Athletes face funding cuts but the party goes on for leaders

Sport Australia executives are preparing celebratory functions for sports board members just weeks after slashing funding for sports.

Acting Sport Australia chief executive Robert Dalton. Picture: AAP

Sport Australia executives are preparing a round of celebratory functions for sports board members to launch a Sports Governance Framework just weeks after slashing funding for sports.

The governing body will host a four-state tour of capital cities, which takes in functions involving two hours of “networking and professional devel­opment, celebrating and acknow­ledging 12 months of whole of sector engagement and co-design’’.

The celebratory mood has been soured by the call by one parliamentarian to review the governance of sport and its funding processes in the wake of revelations of huge salaries given to Sport Australia and Australian Institute of Sport leaders.

The Sport Australia evenings, costing $25,000, will be held in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth between March 25 and April 2 between 5.30pm and 7.30pm. The invitations say board members of sports are invited by Australian Sports Commission chairman John Wylie, other commissioners of the sports commission board, and acting Sport Australia chief executive Robert Dalton.

One invitee said: “Seriously? This is just something else to spend money on — except sport!’’

Another said the executives were “disgracefully tone-deaf’’ to the funding issues all Olympic sports face and the enormous pressure put on the athletes in the lead up to Tokyo 2020 that could have huge implications across the board for future funding.

One outraged parent said the money should be reserved for athletes who were battling to stay in their sport, not bureaucrats patting themselves on the back.

The invitations to the get-­togethers — at venues still to be announced — come just weeks after The Weekend Australian uncovered sports executives had spent more than $5m on recruitment companies in two years and $7m on leadership programs over more than four years while funding to most struggling sports was being slashed — some by more than 60 per cent.

The sports governance and co-design project to be celebrated has already involved 10 workshops across Australia last March and April, organised by Sport Australia’s sport governance and strategy team flying into each one. According to a 17-page Sport Australia report, the aim of the project “is the co-creation of contemporary and innovative whole of sport governance principles and resources’’.

Attendees included directors, senior executives and government agency representatives from across many sports.

Acting CEO of Sport Australia Robert Dalton said on Friday the upcoming functions were “workshops’’.

“Governance is a complex matter and based on feedback from sports and states, they ­wanted more opportunities for face-to-face workshops with Sport Australia. We are responding to that, with these workshops,” he said.

“It’s also important to ­acknowledging the enormous contribution provided by Australian sport to the co-design of this framework and these principles.

“This is sport working together at its best. It would undervalue the enormity of this project to send out a link via email and hope sporting bodies read it and, most importantly, completely understand it.”

Sydney MP Zali Steggall, a former Winter Olympic medallist and a director of the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia, told parliament this week that the benefits of sport were jeopardised “if we start undermining the way we view and fund our national sports program, especially Olympic sports”.

“I know first-hand the challenges of funding. It is a constant struggle, and it’s always the families and athletes that are called upon to contribute,” she said.

“Winter sports in particular are consistently disadvantaged in funding in Australia. But our ­national sporting authority must do better.’’

Ms Steggall called on the federal government “to reassess the funding process, to review the governance in general of the Australian Sports Commission and to support our aspiring athletes’’.

“We must be able to have role models, and our youth need to have those dreams,’’ she said.