating achievements. (Who won International Aviation Minister of the Year and Infrastructure Minister of the Year in successive years? Who won the prestigious Roosevelt Foundation Freedom from Fear Award 2024? Answers in the discussion below.)

This is why Australia ranks so poorly on happiness indices. We are all so damned depressed after reading each day’s falsified “news”.

Fortunately, the success of cyclist Grace Brown, 14-year-old skateboarder Arisa Trew, swimmer Kaylee McKeown, kayakers Jessica and Noémie Fox and the women's freestyle relay team are giving news consumers something to cheer about — finally.

Let’s hope their triumphs bolster support for participatory sport and better physical and mental health outcomes across the nation.

Australia may have the most mendacious news media in the developed world. We may be depressed about the economy and feel irrational anger towards governments as a consequence. We may have a destructive opposition hostile to progress and committed to obstruction. But we will always have Paris.