This is a Sport Australia podcast production.

Kate Corkery Hello and welcome to the Sport Governance Podcast series. My name is Kate Corkery and I am am the Director of Sport Governance and Strategy at Sport Australia. Over this series, we will take a deep dibve into the sport governance principles and how they come to life in practice. Each podcast will focus on an individual principle with a special guest joining me to share their experiences and practical advice with respect to that principle.

Kate Corkery In today's episode, we are focusing on the final section of the sport governance principles - The Game is Changing, contemporary and stable governance structures. This section highlights that structure is an enabler for supporting the way national and state sporting organisations collaborate. How they share strategies, streamline administration, achieve consistent constitutions governing structures and behaviours which in turn decrease complexity and increase agility. Sports can achieve their purpose and deliver timely responses to market needs. Joining me today is James Sutherland, current CEO of Golf Australia. James has a long and distinguished career in the sport industry, having previously been the CEO of Cricket Australia from 2001 to 2018. He currently sits on the board of cricket's T20 World Cup 2022. The AFL's Geelong Football Club. The Advisory Council to Sport Integrity Australia and is a member of the Champions of Change Coalition. Welcome, James, and thank you for joining me.

James Sutherland Pleasure. Good to join you, Kate.

Kate Corkery Well, this is certainly a topic full of opportunity and challenge and I'm really looking forward to getting a sense of your experience over this podcast. But I did want to start with some context. There is increasing evidence that the historical structural model for sport lacks agility. It doesn't meet the needs of our changing community and the the expectation of participants, spectators, partners and other consumers. As a result, the position of traditional sport in Australian culture is being challenged, particularly by recreational activities but also the rise of the Internet and on-demand consumerism. More than ever, Australians are choosing non sport options for their physical activity. In that context what is your experience in terms of modern Australia's expectations of sport and how those expectations changing?

James Sutherland Well, I think for a start, the expectations are high and they're only getting higher. I think from that perspective, I meant to drill down on that a little bit there's an increasing focus on the belief that sport should be providing opportunities. Opportunities for the broader community and serving the broader community and issues around fairness and equality, for example, are things that are pervading and expected perhaps far more than more than they were. I think there's also an element that comes with that. With that opportunity, opportunities to play, opportunities to succeed - as in to get better and be supported by coaching, but then opportunities to thrive as well at a performance level. So going into that high performance. Those expectations are there and they're getting higher all the time. And with it I think, comes an expectation around the administration of the game that the public just expects sport to get that right. Don't bother us with all of that detail about the administration. You just have got to get your stuff sorted and get it done. And to some extent, that's an unreasonable expectation because not all sports are resourced as well as the big ones that generate revenue from media rights and what have you. But it still comes back to that core challenge and something that pervades and, as I say, come back to the question - there's an expectation that is only getting higher.

Kate Corkery So we end up talking about modern and contemporary governance structures, and that means changing. In your experience, why is it so challenging to achieve these structural changes?

James Sutherland Well, first, whenever I've faced challenges with change, I've always resorted to a quote that I like that is attributed to Robert Kennedy, who was a US senator and obviously part of the Kennedy clan. He said "progress is a nice word, but change is its motivator and change has its enemies". And I think that you can get caught up in the word "change". But really what he highlights there is that it's actually about progress. It's actually about getting better. And we all sort of like to think that we've all got our eyes on continuous improvement and how our sport can get better. But it does involve change and for various reasons, lots of reasons which you were alluding to in the question. There are obstacles to change that are obstacles to progress. And I think it's a really important and fundamental starting point when you consider how you try to progress and the great dreams that you may have for your sport to think about the involvement of change and how you can bring people along with you. And perhaps we can take this conversation a little bit further into those reasons why there might be obstacles.

Kate Corkery I guess one of those obstacles is the traditional federated system of governing sport in Australia, which has not changed or using your language has not progressed significantly in over 100 years - is embedded within our Australian sporting organisations. So that takes us to our current sport leaders and our future sport leaders and I mean at all levels of sport - clubs, state, national, what do we need to continue to progress?

