AIS chief executive role scrapped under Sport Australia restructure

The commission is nearing the end of its "global search" for a chief executive, with interviews to start before a recommendation is made to the federal government.

The new structure will abolish the AIS chief executive role, which has been filled by Peter Conde since the job title was changed three years ago.

Conde started as the director of the AIS, who sat under the leadership of the Sport Australia chief executive.

It was decided to have two chief executives to take charge of the organisations with different needs, but the commission has decided it could revert to the system it began with in the 1980s.

Conde will step down in the coming months and the departure of interim Sport Australia leader Rob Dalton has given the commission an opportunity to restructure the leadership team.

The future of the AIS director role will depend on the successful candidate. If they new boss doesn't have a high-performance background, the AIS could still have its own director or chief executive.

The leadership change is part of ongoing discussions about the future of the AIS campus, which is yet to be determined.

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Sports commission officials said they expected "little change to staff operations under a new chief executive".

Sport Australia has been without a permanent chief executive since Kate Palmer stepped down at the start of last year. She had been in the role for three years, with Dalton moving into an acting position.

Conde started at the AIS in 2017 and helped lift the Australian sport high-performance unit to a new level, which led to Australia's equal highest Olympic Games medal tally at the Tokyo Olympic Games.

"The ASC board is in the process of recruiting a CEO that will be responsible for reinvigorating organised sport following the pandemic and building on the high-performance programs and successes at the recent Olympic and Paralympic Games," a Sport Australia spokesperson said.

"The ASC anticipates very little change to staff operations under a new CEO."

International recruitment firm Korn Ferry will lead the search for a new boss, who will be in charge of "building a pathway from participation to high performance".

It's understood the rationale behind splitting the Sport Australia and AIS roles two years ago was to cut some of the red tape in place, which hindered fast decisions in a high-performance environment.

"The ASC chief executive is a Commonwealth statutory officer with duties and conditions for the position outlined in the ASC Act," the spokesperson said.

"As a significant government position, the appointment will be approved by the government before being finalised."

Federal Sport Minister Richard Colbeck has ruled out relocating the AIS to Queensland in the lead-up to the Brisbane Olympics in 2032, but the future of the campus at Bruce remains unclear.

The AIS Arena is being used as a vaccination hub by the ACT government. The venue, however, has been deemed unsafe for use as a sports or entertainment location.

The federal government is still considering a plan to reinvigorate the 65 hectare site, but the search for a new Sport Australia chief executive could delay the project even further.

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