Online Tutoring on Government Sports Policy
Policy Area 1 – Elite Sport & Sport Pathways
Talent identification and programs are essential for development of elite sports persons (Bosscher, Shibli, Westerbeek & Bottenburg, 2016). The policy problem in Elite Sport and Sport pathways was that it was a systematic talent identification system, which selected and developed the individuals and focused only on producing winning elite sports persons through intensive training, facilities and sports science programs and talent identification (Sotiriadou & Shilbury, 2009). This policy affected range of sports enthusiasts, parents and the community as only few best individuals who were very good at sports got the opportunity to get trained and play at Olympics and the focus was only on gaining more medals (Bosscher et al., 2016). The Federal government and the community sport association believed that elite sport system can prosper only when there is a strong talent base that is built from a younger age. The policy that was implemented to address the policy problem included involving junior and community sport in identifying talent and training them to increase the pool from which the elite athletes or sports persons can be drawn (Sotiriadou & Shilbury, 2009). The policy emphasizes on expanding the focus and recognizing everyone’s involvement in the physical activities, which provides many kinds of rewards besides winning medals. The policy was implemented through the resources and skills of policy developers. In the elite sports, community participation was introduced as it meets many objectives rather than just gaining medals such as developing basic skills and healthy discipline in young children, contributing to better health and prevention of chronic disease across all segments and promoting inclusive and engaged community.
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Policy Area 2 – Sport Participation & Junior Sport
In junior sports, there are two forms of junior sport, which are informal, player-controlled spot and the other one is formal and adult controlled (Australian Government, 2010). The policy of organized junior sport had a financial component, which required families and communities to pay for clothing, fees, insurance, registration and travel (Shilbury, Sotiriadou & Green, 2008). The competitive opportunities ranged through local club competitions opportunities through state, national and international have to be financed by parents. Financing became the responsibility of families along with increased need of parental involvement (Government of Western Australia, 2019). This led to reduction in participation in junior sports and participation increased in non-traditional activities, such as skateboarding, skating, BMX riding and snowboarding. This affected the children, parents, sports organizations ad it provided reduced opportunity to develop future sports enthusiast from grass root level and developing the skills at later stage became difficult (Shilbury et al., 2008). Local governments are introducing policy that ensure junior sporting teams are provided the access to active recreation areas without any charge, recognition and support for junior athletes and sporting clubs (Government of Western Australia, 2019). The governments have implemented policy to provide small grants to individual players who are selected in state of national teams (Australian Government, 2010). The policy also involves community fund establishment that provides one-off grants for equipment and any initial costs for junior sport groups to enhance the participation among juniors (Nicholson, Hoye & Houlihan, 2011). The resource and skills used to implement policy was effective engagement with the community and allocating more funds to encourage juniors to participate in mainstream sports (Government of Western Australia, 2019). The factors that policy has addressed helps in overcoming the problem of financial constraint and need for parental involvement.
Policy Area 3 – Sport Betting
Sports along with physical activity have a positive influence on individuals and society. Sports is important for the people participating and for people just watching the sport (Nicholson et al., 2011). In Australia, sport betting led to betting-motivated corruption, which negatively impacted on sport competition that led to decreasing levels in participation and supported and also loss of sponsors and other relevant funding sources (David, Thomas, Randle, Bowe & Daube, 2017). The lack of protection of sport integrity was the policy problem, which affected the players, sports organizations, sponsors and sports fans as the sports was not played with integrity (Nicholson et al., 2011). The policy included platform for collaboration that would be underpinned by legislation, codes of conduct, regulation and industry standards. The resources and skills used was the co-operation and goodwill between governments, betting industry and sports organization. The policy involved support from these stakeholders to Sports Ministers of Australia to implement policy that would deter match-fixing to preserve the integrity of the country’s national sporting heritage (Lastra, Bell & Bond, 2017). Through the policy, consistent national code of conduct principles for sport was implemented, the efficiency of networks between betting operators, governments, major sports and law was enforced. The policy’s scope was to engage all the key stakeholders in the process that involved betting operators, sports organizations, government and the regulations that provided a comprehensive approach to addressing the policy problem of not protecting the integrity of the sports. Through the policy, the public confidence was increased. The policy was implemented to have broader positive impact wherein the development of industry capacity was done to ensure integrity of sport in all types of sports and it included providing financial and any other kind of support if necessary, so that the players and other stakeholders do not opt for match fixing (Lastra et al., 2017).
