Sport: the great Australian double standard

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.