Australia's former sports minister has called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to scrap the Olympic Games after 2004 because their credibility had been so badly damaged by the latest bribes scandal.

Andrew Thomson, the son of fivetimes British Open golf champion Peter Thomson, said the time had come for the Olympic Games to be replaced by another global sporting event organised by a different group of people.

"If you're going to organise sport on a global level I would have thought the first requirement would be that it be ethically clean and that there be no suggestion of any financial taint to it all," Thomson told the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

"But I don't think that with these people (IOC members) appointed for life, silly as that obviously is, that they can redeem themselves. Why can't we organise a global competition in some other form where the franchises are not handed out by this extraordinary, bizarre group of men.

"What better than to say Athens, Olympic history and all that, why not make 2004 the last?"

The IOC was rocked earlier this month after executive board member Marc Hodler said some IOC members had taken money or favours from bidding cities in return for votes to secure the right to host Olympic festivals.

Thomson, who was replaced by Jackie Kelly as Australian sports minister after a general election in October, said he believed Sydney's bid for the 2000 summer games had been above board.