Policy Area 4 – Sport Broadcasting
The introduction of cable and subscription television in Australia led to siphoning of programs to avoid anti-competitive behavior (Davies, 2015). The anti-siphoning policy was implemented bask in 1980s but was not well accepted by sporting bodies and the subscription operators arguing that it would not allow competition with free-to-air broadcasters (OECD, 2013). Anti-siphoning policy at that time led to certain restrictions on the pay Tv channels . This affected the sporting bodies and pay TV channels and to some extent free-to-air broadcasters as the policy implemented did not consider wider aspects (Stewart et al., 2004). This led to implementation of Australian anti-siphoning rules under the section 115 of BSA, which provided more power to free-to-air broadcasters and allowed them first to acquiring the broadcast rights and if they did not enlist it will be deducted (Rhonda, 2012). The policy change was done based on the involvement of the government and Australian Broadcasting Company in the interest of people who could watch the desired sports on free-to-air channels rather pay for them through the subscription channels (OECD, 2013). The anti-siphoning law is not supported by the subscription companies to a great deal as it limits the ability of pay TV companies to televise and popularize the sport. The scope of the policy has addressed the issue of the national broadcasters and not considered its impact on the subscription tv companies. The anti-siphoning policy is not well accepted by the pay TV broadcasters as it provides them very limited scope to choose the sports and those are the ones which national broadcasters are not interested in.
Policy Area 5 – Drugs in Sport
Commonwealth Government in Australia have developed broadly based anti-doping policy called BASA policy, as per which use of performance enhancing drugs is unfair and unethical but is also considered to be harmful to health of athletes (Stewart, Nicholson, Smith& Westerbeek, 2004). It implemented three measures such as providing financial assistance to drug testing programmes, education and informing athletes about use of performance enhancing drugs and imposing appropriate sanction on sports persons who have committed anti-doping offences (Australian Government, 2015). The policy problem is that this required increased investment on the testing procedure, which would then follow education and imposing sanction on sports person, which might not have a positive impact on the person accused and others in the field as getting tested and then getting educated can lead to minimizing the sanction for the person who has committed the offence. This would affect the accused players, other players, sports organization and government as it reduces the seriousness of the offence by the time there is any sanction done on the offender. Cricket Australia brought in a new anti-doping policy, which was an enhancement of the earlier policy (Stewart & Smith, 2008). Under the policy, it has been declared that use of performance enhancing drugs and doping practices is against sports and is very harmful to health of athletes. With the support of the Cricket Board, and support of ASC and Commonwealth Government, a detailed listing of the drugs are mentioned under the title Prohibited Substance (Stewart et al., 2004). The policy aims to prevent drug abuse by first imposing sanctions on players committing the offence, then educating the rest of the players about the issue and then supporting drug testing programme. The resources and skills were of Cricket Association along with support of ASC. But under this policy, CA acknowledges that players can be allowed to take a prohibited substance if the players can ensure that that drug would be used for therapeutic purpose.
Policy Area 6 – Stadia & Events
Australian cities have been developing new, bigger and better sporting stadiums and arenas. But as the sports market is comparatively small there has been increased restriction from communities (Brockhoff, 2018). Under the policy of renovating the six venues across NSW states were opposed by the opposition. But NSW Labor highlighted that the policy was useful as it will put burden on the states spending and also the taxpayers money will be lost on stadium, which might not provide the required returns (Glanville, 2018). The new stadium policy, which was introduced by the influence of community and the opposition parties was that of renovating Stadium Australia rather than reconstructing them as it will save the taxpayers money and the same amount can be invested in some other areas of the community needs (Timothy & Hong, 2015). This policy changes were brought by the involvement of communities and the opposition leaders who opposed for reconstructing the stadium as they believed that stadium will not be used much due to lesser events and reconstructing will incur increased cost on the state government and the taxpayers money will be used (McClintock, 2018). The change in the policy was brought in due to the feedbacks and inputs from the community people and some opposition parties, which considered that spending on reconstructing stadium will not add to the economic costs. It has been highlighted that rebuilding of the stadium cannot stimulate the economy enough to get desired returns on the money invested in building the stadium.
