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Taxpayer funding for sport a fair go for all?
By Jeff Wall
Instead of trying to gag the NSW Origin selectors, the chief executive of the ARL, Geoff Carr, ought to be asking questions about the allocation of Australian Sports Commission funding for the four football codes.
On top of the extraordinarily generous grants and loans the Federal Government gave soccer when it restructured several years ago over $12 million in total the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) has shown a clear bias in its annual allocations to the four football codes.
And the question needs to be asked what are the National Rugby League, Australian Football League and Australian Rugby Union doing about it?
I am grateful to the Sydney Morning Herald's Roy Masters who happens to be a Member of the Australian Sports Commission not only for his revelations about how much the Federal Government lent soccer and how much it still owes, but just how unbalanced the annual payments to the football codes are. His piece seems to have been lost in the flurry of publicity for the World Cup, but it raises some serious issues.
For the 2005-2006 year, the ASC allocated $2.812 million to Football Federation Australia (FFA), the controlling body of soccer in Australia. In the same year, the AFL was allocated $466,000, the ARL $528,000 and the ARU $454,000. In other words, the allocation to soccer is more than double the total allocation to the other three football codes!
Out of the FFA allocation, half is for the Australian Institute of Sports soccer program six times the allocation for each of the other codes. The beneficiaries of AIS soccer scholarships include at least three of the Croatian World Cup team! The other half of the annual allocation is for the development of sport and on that score, soccer gets five times as much as the other three codes.
Does anyone seriously suggest that soccer in Australia whether at the grassroots or any other level is twice as big as the other three codes combined?
The AFL and the ARL in particular need to explain what they have done to get a fair go for their codes out of what is taxpayer-provided funding. Both codes leave soccer in the shade when it comes to programs for Indigenous and remote regional youth, yet their government funding is but a fraction of soccer's.
And the NRL and AFL officials, players and supporters most entitled to an answer are those struggling to keep their codes alive in the bush. At the weekend it was revealed that no fewer than three of the Groups in the New South Wales Country Rugby League are on the brink of collapse.
The FFA, utilising the likes of Frank Lowy and Alan Belford Jones, has been extraordinarily successful in lobbying for federal government funding. Successful yes, but is it fair and just?
_______________________________________________________________
There has to be a logical reason, surely?
Taxpayer funding for sport a fair go for all?
By Jeff Wall
Instead of trying to gag the NSW Origin selectors, the chief executive of the ARL, Geoff Carr, ought to be asking questions about the allocation of Australian Sports Commission funding for the four football codes.
On top of the extraordinarily generous grants and loans the Federal Government gave soccer when it restructured several years ago over $12 million in total the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) has shown a clear bias in its annual allocations to the four football codes.
And the question needs to be asked what are the National Rugby League, Australian Football League and Australian Rugby Union doing about it?
I am grateful to the Sydney Morning Herald's Roy Masters who happens to be a Member of the Australian Sports Commission not only for his revelations about how much the Federal Government lent soccer and how much it still owes, but just how unbalanced the annual payments to the football codes are. His piece seems to have been lost in the flurry of publicity for the World Cup, but it raises some serious issues.
For the 2005-2006 year, the ASC allocated $2.812 million to Football Federation Australia (FFA), the controlling body of soccer in Australia. In the same year, the AFL was allocated $466,000, the ARL $528,000 and the ARU $454,000. In other words, the allocation to soccer is more than double the total allocation to the other three football codes!
Out of the FFA allocation, half is for the Australian Institute of Sports soccer program six times the allocation for each of the other codes. The beneficiaries of AIS soccer scholarships include at least three of the Croatian World Cup team! The other half of the annual allocation is for the development of sport and on that score, soccer gets five times as much as the other three codes.
Does anyone seriously suggest that soccer in Australia whether at the grassroots or any other level is twice as big as the other three codes combined?
The AFL and the ARL in particular need to explain what they have done to get a fair go for their codes out of what is taxpayer-provided funding. Both codes leave soccer in the shade when it comes to programs for Indigenous and remote regional youth, yet their government funding is but a fraction of soccer's.
And the NRL and AFL officials, players and supporters most entitled to an answer are those struggling to keep their codes alive in the bush. At the weekend it was revealed that no fewer than three of the Groups in the New South Wales Country Rugby League are on the brink of collapse.
The FFA, utilising the likes of Frank Lowy and Alan Belford Jones, has been extraordinarily successful in lobbying for federal government funding. Successful yes, but is it fair and just?
_______________________________________________________________
There has to be a logical reason, surely?