Australian Sports Commission Chair John Wylie said that Australian sport is "standing on a 'burning deck' and needs a significant funding boost through the creation of a national lottery to enable athletes to compete with the world's best at the Olympics and other international competitions," according to Chip Le Grand of THE AUSTRALIAN. Armed with new figures showing that "Australian high-performance sport is being outspent two to one by Britain," and modeling indicating that a British-style lottery would generate up to A$50M ($37.2M) in additional funding, Wylie "issued a 'call to action' to arrest the national sporting decline." Wylie: "This is the moment of truth for funding for Australian sport. If we are going to remain competitive internationally, if we are going to have a healthy and active society, we need to invest significantly more in the system." The ASC is not asking for more money from "already strained" public finances. Instead, it is seeking federal government support "to create, through an online lottery, a substantial new funding source to benefit sport and the arts." Wylie said that a lottery would need to be "up and running by the end of next year to have an impact on Australia’s performance at the next Olympics" in Tokyo in '20. The push to follow Britain’s road to sporting recovery was backed by Swimming Australia President John Bertrand and Athletics Australia President Mark Arbib. Arbib said that Australian sport was in "desperate need of an injection of significant new funds" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 11/28).
