ABSTRACT
In 1983, Fraser’s Liberal Government was replaced by Bob Hawke’s reformist Labor Government. Hawke was elected with a mandate to govern through ‘consultation and consensus’ (Armstrong, 1987: 168). This inclusive stance fitted snugly with its sports policy, which aimed to ‘make sport and recreation available to everyone who wishes to participate’ (Semotiuk, 1987: 156). The Hawke Government sport policy was based on a 1980 discussion paper prepared by Barry Cohen, a member of parliament who had been instrumental in designing the Whitlam Government sport policy. One of its earliest initiatives was to re-visit the Whitlam sport development model and establish a separate Department of Sport, Recreation and Tourism. This was followed by a report by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Expenditure which examined the prospects for additional funding for sport. The report was titled The way we p(l)ay and recommended an expansion of government spending on sport. It specifically argued for more spending on tied state grants for both international standard sport facilities and recreation centres in disadvantaged regions, programmes improving the management processes of NSOs, and on facilities for disabled athletes (House of Representatives Committee on Finance and Public Administration, 1983). The Hawke Government also produced a white paper titled Sport and Recreation: Australia on the Move, which set the scene for an expanded sport policy with a facility development emphasis (Bloomfield, 2003).
