Caught an item on the news about various sports bodies demanding they receive more funding. Of course, it’s the time of year that everyone wants more funding, so in itself it’s not surprising, but one set of comments stood out:
“I don’t think the Australian public will take kindly if we suddenly drop off again and fall out of the top 10.
“There is an expectation from the Australian public, the Australian public are very proud of the performances our athletes have been achieving.
“So I’m hoping that’s understood.”
I thought about those statements for a second before I realised what he’d just said. He’s publically blackmailing the Australian government to make them give his group more money.
He just got up there and said, essentially, “if you don’t give me more money, we won’t as well at the Olympics and the people will hate that and they’ll blame you and vote your out for it”.
So that’s how it works. If only arts funding bodies had balls like this, maybe there’d be more money for arts that wasn’t constantly belittled, subject to endless forms of HECS payback schemes and penny-pinched endlessly.
But I guess that’s sport, and sport is Australia.