Sport Policy Areas and Associated Issues in Australia - Case Study Example

Sport Policy Areas and Associated Issues in Australia Name Institution Sport Policy Areas and Associated Issues in Australia Elite sport and Sport Pathways Within most Australian communities, Elite Sports Pathways are unique as it involves specialization based on different elements: community link, camp, coaching, and conditioning. Success in most Olympic sports requires full time commitment from the athletes, which makes properly coordinated and integrated systems important in sustaining the production of the desired results. However, such systems do not exist in Australia, which makes efficient and effective management of the elite sports almost impossible (Wilson & Pomfret, 2014). Success of the elite sports depends on the availability of performance programmes such as coaching, accessibility to the best facilities, medical and scientific services, and competition support. The Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) has a mission of enhancing the performance pathways through undertaking different innovative research projects of acquiring greater understanding of elite sport. The Australian government played a critical role in the formulation and implementation of the elite sport policy in manages the challenges associated with the elite sports and pathways. Before the 1970s, Australia almost lacked sport policy in its national public policy landscape. As a result, the commitments by the individuals within the government instituted the policies, programmes, and funding. Since Australia laid the foundation for AIS in 1981, it has developed continuously and redefined its elite sports policy and practice (Clearing House for Sport, 2010). Since 1985, the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) has been leading the development and implementation of the policy. As sporting activities become more professional, globalized, and specialized, the country is continuing to scale beyond its heights relative to the population size and the level of funding. However, the development and implementation of the elite sport and participation policy has been in inconsistent and uneven process within the Australian context. Within a long period, Australia experienced the emergence of unexpected issues. For example, from the health perspective, the growing crisis of chronic diseases and childhood obesity are the major challenges affecting the development of the next generation of elite athletes. Sport Participation and Junior Sport According to Australia’s Department of Sport and Recreation, the junior sporting activities needs to ensure promotion of fun, inclusivity, and safe environment for those participating. Moreover, the activities need to encourage lifelong commitment to health and active lifestyle among the juniors. The current junior sports in Australia do not base the programmes on the principle of equity of participation. All the participants require equal playing time and the opportunity of playing different positions. Sport participation among children offer numerous immediate and long term benefits such as ensuring formation of a positive physical activity behaviours, development of appropriate skills, physical literacy, and supporting the cognitive and social roles. Several agencies play a critical role in organizing and conducting different sporting activities. These agencies need to embrace co-operation and goodwill to ensure success in provision of sporting services to the young people (Australian Sports Commission, 1994). However, the major proliferation of the sporting providers is that, although they offer healthy diversity, in some cases they offer duplication and conflicting standards. As a result, they leave the gaps within the delivery of sporting activities, which could mean less than complete experience among the young generation. To address challenges associated with junior sporting activities, the Australian government formulated and implemented the National Junior Sport Policy, which also acts as a framework for developing the junior sports in Australia. The policy aims to provide framework and guidelines that ensure efficient and equitable delivery of different types of junior sports using programmes in schools and community. Safer sport and recreational activities among the children tend to increase the ongoing participation. Sport policies tend to encourage enjoyable, secure, inclusivity, and challenging experiences for the children, which guarantee appropriate participation outcomes. Every young Australian has the right of choosing appropriate sporting activities, which they consider enjoyable and safe to participate. In 1991, the ASC and the Confederation of Australian Sport convened in a national conference themed “Junior Sport: Time to deliver” with an aim of addressing some structural and philosophical changes needed for most systematic and coordinated provisions of the junior sport within the Australian context. Sport Betting In Australia, sport betting is becoming increasingly prevalent and it appears to be the fastest growing gambling type. Moreover, the Australian government associated increasing gambling problems with the rising rates of sport betting. Several pieces of evidence suppose that there is irritation among the sport fans on what they consider an encroachment on their enjoyment of the games especially with the rising sport betting related promotions during the live broadcasts. The major irritating factors are the Australian Rules controlling football and cricket matches and the increasing level of corruption related activities associated with the match fixing and sport betting. Despite these issues, there is little concern of the potential impacts, consequences, and costs of sport betting especially the susceptible groups and individuals within the community. The fast growth of sport betting coupled with the persuasive advertising of associated products and services resulted in some sporting becoming increasingly with gambling. As a result, there are several risks concerning the integrity and rising possibilities that there could be manipulation of results to make more money from the wagers. With such risks, the Australian government established various policies to manage the sport betting activities. The Council of Australian Governments