THE CRAWFORD REPORT'S RECOMMENDATIONS IN SUMMARY

Chapter 1.1: Defining Our National Sports Vision

1.1 The Australian Government, advised by the Australian Sports Commission and in consultation with state and territory governments, should develop a costed national sports policy framework and submit the framework to the Council of Australian Governments for endorsement.
1.2 The national sport policy framework should include the following:
a) Measurable national objectives and priorities for public funding including success for high performance and participation, with domestic and/or international significance and capacity to contribute to the Australian Government’s objectives for social inclusion and preventative health.
b) Financial and non-financial strategies to achieve those objectives including strategies that provide for greater participation.
c) The roles and responsibilities of various levels of government and their agencies in delivering those strategies; including the sport and recreation, health, education, Indigenous and youth portfolios.
1.3 The national sport policy framework should be supported by availability of robust data:
a) To ensure maximum effectiveness and efficiency, the Australian Government, in consultation with state and territory governments, should design and fund collections of statistics and other data to inform policy development generally and to assist ongoing evaluation of national sport policy framework strategies.
b) The Australian Sports Commission should develop a system for collection of participation data from national sporting organisations that is reliable, valid, repeatable and comparable across sports.
1.4 The Australian Government should ensure that Australia remains at the forefront of the global fight against doping in sport and that Australia’s domestic anti-doping regime reflects world best practice in deterrence, detection and enforcement and incorporates the recommendations of the Panel into the structural and governance arrangements of the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority.

Chapter 1.2: Reforming the Australian Sports Commission to Lead the Sports System

2.1 Recognising the complex nature of the Australian sports system, a single point of focus is required to provide leadership. That point of focus should be the Australian Sports Commission.
2.2 Consistent with the Australian Sports Commission’s leadership role, it should not be involved in service delivery. Those activities that give the Australian Sports Commission a ‘conflict’ with the other organisations it is supposed to deal with and support should be taken away from it. Specifically, the Australian Institute of Sport should be separated from the Australian Sports Commission (we discuss this further in the next chapter) and the Active After-school Communities program should be contracted out to appropriate providers at agreed performance standards.
2.3 The Australian Sports Commission should be responsible for developing the overarching strategy framework in light of Australian Government policy, proposing and measuring national outcomes, contributing to policy proposals, solving problems, allocating Australian Government money to elite and community organisations and strengthening and evaluating the national sporting organisations. And very importantly, it should be building collaboration across the sports system.
2.4 The Australian Sports Commission board and executive leadership should be reconstituted to ensure that the right skills are in place to meet the Australian Sports Commission’s new objectives. The Australian Sports Commission board should be reconstituted with no more than eight non-executive directors plus the chief executive officer as a board member. Board members should be chosen on a skills basis but with relevant and diverse experience and a truly national perspective. A chairman and chief executive officer who can best bring the skills and vision appropriate to the new challenge should be appointed.

Chapter 1.3: Merging Our Institutes of Sport

3.1 The Australian Institute of Sport should be removed from the Australian Sports Commission and amalgamated with state and territory institutes and academies of sport, into a single Australian Institutes of Sport (AIsS), funded by the Australian Government, and with the existing combined funding levels.
3.2 For elite sport, the Australian Government should be responsible for support of national level programs, state and territory governments for state and territory level programs and in association with local governments for developmental programs.
3.3 State and territory based programs should be funded and managed by the states and territories (even if with Australian Government contributions) with the objective of identifying and preparing athletes for progression into national programs.
3.4 Where appropriate the Australian Government and state and territory governments should negotiate appropriate arrangements for use and control of existing facilities used by state and territory institutes and academies of sport.
3.5 Australia’s high-performance sport system should be based on the principle that elite programs be delivered at optimal locations—and the system must facilitate the engagement of other providers such as universities and private organisations where appropriate.

Chapter 1.4: Building the Capacity of Our National Sports Organisations

4.1 National sporting organisations should have primary responsibility for development of their own high-performance programs with assistance from the Australian Sports Commission as appropriate on a case-by-case basis.
4.2 The Australian Sports Commission should make the adoption of appropriate and national skills-based governance structures that reflect the diversity of membership a funding condition for national sporting organisations.
4.3 National sporting organisations boards and managements should place engagement of recreational participation as a key priority and that this focus should be backed by government policy at all levels.
4.4 All national sporting organisations that are highly dependent on public funding should have rolling five year national plans that set the targets and measures by which the national sporting organisations should be judged.
4.5 To address duplications of functions, the Australian Sports Commission should encourage ventures that provide ‘shared functions’ to sporting clubs and bodies and should make ‘sharing’ a condition of financial support to identified national sporting organisations.
4.6 National sporting organisations that are engaged in the Olympics should explore events that raise profile outside the Olympics.

