Gold for Australia: a lesson in successful public policy?

The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) is confidently predicting a record medal haul for Australia at the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Punters watching from the sidelines or their lounge rooms can cheer as Australia claims an expected 60 medals, 20 of which will be gold. Australia could rate third in the medal tally. On a per-capita basis that will make us number one and confirm Australia, at least in our own view, as the greatest sporting nation in the world.

Such sporting glory has not happened by chance. Successive federal governments have maintained an extraordinary commitment to funding elite sport. Elite sport policy provides an interesting example of what happens in public policy when there is long-term political commitment matched by appropriate funding.

Research by Kieran Hogan and Kevin Norton of the University of South Australia published in The Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport (Vol 3, Iss 2, June 2000) found that Australia has spent $1211 million on elite sport between 1976/77 and 1996/97.

The catalyst for federal commitment to winning gold medals was the 1976 Montreal Olympics. Australia failed to come home bathed in athletic glory. In fact, we didn’t bring home a single gold medal. Given that our national identity is so heavily tied up in sporting glory the failure to win gold was a disaster. Hogan and Norton point out that the public outcry following Montreal created a political environment that enabled the federal government to spend big on elite sport.

Gold medal winners aren’t born – they are made. A talented athlete needs a lot of support to make it to the top. Australia, unlike the sporting super power of the United States, provides that support to its athletes through direct government funding.

Following the Montreal disaster, the federal government established the Australian Institute of Sport – a state-of-the-art sports institute that provides Olympians and potential Olympians with the very best infrastructure, coaching, sports medicine, nutrition, and sports science. State governments followed suit, and most states now also have their own Institute of Sport.

In order to ensure that potential gold medal winners are not distracted by full-time employment, Australia has an elite athlete program that provides some income to athletes plus, if they reside at the AIS, accommodation and meals. This ensures that a full commitment to training can be made.

Access to money has not really been a problem for elite sport since Montreal. Australia’s potential medal winners have access to all the support, coaching and science needed to turn them from potential winners to actual winners. As a result not only do our athletes flourish, but Australia has become a world leader in scientific research relating to sporting performance.

Hogan and Norton translate Commonwealth expenditure on elite sport to around $50 million per gold medal. That is a heck of an investment – and given our expected medal haul at Sydney, it’s a heck of a success too. Hogan and Norton found a significant linear relationship between the money spent, and the number of medals won. In other words, this is public policy that works.

Research shows that investment of money and leadership in elite sport pays off. Gold medals capture the imagination of the nation and make us all proud to be Australian. Backing gold medallists is a political winner. But, to be quite honest, sporting glory doesn’t actually improve the wellbeing of the general population, or return any significant savings down the track to the Commonwealth.

So what would happen if the same level of the commitment and relative funding were applied to other elements of public policy? There are certainly other areas of public policy that would benefit from long-term bipartisan commitment and a decent amount of money – and maybe even deliver us more return for the investment.

The concurrent example that applies to this case is the level of physical activity among the general population. Funding to elite sport has not only been justified by winning gold medals. Successive Governments have argued that if Australian sporting heroes are bringing home gold, then the rest of us will be motivated to get off our backsides and get active. This ‘trickle-down’ effect has always been the secondary target of elite sports funding.

Hogan and Norton dismantled the trickle-down effect theory. They found that while Australian elite performance has improved massively over the past twenty years, the level the general population’s participation in sport and activity has continued to steadily decline. It is somewhat ironic that while Australia has become one of the great sporting nations of the world, the average Australian citizen has got slacker and fatter.

In the eyes of the world (and perhaps in our own eyes) Australia is a nation of fit and healthy people with a love of the great outdoors and playing sport. In actual fact Australia is facing a major health crisis because of inactivity. Heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancers, osteoporosis and osteoarthritis are all major killers, and treating these diseases is costing us a huge amount of money. Just to give you an indication of how much these diseases are costing us take the example of osteoporosis. By 2010, osteoporosis will be costing about $1 billion per annum in hospital admissions. Add up the rest and you have a cost to the community probably not matched by anything else.

Those big killers are in large part diseases of inactivity and poor nutrition. In other words they are preventable. If only we could get active.

We need to translate the public policy approach used in elite sport to general activity. We know there are real benefits in getting Australians fit. In fact the Hogan/Norton research points to evidence that doubling Australia’s current participation rate in physical activity would translate to a $17.5 billion gain to the community. That is a real return to the Commonwealth and would have a real impact on the wellbeing of the Australian population.

It seems governments are afraid of making the sort of proactive commitment that has been made to elite sport on a bigger scale – even though the returns may be greater. Governments don’t like spending massive amounts of money if a Minister can’t stand next to a medal winner, or a big factory, or some other tangible proof of money well spent. But, let’s not forget it took more than 20 years to be on target for 60 Olympic medals.

Surely the big ticket issues that make a nation are worth a bit of forward vision, planning and long term commitment. Health, education and environment are probably the three areas of public policy that could most benefit from the same approach to public policy we have taken with elite sport, albeit on a much grander scale.

Leadership and targeted investment have made us the greatest sporting nation in the world. Now we need that same leadership applied to one or two other pressing matters of public importance.