Policy Area 7 – Harassment & Discrimination
Australian sports reflected a culture of physical aggression and marginalized women making it a male dominant field, which led to sexual harassment and bullying. In 2000, Commonwealth Government instructed ASC to develop a policy and guidelines to overcome the sexual discrimination (Stewart et al., 2004). The policy introduced focused on range of discriminatory and harassment type behaviors and focused on how people can forward a complaint regarding the grievances. The problem of the policy is very vague and does not specify effective empowerment to the women players and the policy does not provide any strong (Nicholson et al., 2011). This affected the women players and men players for sexual harassment and bullying respectively. In 2002 ASC introduced another consolidated policy, which was known as Member Protection Policy (MPP) (Stewart et al., 2004). This policy is aimed to protect members of sporting organization from various actions such as discrimination, harassment, and other form of abuse. This policy also emphasizes on ensuring right people are given authority. This led to introduction of police checks on criminal offences and sex offences along with abusive offensive and belittling or threatening behavior (Nicholson et al., 2011). The policy was implemented using the skills of the existing governing body for organized swimming activities. The harassment and discrimination policy that was implemented helped in reducing the harassment and discrimination and provides a platform for complaints and checks regarding any kind of harassment and discrimination with anyone and at any level. This policy also detailed how disciplinary tribunal should be designed using appeal mechanism.
Synthesis
Sports policy is ensuring that people have access to broad range of sports activities at local level that is organized independently or includes membership-based sports clubs (Shilbury et al., 2008). The purpose of policy development in sports is to guide actions of all the people involved or connected with the organization with any area of the activity within the jurisdiction. The policies are guidelines for directors, employers, players, committee members and others. In some cases policies act as guidelines whereas in some cases it is mandatory. Sport policy in Australia consequently deals with several competing values along with economic and commercial implications of particular course of action and has to deal with culture of the sport and issues related to equity, race and tradition. Sport policy is mixture of incremental and transformative change. There are four policy decision options that emerge when rational-ideological continuum is combined with transformative-incremental continuum (Stewart et al., 2004). The incremental or transformational shift in policy can be wither due to ideology or evidence. The seven sports policy area in Australia have been a combination of incremental and transformational. The elite sport and sports pathways policy was a transformational change wherein there was a move from focusing only few players selected in a systematic model to involving choosing talent from junior and community sport. The changed policy considered everyone’s involvement highlighting the transformational change. The other policy changes, which are transformation include sport betting wherein the government went on to introduce policy wherein all stakeholders are being engaged rather than considering only few to implement stricter regulation for match fixing. The sport broadcasting was a transformational change wherein the free-to-air government channels were authorized to broadcast all the sports event and preferences were not given to the pay TV companies.
This had mixed reactions as it did not give pay TV companies to broadcast any of the sports event on its own. The harassment and discrimination also saw a transformational change when MPP was introduced wherein all the members were protected from all kind of harassment and it provided them a voice to complaint about any abuse of harassment promptly and in an effective manner. The incremental policy changes were found in the areas of stadia and events wherein the reconstruction policy was not supported by many based on evidence that it might not add sufficient value as compared to the cost of reconstruction. The policy for drugs in sports also was incremental wherein the Cricket Board suggested changes in order of addressing a drug abuse based on evidence that spending on the drug test and taking action on player later might not set a right example for others and use up the financial resources being used for eliminating drug use. The incremental sports policy in junior sport participation was based on the evidence that it was difficult for parents to invest in clothing, fees, travel and attend state and national level sports investing their own money. The change in policy has been incremental as the government considering the issues has brought changes to the policy and introduced different benefits gradually to influence junior sports.
References
Australian Government. (2010). Australian Sports-The Pathway to Success. Retrieved from
Australian Government. (2015, November 4). Anti-doping framework. Retrieved from
https://www.health.gov.au/internet/main/publishing.nsf/Content/anti-doping-framework
Bosscher, V., Shibli, S., Westerbeek, H., & Bottenburg, M. (2016). Convergence and Divergence of Elite Sport Policies: Is There a One-Size-Fits-All Model to Develop International Sporting Success?. Journal of Global Sport Management, 1(3-4), 70-89.
Brockhoff, J. (2018, April 11). Planning for great stadiums needs great public policy, The Fifth Estate. Retrieved from
