Australia’s failings at the Rio Olympics have served as a wakeup call to all patriotic Australians that we must commit significantly more resources to sport.

Our country’s self-worth, our identity, is only defined by our success in sport, everything else we do means less than nothing.

Without victory, we are all collectively, worthless. Without victory, we might as well be New Zealand but with a disappointing Rugby Union team.

For far too long, governments of all persuasions have poured more and more money into things like health, education and worst of all, the arts.

As a result, we’ve only spent $370 million of taxpayers’ money on our Olympic team since the London games.

That’s right, million. We should be spending $370 billion every single year.

The money is there in the budget too.

Across Australia we currently wasting billions that should be going to athletes. We waste it on infrastructure, on high school places for not very bright kids and on things like neonatal care units.

Essentially, it’s just pouring money down the drain. Money that should be supporting our athletes.

It’s time Australians started taking sports seriously.

It’s time to lift up our athletes onto a pedestal, to turn them into heroes to fund them with so much money it increases our deficit to unprecedented levels.

It’s time we as a country got serious about chasing gold.

Titus O’Reily is doing live shows:

2^nd September at Yarraville Laughs. Tickets on sale now at http://www.yarravillelaughs.com/gig/titus-oreily

8^th September at The Comedy Store. Tickets on sale now at http://comedystore.com.au/index.php?option=com_eventlist&view=details&id=378