KEY POINTS:
Our cricketers do nicely, thank you very much, on the sub-continent, as do Kiwi rugby players who can take their talents to Europe. But in low-profile sports, even the best are a long way from Easy Street.
Take our Olympians for example. The Olympic Games provides a rare chance for the stars of such sports to take their shot at national adoration. For once they get to compete while their countrymen watching on TV.
It is these sports we have looked to for Olympic glory, and will again in Beijing cycling, equestrian, kayaking, rowing, sailing , triathlon and Valerie Vili in the shot put.
Yet in terms of direct cash grants from Sparc (Sport and Recreation New Zealand), our best-resourced Olympic athletes each receive only $40,000. These are world champions Vili, Sarah Walker (BMX), boardsailor Tom Ashley, and rowers Mahe Drysdale (single scull) and the mens coxless four (Carl Meyer, Eric Murray, James Dallinger and Hamish Bond).
The Government (via Sparc) gives money to athletes who finished in the top 16 at world championships or other designated Olympic test events They are called performance enhancement grants which 303 athletes now receive, including those in non-Olympic events.
Athletes in six other Beijing events (rowers Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell, George Bridgewater and Nathan Twaddle, sailors Barbara Kendall and Dan Slater, triathletes Bevan Docherty and Sam Warriner) qualified for grants of $35,000 by winning silver or bronze medals at recent world championships. Placing from fourth to eighth earned another 17 grants ranging from $27,500 to $15,000.
Carded athletes also get free services from the Academy of Sport, such as use of training facilities and expert medical support, and benefit from the $12.5 million Sparc puts into the nine sports (athletics, cycling, rowing, swimming, triathlon, yachting, equestrian, hockey, kayaking) it has identified as most likely to produce world-beating results.
To try to find out how well-funded our elite Olympic athletes are, we asked the Australians for some figures. Though they don't apply funds in exactly the same way it's clear our neighbours spend much more in dollar and percentage terms on elite sport.
In the past financial year the Australian Sports Commission spent two-thirds of its money - A$143m (NZ$184m) of A$216m - on high-performance sport. Sparc spent a third ($34m of $105m).
Sparc's high performance unit is the one part of the organisation that isn't growing. High performance manager Marty Toomey heads a team of 12, just one more than he had two years ago. In that time Sparc staff have risen from 81 to 94.
And Sparc staff are well paid compared to funding received by its elite athletes, and to the average annual gross wage ($49,000 at the end of the March quarter). Of Sparc's 94 staff, 38 are on six-figure salaries, with chief executive Peter Miskimmin earning $340,000 to $350,000, about $30,000 less than the Prime Minister.
The number of Sparc jobs paying six-figure salaries increased by 14 in the past 12 months (four due to new positions, the rest due to salary increases) and that's projected to further increase to 47 positions by the end of the financial year in 2009.
Sparc was unable to identify what roles these additional six-figure salary positions were in time for this article but Miskimmin says staff and overheads had been reduced to 12 per cent of total costs. The proportion of six-figure salaries is reportedly higher than at the Reserve Bank and has given rise to charges of wastage.
About $10 million is projected to be spent developing the Mission On website, a Government initiative led by Sparc in co-operation with the Ministries of Health, Education, and Youth Development.
Miskimmin was unable to compare New Zealand's investment in top sport with Australia's but says more was spent on elite sport now than before the last Olympics.
What seems inescapable is that large and growing sums are going into social marketing, campaigns such as Push Play, Healthy Eating, Healthy Action and Mission On, aimed at combating unhealthy lifestyles and obesity by encouraging exercise and good diets, particularly in those who are voluntarily inactive.
Opposition leader John Key last month labelled these policies as wasteful and unnecessarily bureaucratic, with each accompanied by "expensive advertising campaigns telling parents things like 'make sure your child eats fruit and vegetables' ".
National has yet to outline its policy for elite sport but Key says it would review the Government's anti-obesity campaigns and channel "wasted" money into sports clubs and schools to use for extra-curricular sports.
