A public lottery in Australia could be a good thing – and deliver more than Olympic gold | Martin Farrer

It’s August 2020 and the Tokyo Olympics have just finished. Once again, the USA and Team GB top the medal table. But the real story is the collapse of the once-great Australian team who only have one shooting gold to show for their efforts. Humiliated, they board the plane back home where a festival of national self-flagellation awaits.

A bit over the top? Maybe, but this was the reality for Great Britain’s team back in 1996 when they took home only one gold (in rowing), prompting a decision to use the proceeds of the newly begun national lottery to fund elite sport.

The medals – along with national pride – have flowed ever since. And, in a profound form of flattery not lost on sports fans back in the old country, the Australian government is now considering a similar scheme to boost the country’s flagging Olympic performance.

It’s easy to see why. Britain finished 36th in the medal table at Atlanta but, 20 years later, they were second in Rio with a haul of 70 medals as millions lavished on the high-performance athletes paid dividends. Aside from the odd great athlete such as Sebastian Coe and Daley Thompson, Brits – and I’m one – had in the past been mostly reduced to celebrating the odd plucky showing in the obscure reaches of Olympic endeavour. These days Team GB win golds in super-competitive sports like gymnastics, something quite unthinkable 20 years ago when not even a committed sports fan could have named a single British gymnast.

Australia, by contrast, has sunk from fourth in the Sydney games in 2000 to 10th in Rio and it is this decline that was the elephant in the room as sports minister Greg Hunt launched the national sports plan on Monday.

Aiming to promote “participation, performance, health and integrity”, he said the plan would “consider, with a strong bias towards support, a national sports lottery. There are great examples around the world, most notably the UK, of funding on a secure basis coming from a national sports lottery”. Tellingly, the chief executive of the Australian Olympic Committee, Matt Carroll, said the initiative was “critical” for Australia’s sporting future and to achieve the collective sporting outcomes.

In a country which already has a gambling problem, the plan will be controversial. Critics will say that people who already spend too much money on gambling should not be tempted into parting with even more in order to fund elite sportsmen and women. What’s more, it’s a tax on the poor and it allows the government to sub-contract funding it should be looking after.

But while the Olympic factor has played very hard in the UK, there’s more to the national lottery than cycling golds. Hunt was keen to make the point on Monday that any lottery would be a “public-good lottery” on the model of the UK, with money raised from tickets going to good causes all over the land. The UK’s defining arts projects of the last 20 years – think the Tate Modern or the Angel of the North – would not have been possible without lottery money. And they’re just the marquee projects. Millions more have gone into cherished local projects such as building community centres and youth development schemes that don’t make national headlines.

Australian arts and culture could therefore be a huge beneficiary of a public-good lottery. Consider these figures from the UK. Ticket sales raised nearly £2bn for projects in the year 31 March 2016, a sum which was shared out as follows: 40% to health, education, environment and charitable causes; 20% for sport; 20% for arts; and 20% to heritage.

It might encourage more gambling – no question. But surely it’s better that some of the money flows into worthwhile projects rather than into the hands of pub owners and James Packer. In addition there will be plenty of people who are not problem gamblers who will buy the odd weekly ticket or join the office syndicate and therefore contribute to good causes – and maybe even a few Olympic golds in years to come.