Sport: the great Australian double standard

The preference for spending on sport than on the arts is even more pronounced in the business sector than in the public sector.

In 2000-01, the latest year for which figures are available, Australian businesses gave $628 million to sport and recreation by way of donations or sponsorship, representing 43 per cent of their total donations and sponsorship expenditures, compared with less than $70 million to the arts and culture (and, for that matter, compared with $339 million to community service and welfare).

This strong bias towards sport on the part of business people extends beyond where they spend their shareholders’ funds. As Ralph Kerle of the Centre for Cultural Studies and Analysis points out, "rather than use arts as their inspirational role models for creativity, corporate leaders exhort their senior managers to embark instead on a quest to succeed and find new heights in performance by learning from Australian sporting heroes … a sporting champion and his [sic] mindset represent the least threatening metaphor for commercial innovation and creativity".

Australian governments do spend more on research and development than they do on sport. In 2000-01 the Commonwealth, State and Territory governments spent $2.4 billion on R&D - slightly more than half of it on plant or animal research. Businesses spend even more on R&D than governments - nearly $5 billion in 2000-01 - although they give much less to support R&D activities by way of donations and sponsorship than they do for sport. However total Australian spending on R&D, including that by higher education institutions, is smaller as a percentage of GDP than 15 of the 27 OECD countries.

If anything, the tendency to exalt excellence in sport above excellence in any other field has increased in recent years. A search of the Australian Honours List reveals that of the 22,154 ACs, AOs, AMs and OAMs awarded since their inception 1,775 or 8 per cent have been for “services to sport” or to particular sports.

This is in addition to the 18,002 recipients of the Australian Sports Medal. But in 2004, the proportion of the recipients of these awards who received them for sport was 10.4 per cent and in 2005 it was 15.8 per cent.

Twelve of the 50 “Australians of the Year” since that award was instituted in 1964, and 10 of the 26 “Young Australians of the Year” since 1979, have been sportspeople; in the past eight years, half of the “Australians of the Year” have been sportspeople.

Let me conclude this discussion by emphasising that I do not begrudge successful sportspeople or the support they have received from governments; or the social standing, high incomes and wealth which they have attained as a result of their achievements. I just wish that as a nation we were as willing to identify and invest in people with the potential to excel in the arts and the humanities, in the sciences, and, yes, in industry and commerce, as we do for people with the potential to excel in sports; and that we were as forthcoming in our recognition of, and as tolerant of the financial rewards that come to, those who do achieve great things in other fields. If we did, there would be more of such people and Australia as a nation would be much the better for it.