The behaviour and performance of our elite athletes over the past 12 months has caused many to question the Government’s financial investment in sport.
Most recently, multi-award winning artist Ben Quilty has sparked debate on the topic, suggesting that professional athletes should be obliged to pay back the cost of their training.
At the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS), athletes receive around $30,000 worth of publicly-funded development and resources.
However, unlike university students, they don’t have to pay back the debt when their income eventually surpasses a specified threshold.
Nope. They get their training for nothing.
Quilty, one of Australia’s most prominent painters, first mentioned the idea in his acceptance speech for the 2011 Archibald Prize.
He elaborated on his proposal in a Fairfax op-ed last week:
My Melbourne mate on radio argued lawn bowlers couldn’t make a living after competing at the Olympics and therefore shouldn’t have to repay any debt to the rest of us. I gently pointed out I didn’t go to art school to make money, and that school teachers sure as hell weren’t making much from their full HECS-incurring degree and years of hard, thankless work in the education system.
Surely if Eamon Sullivan and James Magnussen studied for nothing, then my little boy’s school teacher Ms O’Rourke should also have received education for free?
Unsurprisingly Quilty has faced some backlash for his views, and a number of politicians have shut down his attempts to have the proposal seriously considered.
But he isn’t lacking support.
Professor John Bloomfield, whose 1973 sports plan led to the establishment of the AIS, agrees that a Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) model should be implemented, requiring professional athletes to pay up only when – or indeed if – they earn enough money after they leave the Institute.