Comments on: Let’s take the axe to sports funding

By: Bana

Bana — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:06:40 +0000

I’m from the Philippines. I hope my country does not become sports crazy like certain other countries. We like boxing. Manny Pacquiao rocks but I don’t think we are worshipping sport like some idol above God. In your country, do they praise children on the news for winning international maths competitions like they do in the Philippines? Also much praise for Filipino scientists!

By: Big AL

Big AL — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:07:58 +0000

I too like your post, particularly due to your objectivity. It seems that such reasonable thought will always be suppressed these days – Nicole Livingstone was on the 7pm Project selling the sports-funding message after this report. The three reasons she gave were thus:
1) “…have you ever been to the AIS – it’s not a nice place to be?” Perhaps it is like most share houses near most universities in this country, albeit with better cooking.
2) “Only a small percentage of those who recieve funding ever go on to make the large amounts of money that we hear about.” HECS has a qualification point and is calculated as a percentage and calculated with interest – why not apply the same system administered by the same body?
3) “Olympic success creates celebration in society and gets more people involved in the sport”
An example was given by somebody of a shotputting success creating such an interest in the sport. Other than tossing rocks onto the Eastern Freeway I’m doubtful.

I’ve obviously paraphrased the above quotations (due to memory constraints) but giving the beneficiaries of unfair programs, such as Nicole Livingstone, platforms like primetime television to sell their message is a joke.

If Australia owned the intellectual-property mentioned by Donna – it would probably pay for the program many times over. I also agree with Andrew, it’s all a distraction.

By: Donna

Donna — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 00:08:05 +0000

Nice work, Adam. I think it’s un-Australian to allow innovation to move offshore, as in the case of Dr. David Mills and his developments in solar technology. Wouldn’t it be amazing to teach our children to choose people like him as role models rather than a footballer or a gold medalist?

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:35:01 +0000

Olympic winners amuse the masses and distract them from seriously looking at the short term advantage policies our governments are promoting.

By: sreychilli

sreychilli — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:52:31 +0000

Very good piece of writing here. I really enjoyed reading this article. I do support funding towards sports, however, I hadn’t realised how much funding actually is given to the Australian Sports Commission. I could remember thinking about the 3 million dollars paid to Tiger Woods to come down to Australia to play golf. I thought to myself that is too excessive. Taxpayers shouldn’t be paying for such things.

I really like your point on university students having to pay for their education and yet, sport people get special privilege. This is very unfair.