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2GB Radio - Afternoons with Chris Smith, Wednesday 28 October 2009

28 October 2009

E&OE

Chris Smith: What's an Olympic gold medal worth and I'm not just saying how much money we spend on athletes, coaches, institutes and narrow it down to single athletes, what's it worth to you? As Australians in terms of pride and maybe a sense of nationhood, what's it worth? What about $900 million, now that's what AOC President John Coates says at the moment. We're about $100 million short of that figure. He is suggesting that there is going to be a reduction in the money spent on sport leading up to London.

Now the Olympic President says we're in danger of another embarrassing Montreal style collapse. Remember when Montreal came up, we thought we'd get 20-30, we got one silver and four bronze in 1976 at Montreal.

Now the funding request has landed on the desk of Federal Sports Minister Kate Ellis. A few other things to catch up with her about today including this campaign she supported yesterday at Parliament  outside Parliament House; major magazine revolution pushing for bigger models and less airbrushing.

She's on the phone from Canberra right now, Minister good afternoon.

Kate Ellis: Good afternoon, great to be with you.

Chris Smith: And first time.

Kate Ellis: Indeed it is. Go easy on me.

Chris Smith: No, no, no all good. Now I know you've got question time coming up so thank you very much for this but you don't want another Montreal disaster on your watch do you?

Kate Ellis: I most certainly do not, no.

Chris Smith: So what are you going to do about John Coates has said? Now he is saying over four years to the London Olympics the British will spend $1.32 billion, and understandably because they're hosting, France $1.2 billion, Germany $1.04 billion, Italy $858 million and Australia $588 million. We're going to get hammered.

Kate Ellis: I think that the first thing we do is we recognise that there are challenges that are facing Australian sport and that's something that the Government has recognised, that at an elite international level there have been challenges which have been looming and emerging for some time.

That is why we said last year, well we're not going to just stick our heads in the sand. We're not going to just sit back and get complacent and let this happen. We're going to have a look at the major reforms that are needed of our system to keep it in front of the rest of the pack.

Chris Smith: But are reform, the word reforms, is that code for rationalisation?

Kate Ellis: I don't believe that it is and that isn't the context in which the word was being used but what it meant was that we appointed an independent expert panel. We said we want you to have a look not just at the challenges facing elite sport but let's get the full picture of sport in Australia.

We've got massive challenges in community sport, we've got clubs out there in neighbourhoods which are struggling, but we've also got massive challenges in people that aren't playing sport at all therefore they're contributing to our obesity figures as well.

So we need to have a look at getting the system right.

Chris Smith: I get the feeling though, that you're opening the door here for a reduction in funding. The other side of the argument is; if you add up $900 million and work out exactly what we're aiming for in London, now that would mean basically 55 medals at $1.6 million each, some would argue that that's too expensive. Why would we spend $1.6 million each when in places like in New South Wales we don't have any infrastructure?

Kate Ellis: First of all, I'd say that I can't counter the feelings that you're getting but that is not the intention at all. In fact the Prime Minister has repeatedly placed on the record that this Government is committed to continuing to be a strong financial partner of Australian sport, he's said that repeatedly.

When it comes to the price for an individual medal I'm constantly amazed at sometimes we'll see journalists getting the entire sports budget and dividing it by the number of medals we get and claiming that's how much a medal costs. Well that's rubbish because the sports budget is actually spent on a whole lot of things like junior sport and development, like running programs to use the power of sport for good community messages and campaigns; a whole range of things.

But my view is that it's incredibly useful and powerful for Australia's image that we are strong on the sporting arena internationally and you can put all the money you'd like into overseas advertising campaigns but I think the power of seeing Australians out there doing well on the international stage just does wonders for our image.

Chris Smith: So the next time that John Coates holds a press conference will he be happy? Can you guarantee he'll be happy?

Kate Ellis: I will make no guarantees around whether John Coates will be happy or not but what I will say is that we've committed to being strong partners, we're going to continue to work, not just with the Olympic Committee but with community sport, with grass root sporting organisations and with junior sport. And I would imagine that it wouldn't really be of too much surprise to anyone that when we say that we're doing a major review of sport that the Australian Olympic Committee come out and say; we think the outcome of that should be more funding for Australian Olympic sports. That's their job to advocate and good on them.

Chris Smith: I'm speaking with Federal Sports Minister, Youth Affairs Minister, Kate Ellis at the moment.

Now airbrushing, now I know that you fix your hair and put on a bit of lippy, certainly before question time and I've seen this at South Sydney matches and you're in public and of course you're on television on occasions to look your best. So what's wrong with a bit of airbrushing?

