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Australia's Michael Clarke belts a six from a Muralitharen ball, Australia v Sri Lanka first test - AAP Image/Tony Phillips
The Sports Minister, Kate Ellis, who famously did not know the difference between rugby league and rugby union, is floating the proposition that successful athletes should pay back part of their expenses incurred training at the Austalian Institute of Sports and other similar institutions.
The Minister, in the great tradition of the Rudd Government’s penchant for reviews, has a panel lead by the company director David Crawford looking into the matter.
The way the issue has been raised gives rise to the suspicion that the Minister releasing a kite to see whether it can fly. If there is a strongish public endorsement of the idea, the cash-strapped Rudd Government is certain to go for it.
First, a few facts from the Minister’s office.
It costs on average about $30,000 to train an athlete at the AIS. At any given time, there are about 700 athletes on scholarships training at the AIS in 35 different sports.
Some sports organisations that run their own development programs are funded by the Government. The bulk of AIS athletes train in Olympic sports and never make a living from their sport.
Tennis players, apparently, return a portion of their professional earning to the AIS.
A stronger precedent is the HECS scheme, whereby university students pay back a portion of the costs of their degrees once they begin to earn over $30,000.
A combination of the HECS and the tennis repayment system seems to be the model that should be adopted for AIS students.
Those students, probably the majority of them, who train for Olympic events that do not generally have a commercial kick-back, even when a gold medal is won, should not have to pay back anything.
But athletes who have converted their training into successful sporting careers should start paying back some of the costs of their training when they begin to generate, say, over $100,000 a year in income.
There is no reason, for instance, why Lucas Neill and Mark Viduka, two Socceroos stars and among the highest paid of all Australian athletes, should not repay some of their AIS training costs.
The same argument applies to Michael Clarke, and the basketball stars Lauren Jackson, Luc Longley and Patrick Mills.
When the Sydney Morning Herald ran this story, the clever sub-editor gave it the headline: What the HECS? Athletes face another hurdle.
The headline, in my opinion, is half right.
There should be a HECS-type payback scheme for successful athletes in order to generate more funds for athletes coming through the system.
But this scheme is hardly a hurdle.
The majority of the athletes would not be affected. Those who would be caught by the payback scheme should be proud and pleased to contribute some money to help other younger athletes have a chance of achieving what they have achieved.
So the answer to the question, ‘Should successful athletes pay back their AIS costs?’, is a resounding YES!