National's charges of waste are echoed by John Hunt, whose frustration is palpable as he paces in the kitchen of his Murray's Bay home. Hunt, with a background in law and banking, ran trading rooms here and in Hong Kong, and has recently finished a two-year stint as chief executive of Harbour Basketball which administers all basketball on the North Shore including NBL team Harbour Heat.
It was his first foray into sports management and may be his last. He describes it as two years spent begging for money. "That's the nature of sport in New Zealand," he says. "Without pokie money sport would die. That's what keeps sport alive in New Zealand not Sparc."
Harbour Basketball's income comes a third each from competition entry fees, sponsorship associated with the NBL team, and lotteries money. Hunt was consigned to filling out reams of lotteries grants application forms, then waiting anxiously to see whether they were successful.
At times he stopped drawing his own salary to make ends meet rather than lay off one of the four staff.
"Sparc and the regional sports trusts irritate the hell out of me because they are so inefficient," he says. He points to large staff numbers, high salaries and a second layer of bureaucracy in the form of 17 regional sports trusts dotted around the country, with staff costs consuming much of their funding.
The regional trusts rely on grants from Sparc for the bulk of their funding. That's mostly taxpayer money as Sparc derives the bulk of its income from the Government. Almost $2 million goes on salaries for the regional sports trusts' CEOs who each earn an average of $110,000.
Last year, North Shore's regional sports trust, Harbour Sport, received $1 million of its total income of $1.9 million from Sparc. The equivalent of Sparc's money was swallowed on Harbour Sport's "staff costs", which came in at $1,035,000. That didn't include the cost of running its various programmes a further $315,000.
Harbour Sport CEO Toni-Maree Carnie says the high proportion consumed by staff costs wasn't unusual in a not-for-profit organisation because staff is its resource. Harbour Sport has 19 fulltime and 11 part-time staff.
The trusts which work on the Government's goal of a healthier, fitter population don't spend their money on sports equipment or give money to schools and clubs. Trust staff instead advise schools and obese families about better diets and more active lifestyles and sports clubs on "strong governance" and "strategic planning".
The trust helped ensure clubs had coaches, presidents and fields to play on, which, says Carnie, is "far more important than giving an organisation 100 soccer balls or a load of cash."
But money is exactly what Harbour Basketball needed, says Hunt. "There is no sustainability. All I feel I have achieved in two years is preventing Harbour Basketball from collapsing."
Hunt says someone from the regional sports trust would ring periodically suggesting they meet for coffee. "My response would be, why? What can you do for me?"
Hunt says no amount of social marketing is going to change "the guy who weighs 130kgs". He suggests they are a lost generation and describes such marketing as "fluffy stuff", money that can be put to far more effective use.
The focus should be on helping schools and clubs get kids into sport, he says. Despite being broke, the Harbour Heat, along with the New Zealand Breakers, did their bit to this end pursuing a goal of getting basketballs into all schools on the North Shore and trying to arrange coaches.
Hunt says he is not surprised by the high turnover of sports chief executives and has huge sympathy for former Rowing New Zealand boss Craig Ross, who was convicted of using false documentation to speed up the organisation's applications for charitable grants.
The money which would have been forthcoming anyway was used for travel, clothing, boats and oars for Rowing NZ.
"He shouldn't have done it," says Hunt, "but I understand his frustration."
So does John Walker, former Olympic champion and current Manukau City councillor, who says it is indicative of insufficient money reaching where it is needed.
"Rowing is a terrific sport and will probably win more gold medals than any other and then Sparc will want to fund it ... and that poor guy has lost his job and been fined doing what many would want to do for their sport to make it more viable."
Walker and the council recently launched Find Your Field of Dreams, a project aimed at getting every child in Manukau involved in after-school sport. Its first programme is under way. "We are teaching every six year old in Manukau City to swim, they get eight free lessons."
The aim is to get kids off the streets and give them direction and opportunities through sport. "When the kids get out of school there is nothing for them to do. Teachers don't want to take after-school sport anymore, no mums and dads at home, and so the kids are on the streets and getting in trouble.
