Key targets sports bureaucrats

Fewer $150,000 salaries, more bats and balls

National Party leader John Key has targeted bureaucracy at Sport and Recreation - where half the staff earn more than $100,000 a year - as he promises to direct more cash to children's sports.

Mr Key said a National government would also cut the fat out of anti-obesity and pro-exercise campaigns, which he said included eight projects trying to achieve the same goal.

Announcing National's policy to increase the number of children playing sport, Mr Key said too much was spent on bureaucracy and not enough on bats and balls.

"If I am prime minister, I will give my ministers a clear sense of priorities about how these funds should be spent. I want more sports coaches and equipment and fewer advisers and reports."

He singled out government sports funding agency Sparc as one area in which spending levels were questionable, with 47 of the 86 fulltime staff last year paid more than $100,000. Of those, 14 earned more than $150,000.

Mr Key said about a third of Sparc's $112 million budget "never makes it outside the Wellington office" and he questioned its plans to spend $5.5 million on its website this year.

Though he did not promise to increase funding for children's sport, he said National would redirect cash to ensure schools got more resources. It would also ensure more government spending got through to clubs, which were increasingly having to cater for children as schools struggled to provide organised sports.

Sport Minister Clayton Cosgrove said the proportion of funding Sparc spent on administration had fallen from 18 to 12 per cent since 2003 and was only $12.7 million last year, not the $35 million a year that Mr Key claimed.

Labour had also increased non-Lotteries Commission funding for frontline sports from $2.5 million in 1999 to $69.5 million in 2007-2008.

Mr Cosgrove rejected claims that spending on the obesity and exercise campaigns was being duplicated, and accused Mr Key of being out of touch with the modern challenges of encouraging children to play sport. "In the old days, you didn't have to convince kids to get off the couch, but today there are so many competing influences that you have to use technological channels such as television and the Internet to reach them.

"That is why we need programmes ... that encourage Kiwis of all ages to get active and stay healthy."

Prime Minister Helen Clark also rejected Mr Key's criticisms, saying Sparc was a small and lean agency involved in all levels of sports funding and administration.