James Sutherland You know, I mean, we've seen, you know, the way that we're governed, not just in sport, but, you know, in political life and what have you. We've seen that every day. We're still very much operating within a federal structure. And there's been a great in the last 12 months, you know, with the pandemic, a great illustration of we've resorted back to federation and the power of states. And it's never been more apparent in the last 12 months than any time in the last decade or so how that all works. And some of that sort of rises to the surface in sport, as we know on a pretty regular basis. There is a lot of history and people in Australian sport have a great awareness, you know, people who are playing roles as servants of the sport, either as volunteers or as paid employees they have a line of sight and never really lose sight of where they've come from and who their constituents are. And that in itself can be a significant barrier to progress and change. But nonetheless, we bring ourselves together for the sake of the sport and we try to bring that forward. And I think the other thing with that is, you know, the bigger picture being a part of the bigger picture and growth of the sport and the performances at international level and the way in which the sport appeals to spectators and fans and what have you is something that can galvanise people and people can get behind.

Kate Corkery One of the things about structural change is it is about people. It's led by people. It's championed by people. It's sort of to a certain extent, stopped by people. It's not easy and it's not quick. And we've experienced in sport that it shouldn't just be any one party in isolation that is in charge of or responsible for accountable for the change. It requires the commitment of national sporting organisations and state sporting organisations to achieve that common purpose of strengthening, as you say, the whole sport. What lessons have you learnt through being involved in structural change processes?

James Sutherland I think I mean, my feeling around this is it's really important for a sport to have a clear vision and purpose as to why it exists and to get the stakeholders to agree on that common ground. I remember in cricket, we had a vision statement, which everyone sort of had a line of sight to, which was 'Australia's favourite sport and a sport for all Australians'. And so whatever you did in the sport, wherever you were in the hierarchy or the structure and wherever you were geographically, you still had a line of sight back to that. And in golf today, we you know, we talk all the time about more Australians playing more golf. If that happens and we're all responsible for growing the game and those opportunities everyone in the industry is a beneficiary of that. And I think that goes to the point of common ground and finding that, you know, realising that we have a lot more things in common about the success and how the sport thrives than we do in opposition as we work through change. And I remember when we were working in cricket, we had Pippa Grange, who you may know Kate is, I think, a behavioural psychologist and a bit of an expert in sports culture. But she was doing a workshop, I remember, with our management team, Cricket Australia management team and state CEOs one day and she just said off the cuff, we all love cricket, don't we? And we all want it to be great. So let's talk about that. And I think these sort of conversations perhaps aren't had enough or not, at least at the front end of difficult transformational projects and change. Let's talk about why we want our sport to be great and talk about what its potential is and then get into the detail of what the obstacles are. Think about what does success look like and then work through a process of how we get there.

Kate Corkery Quite often I'm asked and I'm sure you're probably asked, Is there a single right governance structure?

James Sutherland Many may think there is, but my personal view is no. And I also think with that comes the comment and qualification Kate that I think it's a journey. I mean, this whole thing about governance and the administration of sport and how we improve is a journey. There's no end point in this. And there's a constant, you know, oscillation to try to find an equilibrium that works for all of the stakeholders because our whole community is changing all the time. The environment is changing. Our competitor relationships are changing. And and so to that end, we need to continue to adapt and we need to continue to keep a line of sight to, this is where these vision statements and purpose statements come in, to continue to I guess look at that light on the hill and keep finding that sort of sometimes windy road to success so that the sport can thrive.

Kate Corkery And you keep coming back to that common purpose and vision, once you've got that line of sight and you've got that lighthouse on the top of the hill, having the ability to prepare a national picture on a range of functions for sport is really considered to be at the forefront as an outcome of good governance and reflective of a strong, united sport. Have you experienced this done well?

