Penny Mackieson On: AFL & LGBTI

‘AFL’ is the acronym for ‘Australian Football League’. ‘LGBTI’ is the acronym for ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex’ people. AFL plus LGBTI equals…?

There has been much discussion in recent years regarding whether or not the AFL, as the leading football competition in the nation, should also lead the way with inclusivity regarding LGBTI people and anti-homophobic measures.

Arguments in favour of the AFL doing so include that: it has set a number of precedents with its championing of Indigenous players, multi-culturalism, and anti-racial discrimination and anti-doping measures; based on the incidence in the general population there are probably at least 12-32 players (of the collective 792 on the 18 AFL club lists) who are gay and the AFL should overtly support those players; Victorian footballer, Jason Ball, came out in 2012 with considerable support from the AFL community; and it would take only one current AFL player who is gay to come out – with the considerable support of the AFL community – for the steam to be let out of the pressure cooker of unnecessary and unhelpful conjecture and gossip, thus allowing everyone to move on. After all, look what happened when former Australian swimming champion and world record breaker, Ian Thorpe, came out recently – nothing much, aside from everyone expressing their relief that Thorpey had finally realised it and/or found the courage to acknowledge it publicly. Australians did not fall down dead in the streets from shock; Australian sport did not cease never to resume; and current Australian swimmers did not suddenly ‘turn gay’.

Arguments against the AFL leading the LGBTI charge include that: the AFL cannot be all things to all people and should not be expected to be; no former VFL/AFL player has ever come out publicly; it appears there is no gay current AFL player who is prepared to identify publicly as such; and, in any event, it is questionable whether the AFL community is ready for such a campaign given Australia has not yet embraced same-sex marriage.

For example, take the responses of Australian media figures to Channel 7 football commentator Brian Taylor’s recent disparaging “big poofter” comment regarding Geelong Football Club’s Harry Taylor. Many observers have already noted that subsequent comments made by other sports commentators and media hosts were inadequate, disappointing and reflected that homophobia is part of the accepted culture of AFL circles. Just yesterday (01 August 2014) it was reported in The Age that another homophobic slur (“faggots”) has since been posted on Facebook by Greg Evangelou, one of Port Adelaide Football Club’s corporate sponsors. To the AFL’s credit it offered counselling to Evangelou with Jason Ball – now a prominent anti-homophobia activist. However, to the AFL’s shame it did not insist that Evangelou take up the counselling; and to Port Adelaide’s shame it did not subsequently sever ties with Evangelou.

From my perspective as a feminist, I would argue that the AFL should be pushed on this issue, otherwise the Australian football community may never consider itself ‘ready’. For example, women – technically not a minority and, certainly, a very visible group in the community – have been integral to the success of Australian football since the game was first developed in the mid-1800s, consistently comprising about half of all football crowds in addition to their extensive involvement in their own partner’s/children’s football competitions and as consumers of AFL products, etc. Yet there have been, and continue to be, precious few women formally employed in AFL roles, let alone significant/leadership ones. Further, as a passionate female football supporter, I know first-hand from numerous experiences over the years that the AFL and its constituent clubs do not consistently know whether, let alone how, to market themselves to women, with women often referred to as ‘ladies’ or, worse, ‘the ladies’. Even the female partners of AFL players continue to be condescendingly referred to as WAGs (‘wives and girlfriends’) and encouraged to parade like vacuous Barbie dolls on the red carpet on Brownlow Medal (AFL best and fairest player award) night.

All this, despite that the AFL has had a designated ‘Women’s Round’ for many years now; as part of Women’s Round the AFL has hosted a women’s football match (Melbourne versus the Western Bulldogs) in consecutive seasons, 2013 and 2014; and women’s Australian Rules football competitions are currently the fastest growing sporting competitions in Australia. AFL data reported in The Age today (02 August 2014) indicates that “169,000 females participated in the game nationally in 2013 – a huge jump from 57,000 in 2011.”

On a brighter note, I heartily commend the establishment of the Purple Bombers, “a new membership for gay and lesbian fans” of the Essendon Football Club to be available from 2015 (as also reported in The Age on 01 August 2014). Maybe this development will inspire the AFL to take on more of a leadership role in regard to this sensitive matter. However, judging by the level of sexism that persists in the AFL community, I won’t be holding my breath that eventual achievement of an AFL-sanctioned pride round equals genuine embrace of LGBTI supporters and players.