formulated and implemented the National Policy on Match-Fixing in Sport. Through the policy, several Australian sporting entities made agreements with the betting agencies with an aim of reducing the potentiality of corruption within their sporting contests (Sotiriadou and Bosscher, 2013). In such regard, the Cricket Australia made an agreement with different sports betting providers listed as the Approved Betting Partners of Cricket Australia. The major intention of such agreement is to uphold and safeguard the integrity of the sporting contests and ensure adequate prevention and punishment of those influencing them to generate the winning bet. Through the policy, the federal government banned promotions of the live odds during the coverage of the sport and introduced the limits associated with betting inducements. Sport Broadcasting Through the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport, the Australian government recognizes the significance of accessing vital sporting events to several television viewers especially on the free-to-air terrestrial television. In Australia, receives numerous requests for the information as well as complaints of sports coverage on the televisions. Sport is an expensive form of media coverage. As a rest, most Australian broadcasters often fail to broadcast live coverage especially those using the FTA platforms. Sport broadcasting operates within the highly regulated communication environment under the legislations predating the development digital media. Considering the amount of expenses involved, sport coverage media often charge high amounts for the view. To ensure accessibility to sport broadcasts, the Australian government formulated the Sports Broadcasting Policy to ensure that key sporting events are available to all the Australian television viewers especially those who cannot afford extra cost for the television subscription. Due to such problems, the Australian law protects some events. People feel passionate about different sports and associated events. In every country, broadcasting policy play an important role in testing the commitment of the country to sporting opportunities (Collins, 2006). The policy works closely with the anti-siphoning law to ensure the protection of the interest FTA broadcasters by ensure accessibility and availability of sporting activities to the Australian population at lower cost rather than paying for television. Sport broadcasting is one aspect of media used by most businesses to exploit the local Australians especially the sport fans. Since the introduction of pay television in Australian, there have been increments in the cost of broadcasting the sporting activities. These additional costs are reflected in the cost of subscriptions. To some extent, the costs deny most Australians especially the low-income earners accessibility in sport broadcast. Sport broadcasting policy aims to address these problems. Drugs in Sport With the rising use of drugs in various sporting activities, Australia is one of the countries on the forefront fight doping in sports. Besides, it one of first the countries in establishing sport anti doping agency and is the current member of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and complies with the World Anti-Doping Code. However, even with such compliance, using substances among athletes is on the rise. Such applications are prohibited in sports as they have the potential of threatening the personal health, their fair play, and overall integrity of sport (Stewart & Smith, 2010). It is critical to comply with the anti-doping policies and procedures for involvement in any Australian and international sporting activity. Globally, utilization of performance enhancing drugs within the sporting realm is prohibited with WADA Codes setting the rules of managing the anti-doping activities. To curb the rising incidents of performance enhancement in sports, both the Australian Sports Commission and Australian Sports Anti-doping Authority (ASDA) initiated a countrywide drug education and ensured proper enforcement of different programmes through its Tough-on-Drug-in-Sport policy. Since the establishment of the policy, the Tough on Drugs in Sport policy remains the Work Choices of the sport. Moreover, the policy gave rise to the formation of the ASDA as an institution in 2006 (Lewis, 2015). As a result, the policy contributed in breaking down the initial ASDA and expressed the right of every athlete especially on matters involving privacy and natural justice. To ensure effective compliance, the Australian government launched Tough on Drug (illicit drugs) in sports policy with an aim of voluntary regime for the out-of-competition testing especially for the illicit drugs. Through the policy, Australia managed to meet the membership threshold of WADA that also forced the Australian Football League (AFL) to sign onto the WADA Code due to the threats associated with loosing the funding from the federal government. Stadia and Events The Australian Office for Sport plays a vital role in leading and directing a wide range of the country’s sport and physical activities. Before hosting any sporting event in Australia, it is critical to ensure the event organizers follow the outlined procedures as a means of allowing adequate inspection to be carried out for safety of the attendants. In some cases, the sport attendees succumb to several injuries owing to inadequate inspection of the venue. Therefore, compliance with stadia and event policies are critical. While organizing any sporting activity, it is important to assess the risks associated with the event and stadia to enable the establishment of early mitigation measures. The Australian sport policies are clear on the safety of the players and attendants. The Australian National Sort and Active Recreation Policy Framework recognize the fact that Australians place high value in sporting and active recreation. Therefore, it is important that the event organizers consider the condition of the stadium to prevent risk occurrence. The policy recognizes Australia’s federal systems including the capacity of working collaboratively with other agencies in a bid to achieve the national outcomes (Outram, 2015). The designs of the stadia need to allow free flow of the people during emergencies and meet the required international