James Sutherland Well, I'd like to think that in cricket we went through some significant transformational change in cricket. I think one of my learnings from that was you go through that process and you think that when you get to the constitutional reform and everyone votes at a general meeting to change the way that we're governed, that you're there and you've arrived and there's a new almost a new dawn. But it doesn't work like that at all. What happens in that process is that - golf is going through that at the moment where we are bringing our states together under a One Golf banner. People take when they when they do subscribe to constitutional reform, members take a leap of faith. They are believing in something that has been put forward largely in concept. And to that end, it still needs to be proven and it needs to be proven every day. You need to build confidence. You need systems of reporting lines and communication. That is really important. I think back to my time in cricket. One of the things I inherited was a trial integration with Women's Cricket Australia and what was then the Australian Cricket Board. So that's only 20 years ago. But women's cricket in Australia was separately run, had its own board, completely separate company and Australian Cricket Board, which was largely the male side of the game, was the same. And one of the things with that I learnt was that this trial integration, which was a two year period which women's cricket was actually chaired by former Governor General Dame Quentin Bryce. But her leadership in that process was incredible. And so her confidence and belief but also she brought the stakeholders on the women's side along who were quite, I guess in some ways sceptical about it. But they believed in the integration, the trial integration proved the leap of faith. And I'd say reflecting on what's happened in the 18 years since, you know, the women's game in Australia has significantly thrived under that since that merger took place.

Kate Corkery Oh, look, it certainly certainly has. And I mean, I was present at the final of the Women's T20 World Cup in Melbourne in March of last year of 2020. And being in that environment, it's very obvious that when you look at the stewardship and the leadership and those leaps of faith, as you describe them, just how extraordinary they can be in terms of impact. And I guess that sort of leads me to a question around opportunity. I mean, you've given us a live opportunity there of what can happen when sport adopts contemporary governance structures and has that leadership, which is really infinite in its vision. What are the other opportunities you've seen arise out of contemporary governance structures?

James Sutherland One of the things that I've always felt is that under a more contemporary governance structure, you end up fishing in a much deeper pond or a deeper sea. There has been a tendency, I guess, in the past for sports to give roles and important roles in the governance of the game to people that have served for a long time. And people and it's almost a tour of duty and at the end of that, there's the reward of being on the national board or something like that. But if that's, you know, that's the sole qualification or criterion by which people get there, then clearly the talent is going to be somewhat limited. Now, that's not to say you don't want people that have vast experience in the game on your board. Absolutely you do. But at the same time, you need a balance of skills and a different sort of demographic. And that's where I think one of the benefits in these modern governance principles, we see sports now being able to choose from a much broader and diverse sectors of the population. And, you know, one of the things I say is that you don't even need to be passionate about the individual sport, because I think that diversity of opinion and view can be quite significant in helping the sport to progress. Because I think one of the real keys for sport today, amongst the various challenges of competition, not just from traditional sports, but as you pointed out in your intro Kate, from all sorts of other leisure pursuits. How do we make ourselves relevant, continue to be relevant in modern day society? And I think that's the big challenge for Australian sports. And if all we're doing is having a conversation amongst people that are rusted on passionate fans of that particular sport, then the conversation is going to go round and round. We're not really going to bring some new thoughts to the table.

Kate Corkery I think we'll leave it and challenge those who are listening to this podcast series to ask their boards and their colleagues and their committee's that exact question. How is it that we remain relevant in modern Australian sport? James, thank you so much for your insights on this challenging and important topic and appreciate your time.

James Sutherland Pleasure, Kate. No problem at all.

Kate Corkery If you'd like to access a copy of the sport governance principles, you'll find them at the SportAUS website - sportaus.gov.au/governance. If you have any feedback of questions, please email us at sportgovernance@ausport.gov.au My name is Kate Corkery and I look forward to you joining me for the next podcast in the Sport Governance series.