ROSS STEVENSON:
Greg Hunt is the Minister for Sport, Minister good morning to you.
GREG HUNT:
And good morning guys.
ROSS STEVENSON:
So are we going to mirror that, we’re going to have our own lottery are we?
GREG HUNT:
Well that’s what I’d like to see, and we announced in the Budget that we’d examine a national sports lottery.
Today we’re launching the start of a National Sports Plan, and that includes participation to get young people in, performance for the high performance, prevention for health and integrity. But really at the heart of it is this idea of a national sports lottery.
JOHN BURNS:
How much do we need, Minister?
GREG HUNT:
Well I think the demands could be infinite but this has the potential to deliver up to $50 million a year for sport.
ROSS STEVENSON:
Is the lottery in Great Britain sport only, or does it cover more areas than just sport?
GREG HUNT:
Well they also have heritage as part of their national lottery system, and it’s poured an enormous amount into their extraordinary heritage facilities.
What we’re looking at here is two-thirds sport, one-third heritage and the arts, and work with the states to make sure that everything we do is additional.
So I think there’s broad support, it brings together the Australian Sports Commission, the Olympic committee, other sports more generally have been very supportive.
ROSS STEVENSON:
And this’ll be run by the Government, will it? So how much control will you have over the way the money is spent once it gets into the hands of the Olympic committee?
GREG HUNT:
Sure. So what we do is, in fact, our proceeds would go through the Australian Sports Commission which is a government run body.
The Olympic committee is famously independent as we know from the last couple of months. And so we would work with the Sports Commission which is led by Kate Palmer the CEO and John Wiley and his board, on identifying the national priorities.
But basically this is a chance to get young people into sport and then to assist the athletes who are training for the Olympics and training for elite sport with a genuine underpinning.
ROSS STEVENSON:
So Minister, John Wiley’s going to raise the money and give it to John Coates to spend.
GREG HUNT:
It would be through the Australian Sports Commission …
ROSS STEVENSON:
No it wouldn’t, it’d be through gritted teeth.
GREG HUNT:
No, no, the Sports Commission would be the principal body. And the way we’d do is we’d have a tender so a company that one would operate the online component of a lottery. You know, you’d have two things, online and over the counter.
ROSS STEVENSON:
Have you mentioned this to the people from Tattersalls yet, or are they hearing it now?
GREG HUNT:
Oh look, the different bodies are well aware. I’ve talked about it publicly and the only way to allocate who would be in charge would be to have a proper independent tender, but with the funds coming back to the Government for allocation to sport.
ROSS STEVENSON:
I’m trying to think, when was the last state-run lottery? There was certainly one for Sydney Opera House, wasn’t it?
GREG HUNT:
There was one there, but Western Australia has a lottery at the moment. And that provides considerable funds for heritage.
So there is an existing model in Australia, there’s an existing model in the UK. And the simple answer is it’s successful, it works, people like the idea of a public good lottery, and it actually underpins sports funding going forward.
And once it starts I think it’d be there for decades and decades, if not generations.
ROSS STEVENSON:
Good on you Minister, nice to chat.
GREG HUNT:
Cheers guys.