stadia standards. The policy requires any sporting activity to have extensive security plans in place that incorporates the private securities and personnel from the nearby police department. Although people visit sporting events to have fun, accessibility to reliability security and confidence in the condition of the stadium is critical. Most important the ticketing policy used in the event needs to be in line with the policy provided by the government. According to the Australian Sports Commission, it is important that the event organizers and the design of the stadium meets the required standards and guarantees the safety and accommodation of all the attendants. Harassment and Discrimination According to ASC, discrimination refers to any form of behaviour that treats one favourably than the other based on their gender, race, religious, and mental capabilities. All forms of discriminations are undesirable especially if they contribute to unfair treatment of the players or participants in recreation or sport. Australia is a country endowed with people from different races, cultural backgrounds, and belief systems; therefore, it is vulnerable to various harassment and discriminations forms. The Australian Racial Discrimination Act 1975 makes discrimination and harassment unlawful. To manage cases associated with harassment and discrimination, the ASC developed and implemented the Harassment-free Sport Policy and incorporated with the anti-harassment policy. The policy aims at ensuring freedom and equality of all the human rights irrespective of the race, ethnic origin, and ethno-religious backgrounds. The policy also extends to allow people complain of behaviours related to racial or abusive offences. Harassment‐free Sport policy requires that each participant in the sporting activities, irrespective of their accorded responsibilities, have the right to respect, fairness, and treatment with dignity and participate in an environment that they consider secure and enjoyable (Australian Sports Commission, 2000). However, harassment and discrimination within sports tend to deny the participants such critical rights. Although research suggests that the attitude of the racists remain strong within the Australian context in the past 10 years, there has been considerable decline in overt behaviour of the racists to the development of effective social norms against the expression of racist views. The policy defines discrimination and harassments that make one feel unsafe; questions that are uncomfortable; verbal and non-verbal abuses; making racist comments and jokes; and making uninvited sexual comments offending and intimidating others. In most sporting activities, teamwork is critical irrespective of the races or colours if the team is to achieve the intended success. Conclusion In the modern society, development of sporting activities is becoming an important phenomenon with an aim of developing professional sports and ensuring promotion of participating in mass sports. As a result, the governments are establishing the policies that aim to promote the development of sports within the communities for both health benefits and economic development. Hence, government intervention play vital role to ensure effective and efficient development of sporting activating (Stewart et al., 2004). It is from such background that the paper focused on various Australian key policy areas as far as sporting activities are concerned. Important policy areas to focus on include Elite sport & Sport Pathways; Sport Participation & Junior Sport; Sport Betting; Sport Broadcasting; Drugs in Sport; Stadia & Events; Harassment & Discrimination. The Australian Sports Commission in cooperation with other agencies play critical role in the formulation and implementation of different Australian sport policies. The most important policy problem to address is utilization of drugs in sport. Currently, WADA is revisiting the level of compliance of different countries and participants. Compliance with the outlined WADA Code would ensure acquisition of the desired reputation in the global sport realm. In Sport Betting cases, recently the Office of Liquor Gaming and Racing (OLGR) prosecuted Tabcorp Holdings Limited and Betchoice Corporation Pty Limited for offering inducements for people to gamble. In doping cases, the Australian Sports Anti-Doping recently undertook a research on sporting activities and listed the names of prominent athletes with doping cases. References Australian Sports Commission. (1994). National Junior Sport Policy. Retrieved June 3, 2016, from http://www.dete.sa.gov.au/policy/files/links/National_Junior_Sport_Policy.pdf Australian Sports Commission. (2000). Harassment-free Sport. Retrieved June 3, 2016, from https://www.clearinghouseforsport.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/631289/Harassment-free_sport-_guidelines_for_officials.pdf Clearing House for Sport. (2010). Australian Sport: The Pathway to Success. Retrieved June 3, 2016, from https://www.clearinghouseforsport.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0010/372799/PathwaySuccess.pdf Collins, M. (2006). Book Review: Australian Sport: Better by Design? The Evolution of Australian Sport Policy. European Physical Education Review, 12(2), 227-231. Lewis, C. (2015). Another sports drug-testing failure: Australian government policy and powerlifting. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 7(2), 233-253. Outram, S. M. (2015). Protecting sport from itself: a critical analysis of the 2013 Australian Crime Commission’s Report into Crime and Drugs in Sport. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 7(4), 605-622. Sotiriadou, P., Bosscher, & V. (2013). Managing high performance sport. Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge. Stewart, B. Nicholson, M., Smith, A. & Westerbeek, H (2004). Australian sport--better by design?: The evolution of Australian sport policy. London: Routledge. Stewart, B., & Smith, A. (2010). Player and athlete attitudes to drugs in Australian sport: implications for policy development. International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics, 2(1), 65-84. Wilson, J. K., & Pomfret, R. W. (2014). Public policy and professional sports: International and Australian experiences. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Read More