Future of AIS hanging in the balance
The Australian Institute of Sport is not for sale, according to Senator Richard Colbeck.
The Australian Institute of Sport is not for sale, according to Senator Richard Colbeck.
But Colbeck, who is the Minister for Sport, admitted that there would be redevelopment of the half billion dollar Canberra AIS campus “within the next two or so years’’.
Senator Colbeck also told The Weekend Australian that he hoped that “the good people at the top’’ of the sports executive in Australia “were being responsible with the resources available to sport’’.
This follows revelations in Friday’s The Australian that Sport Australia and Australian Institute of Sport executives are on huge $400,000 plus salaries with more than $7 million spent on leadership training and $5 million on recruitment agencies; while some Olympic sports had been told they would have funding cut by as much as 60 per cent and cannot afford to hire coaches or conduct pre-Olympic training camps.
Senator Colbeck acknowledged the salary of AIS chief Peter Conde, on $426,000 a year and at least six other executives earning above $220,000, saying “we need good people at the top’’. But he added: “All elements of the way sports are resourced are important. Sport Australia allocates resources and are responsible in that context.’’
Senator Colbeck said that he was seeking views from sport about the future of the AIS and how it can be returned to being an inspiration for sport and an aspiration for Australia’s athletes.
At the moment the AIS contracts out its services to sports, some of which pay to use the Canberra campus. Over the past few years the AIS has turned into a bureaucratic organisation offloading the core needs of sports such as coaching to national sports organisations. Instead the AIS offers peripheral programs that provide questionable assistance to sports at a high cost.
“It has all been part of the conversation, how sports are resourced, how government interacts and we are also looking at the philanthropic aspect of sport and how we can do that better — all the way down to grassroots sports so that resourcing can happen there,’’ Senator Colbeck told The Weekend Australian.
Senator Colbeck confirmed that he had met with some sports officials in Canberra last week and that some team sports were agitating for the AIS to become a team hub so that there would be a critical mass of athletes with accompanying sports science, medicine and cutting edge innovation that would be available to all athletes. He said accommodating the Paralympic athletes was also a consideration. Another meeting with state institutes is planned later this month.
“Who uses it (the AIS) is one of the key questions,’’ Senator Colbeck said. “What is best for the athletes, what does the AIS do that is unique and what is there and ready made to make the athletes want to be there?’’
The Kemp Review, conducted by former sports minister Rod Kemp into the AIS, which has yet to be made public, is believed to be scathing of the decimation of the AIS campus over the past decade, leading to a situation today where there are no scholarship athletes, nor employed coaches.
Instead cash-strapped sports have had to contract out for services as basic as physiotherapy and the collegiate, innovative AIS atmosphere of the 1990s and early 2000s, that made the AIS the envy of the world, has been ground down into sports having to pay a fee for services.
Over the past two years consultants and architects have been paid millions from the Australian Sports Commission budget to provide plans for the AIS redevelopment, including a sale of some assets to the ACT government and redevelopment of some land into residential housing.
But Senator Colbeck insisted: “I am not selling off the AIS. There is a lot that is really good (about the AIS).’’
He said he wants to see “how best the next incarnation of the AIS campus can be’’.
Senator Colbeck’s consultation with sport is a welcome step, but the apparent redevelopment of the AIS site will be devastating news for Australia’s next generation of athletes.
Many national sports had hoped that the Morrison government would overhaul a dramatic restructure of the AIS campus — reigniting a centralised supportive system that had been world leading with a return of hundreds of aspiring athletes — and save the 64 hectare site including the stadium and sports arena.
The Weekend Australian understands that the redevelopment will include a $250m sell-off of half of the AIS site, including Canberra Stadium and the AIS Arena and relocating the athletics track so that it, and associated carparking, can be included in the sale.
Australian Sports Commission chairman John Wylie said in the 2019 annual report: “we are committed to a renewal and modernisation of the main AIS campus site. The current site in Canberra has been a wonderful asset for Australian sport, but now nearly 40 years after being opened, it needs modernisation and renewal. Significant work took place on this project this year.’’
But Senator Colbeck has revealed to the Weekend Australian that the money reinvested may not necessarily go into the Canberra campus, but to interstate sports facilities that would be best used for preparations for the Paris 2024 Games and then possibly for the Queensland 2032 Olympics and Paralympics.
In budget papers, the AIS land is valued at $10m and the buildings value varies according to different documents, from $548m to $556m.
Senator Colbeck said the Canberra campus had ‘’big ongoing site costs’’.
The AIS advertises its campus as having the world’s best physiology and biomechanics laboratories, a state of the art strength and conditioning gymnasium, haematology laboratory, 50m testing and training swimming pool and dedicated Recovery Centre. It also boasts to potential clients of “a specialised multidisciplinary team of sport scientists and practitioners to support National sporting organisation’s elite, pre-elite and development athletes including intensive rehabilitation and altitude house camps.’’
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