Originally published by Andrew Webster of The Australian
20.03.2026
Olympic and Paralympic sports fear the federal Treasury is about to slash their high-performance budgets, cruelling Australia’s medal chances at the 2032 Brisbane Games.
While Treasurer Jim Chalmers won’t hand down his budget until May, the word out of Canberra is that spending could be cut across the board by as much as 20 per cent. Sports are making pre-budget submissions but are privately concerned their funding will “stagnate” at a critical time.
As one powerbroker told this column: “It takes six years to make an Olympian. Decisions made by treasury in the next two months will determine Australia’s medal count in Brisbane.”
Sinking taxpayer money into sport and infrastructure is an emotive issue at the best of times.
The Albanese government is still copping it in the neck after pledging $600m of DFAT money for an NRL franchise in Papua New Guinea that will, apparently, stave off Chinese interests in the region. It’s been a hard sell to the public, especially when the NRL continually beats its own chest about how much revenue it’s raking in.
Olympic and Paralympic athletes are poorly paid in comparison to the major codes and are required to travel far more to compete in world championships, Commonwealth Games, and other international meets.
But it’s going to be a hard sell. A cost-of-living crisis and soaring fuel prices and interest rates means sport feels secondary. Little wonder the sports to whom I’ve spoken don’t want to comment publicly about the issue, knowing they’ll be hounded down.
But an issue it most certainly is, with cyclic funding for many sports ending in June. As it stands, no high-performance funding has been announced for 2028-2032 ahead of the Brisbane Olympics.
To put it simply, Olympic and Paralympic medals won at home Games are directly tied to how much money the federal government wants to spend years out from the big dance.
After Sydney won the rights in 1993 to host the 2000 Olympic Games, AOC boss John Coates released the Gold Medal Plan, which set a target of 60 medals for Australia at its first home Olympics since Melbourne in 1956. It was costed at $437m over seven years, with a large chunk coming from the feds. Then sports minister Ros Kelly pushed back, claiming “governments don’t win gold medals”. They don’t. But they do fund them.
Kelly was stood down following the sports rorts scandal and the thinking changed. Her replacement, John Faulkner, highlighted to cabinet how host nations enjoyed unprecedented success when their sports received sustained funding years out from the opening ceremony.
Prime minister Paul Keating, who identified in the Sydney bid document that “sporting excellence remains a unifying characteristic of our country”, provided an additional $135m to Olympic and Paralympic sports.
Australia finished fourth overall with 58 medals. At the Paralympics weeks later, we topped the medal tally for the first time.
When funding was slashed years out from the 2012 London Olympics, the result was one of our weaker medal hauls: eighth on the medal tally with 35. It was worse in Rio four years later: 10th with 29 medals. An increase in funding led to better-than-expected performances at the Tokyo and Paris games.
The Albanese government has been generous to sports. In Chalmers’ first budget in October 2022, $84.6m was delivered to Olympic sports. That blew out to $143.4m in the last budget, including $14.1m for swimming, $12.1m for rowing, and $11.4m each for athletics and cycling.
Increased funding for winter sports meant Australia enjoyed its most successful Winter Olympics when it was held in Milano Cortina earlier this year. When Jakara Anthony won gold in the dual moguls, she took the unprecedented step of thanking Sports Minister Anika Wells.
Contrast Australia’s performance with that of the Canadian team, which had one of its weakest Winter Olympics. The country’s Olympic chief, David Shoemaker, delivered a pointed message to Prime Minister Mark Carney with a clear message: “Core funding for national sports organisations has not increased in 20 years. It needs to. It’s the money these organisations count on to fund operations, athletes, coaches and support staff. They safeguard the pathway from playground to podium.”
When former Labor sports minister Mark Arbib was appointed AOC chief executive last year, he said the funding model needed to change with more help required from wealthy benefactors such as mining magnate Gina Rinehart, who generously funds swimming, rowing and volleyball, as well as individual athletes.
In an interview with The Australian last year, Coates was adamant the responsibility should still rest with government, but that’s getting harder to swallow for the taxpayer. The federal government has pledged $3.435bn for infrastructure for Brisbane 2032.
But the legacy of a home Olympics isn’t just big, shiny stadiums. It’s what our athletes do inside them that we remember long after the big dance has ended.
