A free university education isn’t the norm in Australia, unless you are one of our top athletes. An athlete who studies via the Australian Institute of Sport does not have to pay HECS-HELP fees; unlike our doctors, our nurses, our police officers, our teachers, our journalists, our artists, our paramedics; unlike any other career choice in Australia.
The result? A group of over-indulged athletes going on a “rampage” at the 2012 London Olympics. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t really care if they took “sleeping tablets and went to bed at 10.30″. That’s not the issue at hand.
The important issue is why should taxpayers foot the bill for their education?
Australian artist Ben Quilty is asking the same question.
In an opinion piece for the SMH, Quilty wrote:
“Everyone pays HECS: nurses, paramedics, teachers, artists; we all pay for our education. We also pay tax from prizes won: the Archibald, Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, all literary prizes, film prizes, prizes for excellence in education and medical research. Even the Queensland Premiers’ Literary Award was taxed, until it was axed. And I didn’t whinge about being thrown into a higher tax bracket when I won the Whiteley Scholarship as a young artist until I realised that at the same time I was in Paris studying, the young emerging Olympians in Salt Lake City were there for free. In fact the prizes they would receive for winning were also tax-free, and so were their education and training.”
He juxtaposes the recently revealed behaviour of athletes with the quiet heroism of soldiers in Afghanistan. The point is clear – Australian athletes need to grow up.
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If rumours are correct, Tony Abbott wants John Howard to be Australia’s next Governor-General.