"You have to pay the coaches. There's no way around it. It's basically what the Australians are doing. They have put elite coaching into the schools. They are there for the kids every night and they teach them how to be good competitors, teach them the skills," says Walker. "First we have to drop political correctness and try to make everybody winners."
Walker says the project is akin to the direct-funding National is advocating but he warns money given to poorly-run clubs would be wasted.
The Field of Dreams team decided it was best to fund coaches to run after-school programmes.
It has a budget of $3 million from gaming trusts and businesses, though Walker doesn't rule out seeking funding from Sparc in future.
"The thing with Sparc is, it is hard to get money out of them. It's easier to go to [lottery] foundations, and local councils are being called upon more and more. The [Sparc] salaries are just outrageous."
The Field of Dreams project hoped to gets kids off the streets, have them burn fat through exercise and encourage an interest in sport. "Who knows where some of them may end up," says Walker. "We might produce someone like Valerie Vili from Mangere. What I'm saying is Manukau City shouldn't have to be doing it."
HOPES FOR A BOOST
New Zealand is sending a record 182 athletes to Beijing. That any medal should be cherished because our lack of size and funds is seldom more evident than at the Olympics.
We have about 700 athletes in our carded support system, looked after by Sparc-funded sports academies. China has about 20,000 athletes within its talent development system, all ranked in the top 16 in the world.
Nominating medal targets blew up in sports administrators' faces at the 2006 Commonwealth Games, so Sparc will say only that it hopes the team can improve on the five medals won at Athens. It has a long-range targets of 10 medals at the next Olympics and of New Zealand becoming world champions in cricket, netball and rugby by 2012.
Sparc High Perfomance manager Marty Toomey expects China to top the medal tally for the first time and to surprise in some sports, such as rowing. It had under-performed in the past considering its population but has had its state-run sports system in place for 15 years and also has the boost of being host.
Historically the host nation improves its medal tally 10 to 15 per cent.
China is expected to continue its domination of diving, badminton and table tennis but has also been targeting sports such as shooting, women's weightlifting, rowing, boxing and cycling.
THE BALANCING ACT
The Government has given Sparc the job of delivering on a wide set of objectives, from getting the inactive off their couches, to improving the effectiveness of sport and recreation systems while also improving the performance of our best athletes.
Sparc CEO Peter Miskimmin says it is a balancing act.
"We are required by the act to educate and motivate people to be physically active and engage in physical recreation and sport as a means to creating a strong vibrant, healthy community and individuals," says the former hockey Olympian who has a senior management background with New Zealand Post.
Social marketing campaigns such as Push Play and Mission On (targeting healthy eating and healthy activity) aim at changing behaviour by raising awareness of the importance to be active and eat sensibly; educating and then providing opportunity and access to exercise.
"Those who fall off the sport and rec pathway are the ones who are ultimately a risk to our health system."
About $7 million of Sparc's annual budget is ring-fenced by the Government to be spent only on the Mission On programme.
Miskimmin disagrees with former Harbour Basketball chief executive John Hunt's view of social marketing as "fluffy stuff".
Though it might take four or five years to see the benefits he believes it will prove effective.
Push Play has been running several years and has achieved very good recognition of the message (30 minutes exercise a day for adults, 60 for kids), he says.
The New Zealand initiative "Green prescriptions', whereby doctors are encouraged to prescribe exercise where suitable - rather than, or in addition to drugs - has "turned lives around" and is attracting international interest.
On high performance, Sparc follows a "depth over breadth strategy" targeting the nine sports it believes most likely to achieve results at the highest level.
Sparc is not the biggest funder of sport.
It has a budget of about $100 million while the 70 odd gaming trusts contribute $150 million.
Miskimmin says Sparc has to carefully decide how best to apply its money and notes that pleasing everyone is "challenging".
"My message is that life is about a balance and we are required to meet all the requirements of New Zealanders that is from those competing at Beijing, to those little kids who want to run around on a Saturday morning, all the way through to people who have fallen off that [healthy] pathway and need physical activity to help them get back on again."
