Cory Bernardi (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australians have a particular fascination with sport, which escalates during major sporting events. Outside of immediate matters political, the nation is once again focused on major sporting events internationally and at home, with the recent Rugby World Cup in France, the World Athletics Championships having concluded in Japan, football finals taking place right across this country and the Beijing Olympics less than a year away. We all enjoy watching such spectacles, and we love to cheer on our sporting heroes as they participate at the very highest levels and perform at their very optimum. We wear our patriotism on our sleeves for all to see during times like this. As one, we share in the triumphs and the trials of our athletes and our representatives.

But sporting heroes are not made simply in the 40 minutes on the field or in the sub 10 seconds on the track; they are the result of years of very hard work by not only the athletes themselves but the committed coaches, organisations and clubs right across this country. As a nation, we enjoy the fruits of such dedication. It has seen us excel in a myriad of sports: cricket, cycling, swimming, rowing—the list could go on. May I add, for the record of Hansard, that we have the benefit of the presence in the gallery today of a great Australian rowing champion in Alastair McLachlan, a good South Australian.

Our sporting achievements are really remarkable when put into the context of the place our nation occupies in the world. At the Athens Olympics we finished fourth on the medal tally, an amazing feat, given we are a country of around only 21 million people. Our closest competitors on that medal tally were Germany, a nation of 80 million, and the Peoples Republic of China, with a population of around 1.2 billion.

But we cannot take for granted our sporting success. We cannot afford to rest on our laurels. We cannot assume that we will maintain our position as one of the world’s most successful sporting nations. We must do more to ensure continued success. I say this because it is oft remarked that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. So, as a nation, successive governments should be flattered that our successful programs, our ground-breaking sporting programs, are being copied by other countries. Countries such as the UK, Germany, France and China have all developed their very own version of the Australian Institute of Sport. It is obviously not called the Australian Institute of Sport but they have their sporting centres of excellence. We should not only take this as a compliment and recognition of the great strides and achievements we have made but also recognise it as a potential threat to our continued sporting success.

The results of these competing programs are already becoming evident. China has developed into a sporting superpower. In 1932, for instance, China sent a single athlete to the Olympics. In 2004, China came second on the Olympic medal tally, with 32 gold medals. The Chinese have a particular approach that is applicable only to that country. But similar methods are being implemented right across the world. In the lead-up to the London Olympics, the UK is deploying formidable resources to ensure their sporting success. Not only have they established their very own sporting centre of excellence; they are recruiting second generation migrants from Africa and the Caribbean. They are recruiting Australian coaches. They are recruiting managers and sports scientists from this country who are being lured to work offshore in not only the UK but other countries on the promise of hefty pay packets and virtually unlimited budgets. As a nation we cannot afford to lose this local expertise—and it is very important when once again we consider the relatively small pool of talent that Australia has available to it.

I would like to put this in perspective. Let us assume that around 10 per cent of the population aged between 10 and 19 have the capacity to become elite athletes. Countries such as China have a talent pool of 22.8 million potential elite athletes; the USA, about 4.2 million; and Australia, around 280,000. This is a very rough estimation, of course, but it illustrates the enormous challenge facing Australian sport and the very real need to make the most of the talent pool we have. We need to ensure that we can retain Aussie ingenuity and Aussie know-how in this country, not only for the development of our athletes but for the future development of our coaches. We need to ensure that young talent is prepared to replace our existing pool of athletes as they retire or move on to other careers. We in Australia very much need to look forward and focus on the future of the Australian sporting system in order to maintain our sporting influence worldwide.

It is fair to say that our sporting future changed with the development of the Australian Institute of Sport in 1981. I think that every time we witness the success on the international stage of an individual or a team, or we see our national flag being raised in victory, we are witnessing the demonstration of the success of the AIS. It remains one of the most innovative sporting organisations in the world, and our results are testament to the programs themselves. But in an increasingly competitive sporting environment, in a world where many countries have their own sports institutes, what is going to take Australian sport to the next level? What is going to be the AIS of the next 20 or 30 years? At the very base level we need to ensure that we have more children, in particular, participating in sport, because participation rates have, quite frankly, been dropping. It is an issue that has led to a number of health and welfare constraints across the country. It is an issue on which I think quite frankly the state Labor governments have dropped the ball, because they have not committed, over many, many years, to supporting physical activity as a core part of the education policy.

But the federal government has recognised the importance of this, not only to sport but also to the health and wellbeing of the future generations of our entire country. We have done this through the Active After-school Communities program. Through the AASC program, children have the opportunity to develop the mobility skills that will serve them very well throughout their life, whether they become an elite athlete or even a competitive athlete. Children now have the opportunity to become interested in sport, and we need to ensure that young people have the interest and the ability to participate as fulsomely as they can so that we can develop any sporting talents they may have.

