Hockeyroos great Sally Carbon has called for a complete overhaul of WA’s high performance program.

Speaking on the Let’s Go Tokyo podcast this morning, Carbon voiced her belief that WA had not prioritised its high performance athletes enough. The Perth product suggested WA would be well advised to follow the lead set by Queensland, which boast’s one of Australia’s most diverse and productive academies for sport.

“Some parts of Australia are doing a magnificent job and I’d give the gold medal to Queensland, without a doubt,” Carbon said. “Queensland — there’s poles between Queensland and the other states as far as investment and high performance sport (is concerned).

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“And WA, I would really love an absolute overhaul of WA’s investment in high performance sport.

“(In) Western Australia, we’re dropping the ball on high performance. We think we’ve got WAIS, for instance, but WAIS is there to look after WAIS as an entity.

“In WA, we don’t have one person, a single point of accountability, looking after high performance sport in this state. And we — Mark McGowan, premier, we really need to pick up our game on high performance sport because of the impact (it could have) on our people across the state.”

Carbon and hosts Mark Readings and Ben O’Shea discussed the disparity between the bonuses that athletes from different countries earn for winning Olympic medals.

Gold medallists from Singapore reportedly receive a bonus in excess of $1M AUD, while silver medallists ($501,000 AUD) and bronze medallists ($250,000 AUD) are handsomely paid, as well.

And while the scale of Singapore’s payments are something of an outlier, medallists from Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Italy, the Philippines, and Hungary also earn at least 10 times more than their Australian counterparts in bonuses. Australia reportedly pays its medallists approximately $20,000 for winning gold, $15,000 for silver and $9,500 for bronze.

Carbon suggested Australian athletes should receive better bonuses, but reaffirmed that improved funding for high performance programs was of equal or greater importance.

“As Australia (we’re OK at) looking after our athletes (financially), but we don’t look after the impact of what sport has on the country,” Carbon said.

“Australian gold medallists will get about $20,000 but when you say JobKeeper you get $44,000 a year and an Australian athlete who isn’t eligible for any other funding gets $20,000, you’ve got to put that in perspective. “In the US, a gold medallist earns the equivalent of $50,000 Australian dollars and Australia, out of all the countries, is right down (the list).

“The biggest message is not actually about ‘are these athletes getting paid’, it’s the fact that Australia isn’t putting enough effort into high performance sport.

“And that’s not to look after the athletes, but that’s to look after our country.

“If we, as a country, really elevate the impact — the social impact, the economic impact, the educational impact — of high performance sport, that’s us as a country investing in it which is different to us investing in athletes. It’s a bigger story.”