The problem with stopping funding is how much the governments loose. Look at the BS around Crown Casino in Melbourne. After all the corruption that has been found they are still deemed worthy to hold a gambling licence. Why? Because they are the only company big enough to operate such a licence in this state and because it's in the governments best interest to keep the casino operation. The AFL is a cash cow for the government, both state and federal, so the funds we see, and the ones we don't, that the Government put into the AFL come back into the coffers and into the communities tenfold. No government would allow such a operation to be unfunded.
If NSW and QLD governments are happy to prop up NRL over the really bad years where teams like the Bulldogs etc were in the news every day for the wrong thing and it over shadowed the games being played there is little these clubs will do that governments wont fund. They tell the media they are unhappy but they wont stop funding it.