Feathers were thoroughly ruffled yesterday when the Commonwealth Government released a report entitled The Future of Sport in Australia (also called the “Crawford Report”), which examined the government’s funding of elite sports.

Rather than supporting a funding increase, the report’s author David Crawford said the money would be better spent elsewhere, and rejected the Australian Olympic Committee’s request for an additional $100 million in funding per annum.

Predictably, it didn’t take long for a response from the President of the Australian Olympics Committee, John Coates, to crudely declare that he was “pissed off” at the report’s findings. For if there’s one faux pas in Australia, it’s to question the supremacy of sport.

Regardless of such sensibilities, I feel it’s about time we took the axe to elite sports funding in Australia.

Sport is a worthy endeavour. Participation brings considerable health and social benefits to those who engage in it’s many offerings, and elite sportsmen and women provide inspiration for people to give sports a try. Since Australia is now the world’s fattest nation, we need to do all in our power to prevent a looming health crisis.

Yet the current strategy of throwing bucket-loads of taxpayers’ money at the Australian Sports Commission clearly isn’t working in creating a leaner and fitter nation. Nor is it delivering Australia more Olympic gold. Since the 2000 Sydney Olympics, our medal count has been falling whilst at the same time we’ve collectively become fatter.

Exhibiting a vulgar form of sports blasphemy, David Crawford went as far as suggesting that Olympic gold medals are not the best way of measuring  sporting success and described Australia’s aim of being one of the “top five” Olympic nations as “unrealistic”. With comments like that, we’ll no doubt hear calls to “crucify him!” as the angry mobs coalesce!

The Australian Sports Commission was established after the 1976 Montreal Olympics where Australia didn’t win a single gold medal.

The strategy seemed to work, because in time our Olympic performance improved considerably, culminating in the 2000 Sydney Olympics where Australia won 16 gold medals. Yet gold medals come at a cost. In the 2007-8 financial year, the Australian Sports Commission received $216 million in government funding (source). The Crawford report estimated that each Olympic gold medal cost $15 million, although it was a guess because there is apparently little accounting or accountability in Australian sport.

Apparently, to suggest that funding should be cut or that athletes should actually pay for their training, is ‘un-Australian’. Why? Because apparently Australia is a “sports-loving nation” and Australians are “sports-loving people”. After all, what Australian doesn’t love his sport? Or so the myth says.

In fact, there are some of us who don’t have any interest in sports, and resent so much of our taxes being spent on people who contribute almost nothing to our nation.

Students who enrol in university, perhaps to study science, engineering, economics, medicine, law, or teaching have to pay a considerable percentage of the cost of their education. Yet when they graduate they make a considerable contribution to our society by educating our children, designing our cities, developing our medicines, helping us understand our environment, crafting our laws, securing our economy or looking after us when we’re ill. People who enter TAFE to study trades, also have to pay considerable fees.

Yet sports people, who spend their time kicking balls across fields, throwing sticks at targets, or running in circles, receive their training for free. And whilst a university student has to repay his debt after earning a paltry $21,000, a sportman can earn millions and still not pay a cent.

John Coates, chief of the AOC, described the Crawford Report as “an insult”.  At an angry press conference, he asked “Is Mr. Crawford suggesting that medals won in Beijing last year by Matthew Mitcham in diving, Steve Hooker in pole vault and Ken Wallace (kayak) meant nothing to the Australian people? Is he telling us gold medals won by the rowers and sailors in Beijing meant nothing?”.

To suggest that offending Olympic athletes is sufficient reason not to cut the sports budget is ludicrous, whilst Coates’ labelling of the report as “un-Australian” smacks of desperation.

In 2007, the Commonwealth Government slashed $63.4 million from the CSIRO budget. One could call the CSIRO the “Olympic team of Australian science”, as our nation’s premier research organisation. As a result of the cuts, more than 100 jobs were lost and two centres closed.

As a scientist, was I offended? Who cares!

My emotional response (or that of those affected) is irrelevant to a discussion about whether it was a good decision or not. The effect on the nation, supported by data, should be the primary influence on any non-welfare public financial debate.

It is well time that athletes were compelled to pay for their training. It is also time that we dropped our obsession with Olympic gold medals. Instead, we should re-invest our tax dollars into community sport, so that ‘ordinary Australians’ can participate, and gain tangible health and social benefits from their activities.

Winning Olympic gold might momentarily bring a warm feeling to our hearts, but aside from its role as popular entertainment, neither the Olympics nor elite sport in general contribute much to Australian society.

If holding such a view makes me un-Australian, so be it.

The calling of names will never convince me that sport is deserving of such generous quantities of taxpayer dollars, whilst our hospitals are under-funded, our trains arrive late and our poor sleep on the streets.