The outward bounds from the exchequer is the preserve of the King who wears no clothes.
Always the same exchequer, always the same naked King, irrespective!

I don't watch the Olympics.
I don't like the 'win at all costs' attitudes.
It is like watching a war.
Instead of watching friendly competition.
I don't mind if our athletes win no medals at all.
Provided they take part in a friendly, healthy, and meaningful way.
Then they will have demonstrated we are a sensible and practical society.
There could be no better statement made about us.

Only a sour grapes conservative with an axe to grind would write such rubbish denigrating the efforts of a small group of young Australians in their sporting endeavours. Its not all about politics and whether Labor is running the country or a party led by a Mr Potato Head. BTW Mr PH was lavish in his praise of Australia's achievements at the Paris Olympics. Your party chief doesn't agree with you Graham.

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It was 100 years since the Summer Olympics had been held in Paris.

In the 1924 Olympics, the US came first with 45 gold medals and France second with 14. Finland also had 14 golds, but France had 15 silvers and Finland only had 13. So, Finland came 3rd.

Australia came 11th with 3 golds, 1 silver and 2 bronze. Our population that year was 5,811,145. The US population was 114,109,000 (almost 20 times ours). China did not participate in the 1924 Paris Olympics.

Our 3 gold medallists were :

• Boy Charlton - 1,500 metres Freestyle,

• Dick Eve - Plain High Diving,

• Nick Winter - Triple Jump,
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Our silver medallist was :

• 4 × 200 metres Freestyle Relay,

[Boy Charlton • Moss Christie • Frank Beaurepaire • Ernest Henry • Ivan Stedman]
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Our bronze medallists were :

• Frank Beaurepaire - 1,500 metres Freestyle,

• Boy Charlton - 400 metres Freestyle,
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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) highlights the role that sport and the Olympic Games play in fostering healthy and active lives.

Scientific research has evidenced the fact that sport and mind interact with mutually positive effects not only physically but also intellectually and psychologically.

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that children and teenagers engage in at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day, while adults should do at least 150 minutes throughout the week.

As the IOC President Thomas Bach points out : “Sports participation is an extremely low-cost, high-impact tool to foster active and healthy lives 365 days a year.”

I should add that sport doesn’t just build muscles, it forges character, willpower and self-confidence. It teaches team spirit, the respect of competitors and the acceptance of defeat graciously.

More importantly, it helps realise that the virtue of all achievement is victory over oneself.

The Paris Olympics came as a breath of fresh air in a persistently anxiogenic atmosphere of political, cultural and sociological conflict – not just in France, but worldwide.

That has been extremely positive.

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Hi BP,

Those Kiwi's must be on steroids they won 10 gold medals (my wife tells me often enough) more than 50% of Aussie. BUT! with a population of about 25% of ours!

SEE those B's took gold, silver and Bronze in the sheep tossing competition! The poor Aussie competitor got knocked out when a belligerent ewe kicked him in the head, STONE THE CROWS! The American kept demanding fries with his sheep, and the Chinese competitor said; "it all taste like chicken when cooked", DISGUSTING!

You're right Paul, the Kiwis are even worse at substituting sport for useful output. We have a lot in common as former British Colonies settled at the bottom of the world mostly in the late 19th, early 20th centuries.

BTW, has anyone else noticed our latest contributor John Daysh is actually an AI Chatbot? Or has he been passing the Turing test? John Daysh is a New Zealander who invented the milking machine, so I guess we've all been being milked.

If you doubt me, copy his text into some AI detection software and see what you get.

So the AI believes that this Labor government is following established principles of how to make a society rich? Interesting, because we know how societies get rich, and that is by increasing productivity, and everything they have been doing since they arrived in government is to reduce productivity, and there are graphs that prove that, along with commentary from the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Seems AI has its limits.