Arts ?

I feel government should not be involved with sport anywhere outside of the school ground.
It is a bit rich donating scarce Overseas aid to Indonesian sport, when the Brisbane Roar are owned by Indonesian interests.
There are more direct ways to aid cultural exchanges; as poster above indicated in his one word post...art!
By all means, (or most means, excluding os aid), Australia should compete at all levels overseas, but self funding should be the imperative!

How about those who agree with you pay for it, James, and those who don't, don't?

That'd be better, wouldn't it?

Well, we do have an aid budget and sport can drive desirable social change? As evidenced in the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa, when the world placed an international blanket ban on all sporting endeavor that left the South Africans isolated from any form of international competition!

I think cricket and a round robin played between other muslim nations and Australia and televised as free to air entertainment played on Indonesian soil could spark some interest over time?

And indeed get a conversation started that then exposes how much we share and are the same, rather than any perceived difference that separates us.

This is the most populous muslim nation and it's on our front doorstep. And there simply has to be a huge upside to increased social interaction and putting all the old enmities to bed?
Alan B.

I don't know which planet James Rose hails from, but it must be from a universe far, far away.

James want us to give part of our overseas aid budget to promoting sport in foreign countries, especially soccor in Indonesia, because he claims it promotes friendship. That's funny, here in Australia, the sundry ethnic identifying soccer clubs had to change their ethnic identifying names because some of the soccer matches in NSW turned into all out race riots. Some friendship there, James.

Who could ever forget the famous "Soccor war" between El Salvador and Nicaragua when they actually went to war against each other over a disputed line call in the World Cup? Both sides artillery shelled each other's villages and they both used their Air forces to bomb each other's capitols. Real mature people. And you wonder why I am a racist?

Reality check, James.

Australia is $500 billion in dept and we are getting deeper into dept to the tune of $700 million every month. Our interest on our borrowed government dept is $1 billion a month. If we don't stop spending money on trifles, the Aussie dollar is going to be worth US40 cents in three years.

Governments really have no business in sport outside of schools, although I don't mind them giving a bit of taxpayer money to support sporting activities on health grounds away, if we can afford it. At the moment we can't afford it. And we certainly can't afford to give money away to bloody foreigners to support their sports.

If you want to give aid money for soccer in Indonesia, James, just ask Bill Shorton. He will be happy to promise you all the money you want just to buy your vote. By the time the Aussie dollar hits US 40 cents, Bill will be living on the Isle of Capri in a mansion with the former Greek politicians who ruined Greece.

By then you may have come down to Earth.

Yeah, let's waste our valuable aid budget on sports. Forget about all that disease and starvation and depressing stuff. Football!!

Starving kids can't eat footballs, James. Footballs won't keep them warm at night or provide shelter from the sun. You can't obtain clean drinking water from a football. They don't protect against malaria or TB or cholera.

If people want to dig into their own pocket to buy a football for an impoverished village, they can go right ahead and do so. And I'm sure the impoverished villagers will be much happier to receive that than some boring old vaccines or something (sarcasm).

But the government should spend our aid money in a useful way that does the most good possible, which funding sports programs is emphatically not.