WANTED: More gold

Victoria police this morning issued photographs of this man, expat South African John Steffensen, who has gone missing after storming to victory and gold for his new home, Australia, in the 400m last night.

Steffensen is believed to be seeking permission to emigrate to Sierra Leone, to replace the eleven members of their CommGames team who went AWOL in Melbourne this week.

"Sure, Gold for Australia is great - and having an annual $30 million training budget helps," Steffersen told friends after his win last night. "But frankly, now we've won 73 gold medals my win kinda gets lost in the mix. I'd rather bring home to Gold for Sierra Leone; and I think eleven of theirs for one of ours sounds about right on the current athlete export market..."

Now that we are 100 medals ahead of the second best nation in the Commonwealth, England, maybe it's time to ask: are we putting enough resources into finding suitable athletic immigrants to stock our all-powerful sporting teams?

It does seem odd that – despite a $1.1 billion CommGames budget – there is no official program to encourage athletes to jump the fence and join the Green & Gold Army decimating the rest of the Commonwealth here in Melbourne. If it's not official Government policy, it should be.

And there is an opening here for a keen Opposition. Instead of whingeing about policies that put asylum seekers behind barbed wire in the desert and Pacific islands, Labor should be taking the program one step further.

Athletic refugees could be identified early in the screening process. For instance, those who are able to escape from Christmas Island detention facility and swim to the mainland should be accepted as members of the AIS triathalon training squad. Those who can't clearly don't have what it takes to join us in this wide, brown, athletic land.