Sport: the great Australian double standard

There is something uncomfortably reminiscent of the former East Germany about the way in which Australia holds up success in sport as somehow indicative of the superiority of our way of life: and we pay a price for the fact we do not regard success in other fields as similarly worthy of support, encouragement or pride.

Let me say straight up, since if I do not it will inevitably be presumed otherwise, that I do not dislike sport. Well, golf bores me senseless, and I’m in a way proud of the fact that I’ve lived in Melbourne for over 22 years without once having been to a horse race. But I do like cricket and (Australian rules) football. And indeed one of my fondest dreams is that during my lifetime we will actually have a truly national football competition, one in which every state is represented and that I will see a Tasmanian team play in an AFL final series.

Nor am I opposed to the public funding of sport. There is a clear economic case for the expenditure of public money on encouraging participation in sport. Apart from the health benefits that accrue from regular exercise, participating in sports teaches the benefits of persistence and team work, the importance of rules and fair play, and (desirably) the capacity to lose with good grace. Even for those who are not active participants, sport plays a vital role in bringing together Australians who might otherwise have little in common.

Nonetheless, the fact I like (watching) some sports as much as any other Australian (male), and that I readily acknowledge the positive role which sport plays in the lives of Australians, does not prevent me from observing that there is a Great Australian Double Standard at the heart of our national identity.

It is that the pursuit of excellence, the nurturing of talent (at public expense) and the recognition and financial rewards that accompany success are all applauded in the context of sport in Australia, but viewed with disdain in virtually every other field. Sport is one of only three socially acceptable ways to become rich in this country - the others being through popular entertainment or gambling.

Or take the word “elite”. For an Australian to say of someone that he or she is an elite athlete or sportsperson is, in every context, intended and taken as a complement. But to say, in any other context, that someone is part of an “elite” or is an “elitist” is to aver that he or she is part of a privileged minority, out of touch with “mains(h)tream Aus(h)trayans” (sic), and that his or her opinions on a subject are of no account whatsoever.

Recall the extraordinary outburst of wailing and gnashing of teeth which occurred after the 1976 Montreal Olympics, when Australia not only failed to win any gold medals, but - ignominy piled upon shame! - won fewer medals of any type than New Zealand.

After the ensuing outcry the Fraser Government established the Australian Institute of Sport, on which it and its successors have lavished ample amounts of public funds, and to which young people identified as having the potential to be Olympic champions are sent at public expense - with no requirement to make any repayment to the public purse of the cost of their maintenance and training via a HECS-type arrangement - as are the mere mortals who attend universities.

This year’s Commonwealth Budget provides an additional $41 million over four years “to support elite sport” (in what other context does the Howard Government explicitly support “elite” anything?). It also provides a further $11 million so Australian athletes can spend time training in Northern Italy. (What other instructional institutions have been assisted with taxpayers’ money to establish an overseas campus?)

Contrast this with the reaction to the revelation two years ago that Australia had not one of the top 100 universities in the world. Rupert Murdoch and the Governor of the Reserve Bank, Ian Macfarlane, expressed concern about this less than gold medal-winning performance. But was there a national outcry? Was there a public inquiry? Was there an immediate injection of funds into our university system? No, there was a collective national yawn.

In fact, last year the number of Australians attending universities declined for only the second time in 50 years. To the best of my knowledge no-one in government or business has thought this worthy of comment.

Every year Interbrand produces a list of the top 100 global brands. For each of the past five years, it has been topped by Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM and GE, in that order. Brands are the result of creativity and innovation. And brands are valuable: that’s why anti-corporate “activists” like Naomi Klein campaign against them. The top four global brands are valued at between $US67.5 billion and US$47 billion.

Not once in the last five years has there been an Australian name on this list.

Has this caused any kind of national outcry? Not at all. We take comfort in being told that we are “too small” for any of our brands to be globally significant. But being smaller than Australia, the 16th largest economy in the world, hasn’t prevented Switzerland, the 36th largest economy in the world, from having five on this list (Nescafé, Novartis, UBS, Rolex, and Nestlé); the Netherlands, the 23rd largest economy in the world, from having three (Phillips, ING and Heineken); Sweden, the 34th largest economy in the world, from having one (Ikea); and Finland, the 49th largest economy in the world, from also having one (Nokia).

Australia produces a disproportionately high number of Olympic gold medallists and other sporting champions relative to our population, because our culture values and applauds success in that arena, and is willing to confer financial support and high social status on those who achieve it.

Conversely, we “punch below our weight”, to employ another sporting metaphor, in other areas such as the arts, sciences and business because our culture does not value or respect success in these areas.

The federal, state and territory governments spent $1.074 billion on sport and recreation in 2000-01, the latest year for which such figures are available. Local governments spent a further $1.05 billion, nearly all of it on venues and grounds.

In the same year, the federal, state and territory governments spent $1.559 billion on “the arts”, plus another $226 million on “art museums”, figures for local government spending on “the arts” that year are not available, although in 2003- 04 local government spending on “the arts” totalled $945 million.

However these figures for spending on “the arts” include $914 million spent by the federal government on “broadcasting and film”, of which 90 per cent represents funding of the ABC and SBS. Some of this is, of course, spent on broadcasting or televising sport: nothing wrong with that, but spending on “the arts” it isn’t. Nor does spending on news and current affairs, worthy and valuable though it is, constitute spending on “the arts”.

It’s not clear from their Annual Reports how much the ABC and SBS do spend on “the arts”, but it’s not unreasonable to suppose that it is of the order of 10 per cent of what they receive from government. On that assumption, total spending on “the arts” by the federal, state and territory governments in 2001-02 was about $960 million, $100 million less than the amount they spend on sport.

According to a study (pdf, 85 KB) by the US National Endowment for the Arts - which admittedly is now a little dated - Australian governments spend less per capita and less as a percentage of GDP on the arts than governments in any of a representative sample of 10 OECD economies other than the United States (where, of course, there is a much higher level of business and private support for the arts) and (rather surprisingly) Ireland.

Yet the case for public spending on the arts is surely no less compelling than that for public spending on sport. Indeed, even President George W. Bush has acknowledged, “the arts and humanities serve as an incomparable mirror and a record of humanity’s response to the joys, tragedies, and mysteries of life. They help us better understand ourselves and our world. And they are essential to preserving and celebrating our democratic way of life”.

Economists understand this too. Maynard Keynes, in his last broadcast as Chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, ten months before he died, said: “The artist … leads the rest of us into fresh pastures and teaches us to love and to enjoy what we often begin by rejecting, enlarging our sensitivity and purifying our instincts.”

And of course (most) artists create something which continues long after the death, which (memories aside) is not the case with sportspeople.

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.