Chapter 1.5: Putting Sport and Physical Activity Back Into Education

5.1 The Australian Government and state and territory governments should make sport in schools an ongoing priority and should agree that physical education be a stand-alone key learning area in the national curriculum.
5.2 Relevant Australian Government agencies, including the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority), should ensure that the national curriculum for sport and physical education be considered as soon as possible and no later than the second phase of the national curriculum, to be developed in 2011 and implemented in 2012.
5.3 The Australian Government should consider the repair, upgrade and development of sport and recreation facilities in schools as an integral part of its ‘education revolution’ initiative on the basis that public access to school sporting facilities is maximised.
5.4 The Australian Government and state and territory governments should take action to allow greater access to school (primary and secondary) sporting facilities outside of school hours.
5.5 Greater community access should be provided to tertiary education and other institutional sporting facilities.
5.6 The Active After-school Communities program should be reviewed and if continued beyond its currently funded term should be contracted out to other service providers at appropriate service standards.

Chapter 1.6: Building Community Sport With People and Places

6.1 The Australian Government should develop and fund a national volunteer program for sporting and physical activity organisations that aims to attract and retain volunteers to sport through education, accreditation and recognition and in particular takes account of the potential offered by the growing number of older Australians to become volunteers.
6.2 The Australian Government should establish and fund a national scheme that encourages past high-performance scholarship holders (Australian Institute of Sport and state and territory institutes and academies of sport) to volunteer within community sport organisations as coaches, managers, administrators and mentors.
6.3 The Australian Government, in consultation with the state and territory governments, should develop a strategic national facilities initiative for the funding and development of Australia’s community sport and recreation facilities over the next decade.
6.4 The Australian Government should establish a national sport facilities fund with an initial allocation of $250 million each year for four years, to begin the implementation of the strategic national facilities initiative in partnership with state, territory and local government and the private sector, where appropriate.
6.5 The national sport facilities fund should have an initial focus on drought-proofing assets that are determined to be of ‘high-priority’.
6.6 In any infrastructure programs, preference should be given to projects that have the potential to engage wide sections of the community, such as multi-sport facilities in proximity to other community infrastructure, to help with sustainability and to increase social capital.

Chapter 1.7: Ensuring Australia’s Sport System is Open to All

7.1 The Australian Sports Commission, in consultation with Australian Government, state and territory and local governments and agencies and appropriate experts, should develop strategies as a matter of priority in the nine key areas identified by the Panel. In each category, the Panel has made specific comment on the key issues to be addressed and these should provide the context in which strategies and recommendations are designed and communicated across the sporting system. In some instances, this would involve the setting of targets, the undertaking of new research and analysis, and significant community consultation.
7.2 The Australian Government should choose several geographic areas across Australia where many or most of the nine issues exist and contribute to significant social disadvantage, and design projects which place sport, recreation and volunteering at the centre of plans to improve community outcomes. This would involve collaboration with the state, territory and local governments and agencies responsible for indicators of disadvantage in partnership with national sporting organisations, non-government organisations and communities.

Chapter 1.8: Sustaining the Funding Base for Sport

8.1 The Australian Government should maintain sport funding at current levels and should consider supplementing this funding on the basis of the agreed targets for high performance and participation outlined in the national sports policy framework.
8.2 The Australian Government should provide to the new Australian Institutes of Sport (AIsS) at least the existing level of funding allocated to the Australian Institute of Sport by the Australian Sports Commission and the combined allocation of state and territory governments to the state and territory institute and academies of sport.
8.3 The Australian Government should not introduce a HECS style contribution scheme for graduates of the existing Australian Institute of Sport, state and territory institutes and academies of sport or the new Australian Institutes of Sport (AIsS), but rather it should introduce a scheme that requires graduates from these institutions to donate time and or expertise to the Australian sport system.
8.4 The Australian Government should not introduce a national sports lottery at this stage but should negotiate with state and territory governments to provide a share of existing lottery revenue for sport and recreation facilities and programs.
8.5 The Australian Government should review the governance, structural and operational arrangements of the Australian Sports Foundation to raise awareness within the community of the opportunity offered by the Australian Sports Foundation for fundraising and to provide easy access to the Australian Sports Foundation by community groups.
8.6 That the Australian Sports Commission in conjunction with the Department of Health and Ageing should explore the viability of tax rebates, voucher or another system designed to reduce the cost of participation, and the likely contribution of such schemes to increasing participation levels.

The full report can be viewed at http://www.sportpanel.org.au/internet/sportpanel/publishing.nsf/Content/crawford-report