Sport, set, money!
The revelation this week that the Victorian authorities secretly authorised a bailout of as much as $63 million to Tennis Australia (TA) simply earlier than the final state election in 2022, raises the purpose — simply how a lot dosh does the organisation snaffle in taxpayer cash?
Even with out the Victorian authorities’s largesse, TA receives tens of thousands and thousands in authorities grants. And regardless of the governing physique for tennis in Australia making a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in income yearly, and tens of thousands and thousands in surplus, this authorities assist simply retains going up.
Final we checked in, firstly of 2018, TA may financial institution on about $6 million a 12 months in authorities grants. The subsequent 12 months, that determine greater than doubled to over $14 million and in each 2021 and 2022 it was as much as greater than $19 million a 12 months. The 2022-2023 report isn’t out but.
That’s not all. TA’s annual report units out “authorities grants” as a separate stream of revenue, but in addition notes that throughout the mammoth income it makes are “business, authorities and broadcast companions” (emphasis added). For instance, the greater than half a billion income TA made in 2021-2022 included “authorities revenues from Australian Sports activities Fee, Victorian Division of Jobs, Precincts and Areas, Division Communities Sport & Recreation Tasmania, Vacation spot NSW, South Australian Tourism Fee, Tourism and Occasions Queensland, and Go to Victoria”.
So amidst greater than half a billion in income — even throughout the pandemic dip in 2021, it introduced in $358 million, greater than twice what it made in 2013 — why does TA want so many tens of thousands and thousands in public cash?
CPAC your luggage
Australia’s Conservative Political Motion Convention (CPAC), the native department of the SXSW for aged reactionaries, is scanning round for the little doubt a number of younger folks in Australia eager to be yelled at in regards to the woke thoughts virus in america. “We’re taking 5 Volunteers to CPAC USA”, they inform all of the folks below 25 who subscribe to their electronic mail correspondence, which, I feel we are able to agree, is a really particular form of individual.
“To use for this unimaginable alternative, please ship us a video, now not than 60 seconds, explaining why you’re the proper individual to hitch us at CPAC USA”, preferring video little doubt to verify whether or not the younger grownup in query has the potential to actually pop in what we are able to solely think about would be the world’s worst social media content material.
The youngest individual we are able to think about having any curiosity in that is conservative commentator Caleb Bond who, as a 24-year-old, simply makes the lower, whereas Sky Information TikTok creator Carla Efstratiou has aged out of the competitors. However primarily we marvel if these younger go-getters who’ve aligned themselves with CPAC may make time for the journey in between their busy work schedules.
Hockeying for consideration
Former treasurer Joe Hockey’s Instagram, with its sartorial aptitude, dadaist captions and ineptly framed selfies, exuded a basic air of innocent middle-aged cluelessness when folks began occurring upon it a couple of years again. That cluelessness was in full impact this morning.
This is identical Hockey who famously sorted Australians into “leaners and lifters” forward of a finances that should rank among the many most bizarrely punitive and politically catastrophic in historical past, topping it off by being pictured honking on a cigar afterwards (whether or not it was lit by a burning fifty was left to the viewers’ creativeness). The identical Hockey who proposed ravenous younger folks of Centrelink funds for six months whereas concurrently claiming a grand a month in public cash to sleep at his personal spouse’s home.
We’re unsure receiving an apparent rip-off textual content (“even this fails the rip-off take a look at”, Hockey mysteriously observes) is price bringing that to folks’s minds?
God rattling
Talking of the US, keep in mind yesterday we talked about that Donald Trump was utilizing much more excessive rhetoric this time round? We must always have been extra particular: over the weekend, his folks had been actually saying Trump was a present from God, placing out an advert that would embarrass Saddam Hussein: “God stated, ‘I want somebody to get up earlier than daybreak, repair this nation, work all day, struggle the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Workplace and keep previous midnight at a gathering of the heads of state’. So God made Trump” runs a consultant pattern.
The Lincoln Mission has responded in type, with “God Made a Dictator”, which posits Trump not as a present, however as a take a look at:
The Lincoln Mission — essentially the most high-profile of the “By no means Trump” Republican teams — made a expertise of interesting to exactly no-one within the years since Trump left workplace, dealing with allegations of sexual harassment and monetary self-dealing by high-profile members. Co-founder Rick Wilson’s said want to see Trump because the 2024 nominee could also be about extra than simply Wilson’s obvious perception Trump could be the simplest to beat.
