Sports Commission's Keiran Perkins looks to rebalance funding

Australian Sports Commission Chief Executive Keiran Perkins has called out Federal Government funding for sport, criticising the concept of ‘buying gold medals’ and indicating how financial support between the elite and grassroots needs to be rebalanced.

Profiled today in Nine's Good Weekend magazine, Perkins points to how this year, $132 million in Federal Government money is being spent on high-performance pathways, while just $17 million goes to grassroots participation, noting “that rebalance has definitely got to happen … because right now it’s well and truly out of kilter.”

Charting Perkins’ achievements at the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) since his appointment in March 2022, the profile says “he found a system that was fragmented and underfunded, engaging in the same tired political arguments and still trying gamely to ‘punch above our weight’.”

Looking to the opportunities presented by the ‘green and gold decade’ in the years up to the 2032 Brisbane Olympics, Perkins suggests Australian sport needs to be more agile and sustainable, and open on socio-cultural issues from LGBTQI+ rights to gender inequality.

Concerned at the decline in sports participation among teenagers, Perkins shares his belief that the vast majority drop out because they have an awful experience, stating “it’s a demeaning, demoralising, stressful environment when you’re coming into your teenage years … (with people) pushing on you is to be harder, fitter, stronger - because you could be a superstar one day, and if you’re not, you’ve failed as a human being and wasted your talent.”

Instead, Perkins is an advocate for the ‘win well’ strategy, the "balanced, holistic approach, supporting our athletes and people to win in all areas of life" launched by the 51 organisations including the ASC, Australian Olympic Committee and Paralympics Australia along with the governing bodies for sports including athletics, boxing and rugby union.

Perkins also emphasises the need for sports to find new avenues for funding while expressing surprise at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s pledging $240 million towards the $715 million stadium for an AFL team in Tasmania, commenting “it looks like a couple of hundred million dollars was given to a billion-dollar sport.”

He is also critical of the Victorian Government’s decision to relinquish its hosting rights for the 2026 Commonwealth Games, commenting “it’s completely disappointing and ­incredibly damaging for Australia’s reputation.

“We have, for generations, been a country that you could rely on to be a partner and a host, and this dramatically undermines that.”

He also is looking to expand gender and cultural diversity, with the Good Weekend profile referring to closing systemic gaps.

On his views on LGBTIQ+ issues, particularly the right of transgender people to join in community sport, he is surprised that it gets such attention given the tiny number of elite transgender athletes.

The question worth considering, he says, is whether an already at-risk, highly ostracised part of the community should be further ostracised. If people want to call him “woke” over this, he says, it only shows the shallowness of their perspective.”

Click here to read the full article in Good Weekend, distributed with Nine's Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times.

Image: Keiran Perkins at the National Press Club in 2022.