You don’t need to be a sociologist to know that Germans are humourless, Italians are terrible drivers and Eskimos are good at fishing. True or not, these tropes are easy to believe because they help you understand each ethnicity’s culture in one way or another. To that list, you can add that Australians excel at sport.
How and why we became sports mad is clear enough. Our country was established at the height of the Enlightenment, when the concept of fairness became somewhat of a global intellectual preoccupation. As Australia became more and more prosperous, and we acquired more free time, we naturally applied the egalitarian idea of fairness to our newfound forms of recreation. That sport then became symbolic of our most sacred belief, and a vehicle for representing us to the world, is an understatement.
So it’s instructive to observe two recent stories related to sport, which cast what might be a disturbing light on the current state of play in this field, if you’ll pardon the pun, and reveal how much Australia has changed recently.
Firstly, the case of Kirralie Smith, whose attempts to bring attention to men playing in a women’s amateur soccer league in Sydney were interpreted by a court as vilification and harassment. Last week the Federal Court ordered her to pay $95,000 compensation to her two victims within 28 days. If she fails, the fine doubles. She must also apologise for having called two men men.
Bit harsh, don’t you think? Or, as they say on the field, you must be f***ing joking, umpire. If a decision as biased as that was handed down in the final minute of an AFL grand final, giving the side losing by five points a free kick ten metres straight out from goal, the umpire would be lucky to make it out of the MCG in one piece. The decision against Smith is no less consequential.
Smith has promised to challenge it in the High Court, where the ludicrousness of the debate about whether men can be women will be lost, as far as us ordinary Australians are concerned, amid esoteric technical arguments made by lawyers who earn in an hour more than some of us earn in a week. And that’s not even to question what for us is the real issue here, which is whether it’s safe for women to play against men anyway. It’s just not — what’s that word they use? — cricket. Don’t you think?
Be that as it may, compare Smith’s quest for fairness for female soccer players with federal Minister for Sport Anika Wells’ quest for taxpayers to pay for her and her husband (and in some cases their kids as well) to attend as many expensive, exclusive sporting events as possible.
As of the time of writing, it’s been revealed that we taxpayers helped the couple, who aren’t short of a quid themselves, attend three AFL grand finals, a couple of Boxing Day Tests, the Formula One Grand Prix and the Australian Open, plus a skiing holiday at Thredbo, at a total cost of about $25,000. Whether she also paid Thredbo employees to lay fluffy pillows on sections of the ski run where she was likely to fall remains the subject of extensive speculation.
Her expense claims are technically within the rules, she says. But that’s like Greg Chappell saying his brother Trevor’s underarm delivery on the last ball of a tight one-day international against New Zealand in 1981 was fair play. In truth, it was one of the nation’s most embarrassing moments. Adhering to the rules doesn’t always mean you’re sticking to the spirit of the game, Anika darling.
Wells also billed us $100,000 for a trip to New York to deliver a two-minute speech to a handful of globalists who couldn’t care less about her sport portfolio but have a vested interest in her other gig as the Orwellian-sounding Minister for Communications.
It’s under this portfolio that Wells, from tomorrow will enforce the most outrageous restrictions upon freedom in Australia since Philip King declared martial law to suppress an uprising by uppity Irishmen across vast swathes of western Sydney in 1804.
These restrictions, as I’m sure you know by now, are the latest additions to the Online Safety Act, which purport to make the online world safer for kids. On the contrary, as I’ve already explained, they instead drive kids towards sites that are the most dangerous.
When Wells’ AFL team, the Brisbane Lions, won the 2024 grand final, she did what all self-respecting federal Sports Ministers do: she was photographed lying ecstatically on her back on the field of the MCG, surrounded by confetti in the team’s colours. She looks so happy, you’d think she’d just kicked the winning goal or something.
It’s one thing to be excited that your team has won the flag. But it’s another entirely to behave like you somehow contributed to the triumph, as if it was you who did all those late nights at training and in the gym, dreaming season after season of one day winning the ultimate prize.
Such behaviour is worse in Wells’ case because, as Minister for Sport, she represents the fans of the losing side as well. Her indecorous celebration was above all else in poor taste.
But that symbolises her understanding of sport. It’s just entertainment to her. Likewise, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has no idea how deeply Wells’ behaviour offends our sense of fair play. If he doesn’t bench her, it will be an own-goal.
Former Queensland premier Wayne Goss famously said in 1996 that Queenslanders were waiting on their verandas with baseball bats to kick out Paul Keating’s government in the forthcoming election. If Wells isn’t sacked, it won’t only be Queenslanders who come angry and armed to the ballot box in 2028.
