Sensible allocation of funds or comical extravagance?
If you were a president, prime minister, how would you allocate your country’s precious dollars?
Would you, like the president of Equatorial Guinea, Teddy Mbasogo, buy houses in Malibu and Michael Jackson memorabilia? Or would you splash out on a 130 mill crib in the middle of Paris like Gabon’s dashing prez, Ali Bongo? All while your people die in the streets and so forth.
The Australian government, a slightly conservative one at the moment if you were wondering, has always been prone to throwing cash at sport.
It’s a little country and the people, who have the mental agility of a giant prawn for the most, become terrifyingly elevated by Olympic gold medals.
Therefore, today’s announcement that the NSW state and federal governments had puked six million dollars at the High Performance Surf Centre at Casuarina, just across the border from Coolangatta, raised zero eyebrows.
Let’s go the newspaper of note, the Gold Coast Bulletin, for the story:
SEVEN-TIME world surfing champion Layne Beachley is confident Surfing Australia’s multimillion-dollar High Performance Centre expansion can create a gold rush for the 2020 Olympics and beyond.
The surfing Australia chairperson was on hand with World Tour professional Bede Durbidge, up-and-coming Tweed superstar Zahli Kelly and dignitaries at the Casuarina based centre on Tuesday to turn the first sod of soil on the $6 million upgrade.
With surfing set to make its Olympics debut in 2020, Beachley said the major expansion would set Australia up for sustained success in Tokyo and beyond.
“It (expansion) signals the turning of the tide for this organisation. We’re going to go to a benchmark facility we anticipate is going to bring home a whole host of gold medals in the future,” she said.
“We are confident that we will be ensuring athletes are provided with the opportunities for success.”
Works on the project – generated by $2.536 million in funding through the Federal Government’s Building Better Regions Fund, and $3 million from the NSW Government – begin on Wednesday and are expected to be completed in July, 2018.
New facilities will include underground parking for 18 vehicles, a bigger and better AIS Aerial Surf Skate Training Facility, an improved and expanded world class gymnasium, 100 seat auditoriums, expanded treatment facilities, and 11 new accommodation rooms.
Wow, right?
I have mixed thoughts about flashy government spending.
One, the money’s going to be pissed up against a wall anyway so why not have a good time? Six mill is peanuts when your budget is 500 billion a year.
Conversely, I also believe that each dollar is as precious as gold and must only be spent on those things that really matter, health, education, defence and so on.
Oh I’m lost!
Therefore, I seek your counsel:
Do you think six million dollars spent on the off chance an Australian might win a gold medal at the 2020 Olympic Games in the category of surf is a sensible allocation of government funds?
Or comical in its pointless extravagance?
I’m backing ya mullet. Seems they forgot to teach the most important thing, etiquette. They could at least ditch the offensively sticker’d up tarago’s.
They do know they’ll be drug testing yeah?
hoooooooo!
I hear ya. This black duck used to love that area, but nowadays surfs away from that zone.
Who do you think is going to deliver all that?
My cut of the the $120 mill is about $200 by the by…
I was wondering when the surfing world was finally going to wake up and invest in 100-seat auditoriums.
In my day, you could watch surf movies in the cinema.
Lucky! We had to walk barefoot through the snow to collect our bread rations.
To my knowledge we give little public funding to athletes, maybe a training center in Colorado, and one in Utah, but even those, I think, are privately funded.
MAGA.
Make Australia Great Again.
will chas surf for team yemen?
do you guys have a team doctor to molest the young surf/skate gymnasts yet?
Mental agility of a giant prawn- and I had thought all along that Chas was the witty one!
Six million might be better spent further developing inter-club surfing events to help re-energize the grass roots of Aussie comp surfing with a tested and proven format that used to produce gold medals and world champs at all levels, well before all this ‘high performance centered’ stuff took over. Anybody check the latest WQS ratings? Only 9 Australian surfers in the top 50. And not a single Aussie in the top 10. So much for high performance. Bloody embarrassing. Get back to club comps Australia, hold more of em and go harder. Six million would also make for a good little national circuit for aspiring pros to thrive on.
That’s a pretty fucken amazing result given your population size!
Are you calling the likes of Dean Lucan a giant prawn?
Laynes a turkey
Faast we’re gonna whoop the bloody seppos then the brazi’s! Ozzy Ozzy ozzzy, shitty beer 123 whoo whoo
we got better than that Carlton Draught cats piss Chas was spruiking.
I am now too cynical to care. It’s official. I should get a badge or something.
Commenting on this board is your official badge of cynicism. Heck, just reading the site!
Comic genius
Fucking Layne
seriously, isn’t there a sunset she and Ken Bradshaw can ride off into?
Peanuts, specially compared to defense, the most stupid and bloated kind of spending in this world.
but the ISIS are trying to kill meeeeeee!
ISIS is backed by “defense spending”.
I don’t mind the 6 mill I guess….but the hard head in me looks at the return on investment so far from the Hurley HPC and does have a chuckle.
Over-coached, under-cooked CT surfers or a few more journeymen to make the numbers.
I can’t see a future World Champ or Top 5 surfer anywhere within coo-ee of that gubberment money spigot.
I reckon we should be spooning some taxpayer money to Jack Robinsons Dad, at least he’s got a fighting chance of producing a champion.
6million au$ = 3 beach side homes in Australia = chook feed for the future of Australian competitive surfing. Had the super mining tax been implemented we could have given them 600 million . But no, we have to look after the billionaires or they might cut off our soma.
Any medal Australia win will not be attributable to one cent of this money. Not a fucking cracker.
Nik you don’t build a team in a month or a year . Have some vision and see the possible long term benefits . We could sell the knowledge gained from the program to cashed up emerging surfing nations.Alternatively we could just let the best Australian coaches look after china or the quiksilver B team.
My vision is simply different to yours. Not everything needs selling, especially to emerging (usually impoverished) nations who have bigger issues than getting thrashed at the Olympics.
Cashed up ! E.g. Germany Belgium Holland England
Russia!
As long as we reinvest the profits into research and development to keep old Adam smith happy
What could they possibly bring to surfing drug program that we don’t already know?
the China part of this is 100%. PT is thinking of coming back home i bet.
No pt and Ian cairns possibly no world tour and no curren . There was a famous tennis coach Harry Hopman who left Australia . Australian tennis was never the same.The current crop working with ( not exclusively) foreign surfers include jake Patterson dog marsh tom Whittaker Luke Egan . Do you think mike parsons or Rainos Hayes will come and work with an Australian team ?
no, but you could probably get Ryan Simmons or Saxon Boucher, maybe Dave Riddle. and Tommy Whitts should still be on tour, scary draw at Sunset and Haleiwa.
I got cut off soma. 🙁
Did it hurt?
Australia should buy a house in front of Pipe with the cash. Every tax payer would be allocated 5 seconds a year.
What in the barrel at pipe ?
Now that’s a thought, but you may need the Australian navy!
If you’re talking Australian Pipe, you’re in for a world of hurt. That National Park and Native Title land.