Kate Ellis: This isn't a war on airbrushing. What we were talking about in the body image report that was released yesterday is recognition of the fact that, I mean it might be shocking to you and me, but when Mission Australia goes out and does surveys of young Australians saying what is the biggest issue confronting you, body image keeps coming up.

It came up as the number one answer in 2007 so there is something that is very serious out there where we have this generation of young people who are not feeling comfortable, who are not feeling confident and are constantly feeling under pressure.

Chris Smith: So under pressure to look like a model you're saying?

Kate Ellis: Well no actually, if it was to look like a model then that would be one thing but it's actually to look like a whole range of pictures which they might be seeing. We saw recent examples of a model who had been photo shopped so much that her waist was about the same width as her neck.

Now I think it's a problem when young people are feeling like they don't add up when they're tyring to aspire to images which aren't real in the first place.

Chris Smith: But you're not the editor of the Women's Weekly and I know what Helen McCabe has done, she was down there too making comments about what she's done with Sarah Murdoch on the latest cover; that is she's not airbrushed but how do you tell editors to do what you want to do and do you have a right to do that?

Kate Ellis: The simple answer is you don't. What we're trying to do is work in partnership with, not just media - this isn't a problem that has been created by the media, it's a problem that we need to work with the media with fashion industries, with advertisers but also with the education system.

We need to be building up resilience in our young people and teaching them that we can't put the genie back in the bottle when it comes to technology but we can acknowledge that this generation is seeing images and advertising at a level that no other generation had to deal with.

They're constantly getting it whether it's over the internet, on their mobile phones. They're then seeing these digitally altered images which they're meant to try and aspire to look like and then they're told that if they don't look like that then there's plastic surgery on offer so there's no excuse for them not to.

We've got this generation of kids that are just feeling like they don't measure up. I think that's a real problem.

Chris Smith: The other thing is no one has spoken to blokes. Blokes don't like skinny women, we don't like seeing these skinny, awful, unsmiling, too intense women on a catwalk, we just don't and when they have that, I think it was the Sydney Fashion Festival or what it was Fashion Week, and those larger models came on; yeah, yeah went everyone in this office. It just made sense.

Kate Ellis: I think it's about diversity. It's not about saying skinny models are necessarily bad - if they're healthy then good luck to them. But it's about when you open a magazine shouldn't we see different ideas of beauty. Can't we recognise that not everybody aspires to be a size zero and that they can be beautiful at the same time and that's what this is really about.

It's just about having a diverse range of pictures which young people, young girls in particular, can recognise that they're normal.

Chris Smith: A post-script to our discussion this afternoon before I let you go; we had an argument, a healthy argument, at the grand final, about the ETS.

Kate Ellis: I don't think it was an argument.

Chris Smith: About the ETS. Now I respect your views about what climate change represents to you. I have a little bit more suspicion than you do but put that aside, you want an ETS or a carbon tax, I have a feeling it's not quite right but what I take issue with is that you want to go to Copenhagen with it written into law in Australia that we have a particular set of targets and we have an Emissions Trading Scheme. Why can't we wait until after Copenhagen and work out what the rest of our trading partners are doing?

Kate Ellis: I think the simple answer to that is that we've already had over 12 years of delay and the time for action has well and truly come.

Let's go back to the previous government, even John Howard committed that we would have a CPRS in 2007 so I think the Australian community, I know that business groups, a whole range of people, want a CPRS voted on this year so they can start to make their plans and make long-term investments.

Chris Smith: But you can't make plans if you don't know what the rest of the world is doing and surely if you want to have a proper due diligence you've got to work out what your trading partners are up to?

Kate Ellis: I think that that's an argument that was used many years ago when the previous government constantly was like we have to wait for what the US is doing we have to wait for the outcomes, we have to wait for Kyoto, we have to wait for a whole range of things.

My view is that in the lead up to Copenhagen the more countries that are moving forward, the more countries that are actually coming out and taking action then the more chance we have of an ambitious deal&.

Chris Smith: And the more suckers you'll see, Minister, I'm telling you we're not going to agree on this but the more suckers you'll see and I don't think we should be a sucker, however, good to catch up.

Kate Ellis: Nice to speak to you, thank you for having me.

Chris Smith: And you're going into question time, any bombshells due to be dropped this afternoon?

Kate Ellis: I'm not sure, you know that I would love to give you the scoop on that one but I just hope if they are they're not aimed my way.

Chris Smith: Thank you Kate, Federal Sports Minister, Youth Affairs, Kate Ellis.

ENDS

Minister Ellis' media: Jayne Stinson 0458 547 512
DEEWR media: media@deewr.gov.au Non-media queries: 1300 363 079

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