Member for Robertson Gordon Reid has welcomed the Federal Government’s largest ever investment in Olympic and Paralympic sports to help athletes achieve glory on world stages.
A record $283M in new money will flow to the country’s elite athletes, coaches and support staff over the next two years in an historic show of support on the path to Brisbane 2032.
Reid said it was a record investment in our athletes.
“The Central Coast region has a proud track record of producing outstanding Olympic and Paralympic athletes including Nicola Olyslagers, Liesl Tesch, Matt Dawson, Dylan Littlehales, and many more,” he said.
“Get behind our Australian teams at the 2024 Paris Olympics and Paralympics – I wish all our athletes the very best.”
The investment represents a 50 per cent increase on the previous government’s 2021/2022 high performance funding.
It also represents a doubling of the investment the previous government made for Paralympic athletes.
The new funding is in addition to $102.8M in annual grant funding and brings the government’s total high-performance investment to $489M over two years.
The investment will be a major boost for Aussie spirits ahead of Paris later this month, and will strengthen Australia’s hopes for gold at LA in 2028, Brisbane in 2032 and in Winter and Commonwealth Games events.
The funding will create more opportunities and better development pathways for high performance athletes to thrive while inspiring the next generation of Australians to be more active.
It includes: an increase of $17.6M to the Direct Athlete Investment Support Grants (dAIS) program to address cost of living pressures for athletes; a major uplift in direct sport funding; access to more domestic and international competitions to regularly compete against the world’s best in preparation for major sporting events; and extra training, wellbeing and preparation support, including access to world-leading coaches and performance support staff.
Investment in Paralympic athletes and sports will more than double, with $54.9M in additional funding – the biggest ever Paralympic spend by an Australian government.
The funding increase will deliver better classification opportunities, access to fit-for-purpose training environments and specialised coaching and performance support.