I heard an Olympic athlete the other night during the telecast making reference to the conditions in the Athletes Village that weren’t up to standard and may have impacted the time that was recorded.
Now, don’t get me wrong: I love watching and supporting athletes in the Olympics.
It is awesome and they certainly deserve our support after all the work and sacrifices to get there.
But I do falter a bit watching full-on professionals, particularly US basketballers, with some earning more than the gross income of some of the smaller countries competing.
Back to the accommodation.
I wonder if some of Australian athletes actually understand that they are being funded by the everyday worker, the taxpayer.
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Sure, Gina picks up some of the gap but about $25 million goes into getting the team to Paris.
About 4 per cent of that apparently goes to high-ranking board members, which irks me a bit.
But in general, it is probably money well spent.
I guess my point is, there is a homeless problem across our country.
It’s here on the Sunshine Coast.
I see it every night when I take my dog for a walk and, to be fair to the government, $25 million probably won’t go too far to fixing it.
It would buy about a million blankets, about the same amount of people breakfast and dinner for one day, or about half-a-million kids some school shoes.
Of course, what the Olympics does for most nations is give athletes support, change some lives and lift the national morale generally for a couple of weeks.
They help us forget the bumblings that go on in state and federal politics for a couple of weeks.
They help us forget how our justice system continues to let us down – all great things and well worth the cost, although if I was sleeping on a park bench tonight with no blanket on an empty stomach, I might beg to differ.
As I said, I’m all for the Olympics, but maybe someone needs to remind them that sleeping on a cardboard bed for a week or so is probably not that bad and is way better than a park bench or the back seat of your car that is full of all your worldly goods.
And maybe “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi! Oi! Oi!” should finish with a thank you to all parties.
Ashley Robinson is Chairman of Sunshine Coast Falcons and Sunshine Coast Thunder Netball and a lifetime Sunshine Coast resident.