We need to encourage more young people into the sports system. An active after-schools program can do just that. We need to also review how best to support them once they get into the sports system and how best to develop their natural talents because it is in the early stages that future elite athletes—or, indeed, people of any walk of life—develop a number of skills. They develop their dedication, work ethic and commitment—and build their character—that will stand them in very good stead.

Right now we are entrusting our sporting future to a number of very well-meaning, very well-intentioned and very dedicated parents and volunteer coaches. One can never understate the contribution that these people make to our nation, the history of volunteerism and the development of the potential and character of every child. But our best and brightest sporting talent need our best and brightest coaching talent. We need that to ensure that Australia’s sporting potential is fulfilled. We need to be able to identify at a very early age our best and brightest sporting talent and take them as far as they can go. We also need to identify which coaches offer the most innovative development of sporting potential in this country. We need to identify those at a very early age too.

I believe that Australia’s sporting future lies in talent identification, which was pioneered by the AIS some 20 years ago. I was involved in the early stages of that development. They must have used me to discover what not to get in an elite sportsman; nevertheless, I was one of their early guinea pigs. Since then talent identification has been a big part of the AIS and the Australian Sports Commission. One of the aims of the program was to identify and develop athletes in preparation for the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics. The focus initially was on eight sports, including athletics, cycling, swimming, rowing and weightlifting. Over the years the program has progressed and become more important, especially in the lead-up to the Sydney Olympics.

Talent ID was used in schools to identify those children with the physical potential to develop in a chosen sport. We have had a number of successes with this approach. According to the Australian Sports Commission, the program aims to identify and subsequently fast-track the development of potential athletes to Olympic and world championship levels. It also contributes positively to our sporting culture by increasing participation, increasing the depth of our competitive field and developing our coaches.

This program also allows us to target particular sports where Australia can achieve early success. Perhaps the best known success is the skeleton project of 2004. Skeleton is an unusual sport. It is a sport which involves sliding headfirst down a bobsled track—it is not for the faint of heart! Ten women were identified as having enormous potential to succeed in this sport. These women came from areas such as surf-lifesaving and beach sprinting. A few of them had not seen snow or a bobsled track ever before. They trained these 10 women very hard and they participated in international competitions. Some 18 months later we had a junior world champion and a skeleton crew member qualifying for the Torino Winter Olympics in 2006. This demonstrates very clearly that Australia has the talent, the capacity and the ability to succeed in a range of areas based on identifying the talents and potential of athletes.

The federal budget in 2006 allocated $55.7 million to the Australian Sports Commission to enhance the performance of our elite athletes. This was part of a $125 million package given to the ASC to deliver excellence in sports performance over 2006 and 2007. Importantly, $4.8 million was earmarked for the development of a national identification network, involving regional talent identification initiatives and the implementation of a talent transfer program. Further funding of $4.6 million was also allocated over four years to identify, develop and retain elite coaches. This is a very far-sighted allocation of funds and it will stand the Australian sporting network in very good stead.

We also have an Indigenous talent ID program. This program aims to develop the athletic ability of the Indigenous population, who are very well regarded and very well known for their enormous sporting potential. You just have to look at the football field or see the success of Cathy Freeman to understand that. We have programs in athletics, boxing, basketball and a whole range of other areas. One example of success in this program is Patrick Mills, a 19-year-old basketball player who was selected to join the Boomers on their European tour. His performance there earned him a spot in the Olympic qualifying series against New Zealand. So we are already producing results.

We are taking multi-talented athletes with a background in one sport and identifying those people who have an interest in sport and channelling them into an area where they can achieve not only success and enjoyment but a great deal for Australia. We did it with Alisa Camplin, who went from gymnastics to aerial skiing, and Jane Saville, a former ironwoman in surf-lifesaving turned race walker and triple Commonwealth gold medallist.

Many other talent identification programs are being undertaken because we need to know how many potential Cathy Freemans are out there. How many potential Ian Thorpes are swimming in the backyard pool, unseen by those who could catapult them to glory? This is a way of allocating our scarce resources—the human resources, the human potential and the talent pool I referred to earlier—and applying our funding model in the most consistent manner possible.

Australia cannot afford to leave the discovery of our successful athletes and our potential gold medallists simply to chance. With the small population that we have we cannot wait for accidents or coincidences to identify future successful athletes. ID programs are essential for the future of Australian sporting success. To remain competitive we must focus on these programs and support them wholeheartedly. International sporting success is a vital part of our cultural identity. We cannot afford to leave any stone unturned in seeking to achieve these aims.