Speech by the Australian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Trade, The Hon Tim Fischer to launch the travelling exhibition Australia - Our Sporting Life, Melbourne

17 June 1998

Mr Bruce Church, President of the Melbourne Cricket Club; Mr Michael Richards, Assistant Publisher of The Age; Mr Kevan Gosper, International Olympic Committee Member; former Olympians; sports administrators and representatives of the sport and recreation industry; ladies and gentlemen.

It is a great pleasure for me to be here in the Long Room of the MCC - in what was the main stadium of the 1956 Olympics - to launch the exhibition Australia - Our Sporting Life.

With just over 800 days to go before the opening of the 2000 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Sydney, this exhibition will become a key element in the public diplomacy program of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade over the next two years.

The title of this exhibition is particularly apt, because sport for Australians is very much a way of life. About one third of all adult Australians participate in sport, while almost one in two will go and watch at least one major sporting event each year.

Nearly a quarter of a million are employed in sport and recreation occupations. For those collectors of sporting trivia, the largest single occupation was not footballers, or golfers, or even coaches, but greenkeepers - around 12,000 at the last census in 1996.

And sport plays a major role in Australian society. The central place of sport in Australian life can be seen both in the blanket media coverage it is given, and the fact that Australians will talk sport far more readily than they talk politics. For us, as Roy Slaven and H.G. Nelson say, "too much sport is never enough".

Sport is also very much part of the economic life of our country. The output of the sports industry in Australia is valued between $6 and $8 billion annually. Exports of sport and recreation goods and services total around $630 million each year.

We export everything from swimming costumes and sports equipment, to expertise in facilities engineering, coaching and sports management. It is sufficient comment on Australian export ability for me to say that an Australian company was chosen by Manchester United to provide the new turf system for its home ground.

The Sydney Games will provide a big boost to the economy. The Federal Government's Australia: Open for Business program represents a number of new business initiatives to maximise this opportunity.

In the month around the Olympics, up to half a million visitors are expected to come to Australia. And the direct economic benefit expected to result from the staging of the Olympics is estimated from $4 billion up to perhaps $10 billion over a year.

This travelling exhibition displays Australia's leadership and excellence in sport from the 1956 Olympics through to the Sydney 2000 Olympics. It also showcases Australian sophistication in the field of sport and recreational goods and services.

This combination of sport and business is not new to Australia. Our first Olympic athlete, Edwin Flack, was in London in 1896 training as an accountant when he heard about the inaugural Games. Travelling to Athens, he won gold in the 800- and 1500-metre track events.

History does not record whether, being a good accountant, he claimed the trip as a tax deduction!

The exhibition will be open here at the MCG for six weeks. It will then travel to Kuala Lumpur, to open at the time of the Commonwealth Games in September. We then plan extensive tours of Asian, North American and European centers, before the exhibition returns to Sydney in time for the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The credit for the exhibition itself goes to the creative and professional staff from the Australian Gallery of Sport and Olympic Museum here at the MCC, who have put the show together under the guidance of the Overseas Promotion and Olympics Branch of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the sponsors of the exhibition. They include Austrade, the Australian Sports Commission and the Australian Tourist Commission, the Melbourne Cricket Club, The Age, Channel 7, Ansett Australia, Westfield Shoppingtowns, Malaysia Airlines, Fujitsu General, Bond Colour Imaging and Click Systems. Their contributions have done much to ensure the success of this project.

So, ladies and gentlemen, may I without further ado invite you to experience the exhibition, Australia - Our Sporting Life. In these hallowed halls of Australian Olympic and sporting endeavour, you can relive our triumphs of the past three decades. And perhaps, like audiences overseas in coming months, you will gain a better appreciation of what Australia has in store for the world at the first Games of the new millennium.