Australians are famous for producing world champions in just about every sport under the sun.
We rank among the world’s top half dozen Olympic nations, even though we number just over 20 million people.
So my Australia Day question is this: couldn’t we do more to help every Aussie family afford to play sport at grassroots level?
Everyone in my house, I’m glad to say, plays sport. But it costs.
My wife and three daughters are just gearing up for the new netball season, at a cost of about $1000.
That’s $160 for each big girl and $110 for the younger ones to register, plus $70 each for new uniforms and about $100 for sports shoes.
That’s just one sport.
Our sports budget also includes $70 a month for (year-round) swimming lessons, and has included $120 a term for gymnastics, plus various other activities such as ice skating.
And that’s just the girls.
Our boys have also played regular sport over the years, including soccer, rugby, cricket, tennis, basketball and martial arts.
They all require equipment, which can be pretty expensive, as well as playing fees and, if you are luckier than I was as a kid, the cost of lessons.
I play squash, which is affordable in the sense that it probably costs me under $1000 a year.
But I have also suffered the dire financial misfortune of falling in love with skiing.
I don’t want to tot up what we spend on sport every year or decade because I will probably go into meltdown quicker than my calculator.
But I have no complaints.
It’s money well spent.
Sport is an integral part of life, essential to physical and mental well-being.
‘‘Life. Be in it’’ the government urged us once in a very successful ad campaign.
We’re in it up to our eyeballs, which is where some families are up to in debt.
Subsidising grassroots sport to a greater degree strikes me as money well spent.
Every person playing sport regularly is ultimately making a huge contribution to cutting the national health bill by staying out of doctors’ surgeries and hospitals.
We are good at imposing punitive taxes on harmful products such as tobacco and alcohol.
But are we as good at the reverse - easing the financial burden to encourage healthy pursuits?
The Crawford report came down heavily on the side of financing grassroots rather than elite sport for the greatest national benefit.
Under heavy pressure from the powerful Olympics lobby, the Government chose to keep funding both.
Fair enough - I can see how one Olympic swimming medallist can inspire scores of kids to get on their blocks.
But if a choice has to be made, I think elite sport has to give way.
Funding one netball competition is worth more, in my reckoning, than giving a Greco-Roman wrestler the chance to make the top 30 at a world grapplefest.
It’s certainly better value than naturalising an Eastern bloc weightlifter just so we can add another medal to our tally at the Games.
But as I heave my way around the squash court and watch the Test cricket and the tennis I’d be happy if Australia stood out as the one country that truly encouraged everyone out onto the field of play.
The nation that pays you to play, as an amateur. That would be something to celebrate every Australia Day.
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