Labor’s Election Blues

It seems to me that the Victorian Labor party is doing everything it can to lose the upcoming state election to the Liberals. It was only a month or so ago, that Labor was in a seemingly unloseable position for the win, but with the latest Dictaphone saga it seems that we are now headed for a 50-50 election. Daniel Andrews has already shown his inability to act when crises arise, a major problem when your party may well take office. The Victorian people will ultimately decide the next Premier on which party they feel is dominating the political scene (which at the moment is neither party) and whose party will govern in a more convincing way (after the Dictaphone scandal probably neither party). A month ago, I would’ve said that Labor had it in the bag, now with this scandal, coupled with their support for the East-West Link, an infrastructure catastrophe, the Frankston bullying saga and the fact that very few Victorian governments get beaten after one term due to the want for stable governance leads me to believe that while Labor might have the edge, the Liberals will come very close.

 

My Take: Power and Rape

India’s rape problem has been in the news recently, particularly for the extent that Indian culture has allowed these atrocities to happen. The latest story, reported by the AFP, is that of a Bangalore private school roller skating instructor who is alleged to have raped a 6 year old girl at Vibgyor High School and has been arrested. This is a new low, and has outraged parents at the school for obvious reasons, particularly as it happened in a classroom in an expensive institution with a long list of well-off alumni. My take is that the biggest problem with this is that not only was this allowed to occur, but that it seems in modern society, such actions by people in power seem commonplace. For example, Rolf Harris’ indecently assaulting girls as young as 7 years old, that he has only recently been convicted for. It seems to me that a number of the people who are famous and are in position of influence, public life or wealth are predatory in nature and are drawn to fame and power due to the easy access it allows to get to innocent victims. Rape in India has been a big issue since the 2012 Delhi gang rape, in which a 23 year old woman and her male friend were so brutally raped and killed on a bus, and is made even worse by the lack of justice which allows criminals to kill women while knowing they’ll get away with it and also India’s patriarchal culture in which the victim is often blamed for the rape.

Australia’s racist heritage

Australia’s history was born out of racism. In order to colonise the landscape of this great land, the British settlers killed and pillaged the country in the name of colonisation. It was in Tasmania where the settlers committed genocide and very nearly wiped out the whole Aboriginal population in that state. It was in our culture that the people who first inhabited our land were treated as flora and fauna, and were given voting rights in 1967. It is in our country that the excuse of “terra nullius” was used by settlers to justify the killing of more than 65,000 Aboriginal people from 1788 to 1838 in Queensland alone, in a war for which there is still no true recognition.  It is in our country that Aboriginals, despite making up 2% of our population, have 25% on the imprisoned population, and over 300 Aboriginals have been killed in police custody since 1991. Yet this is the country that is constantly labelled “the lucky country”. Our history is riddled with racist atrocities and genocidal activity and we must never forget this.

My Take: The Middle Class: an integral part of liberalism

The first mentioning of the middle class was in James Bradshaw’s 1745 pamphlet “Scheme to prevent running Irish wools to France”. The term in Bradshaw’s world meant the people in the class hierarchy in between the proletarian peasants and the bourgeois nobility. However, this term came to mean the petite bourgeoisie, people who are educated, have qualifications and work in professional industries like business and managing roles. In theory, this seems like a best of both worlds scenario, with the education and fiscal security of an upperclassman without the image of an aristocrat, however, in modern politics, of the ideologies currently in the worldwide political arena, only one has a vision that includes the middle class as its centrepiece: liberalism. While many libertarians and neo-liberals see the class struggle as between the rich and the rest (also called social Darwinism) and many socialists see the struggle as between the working class and ruling class, modern liberalists sees no class struggle and a utopian harmony where the upper, middle and lower classes live in peace. Unfortunately for liberals, neoliberal ideology is ascendant in many countries including Australia, where both major parties have spread neoliberal ideas such as privatisation of state assets and deregulation and the United Kingdom. These ideas have put our respective middle classes in grave danger. In the United States, while the ultra-obstructionist Republican Party continue to pass bills attacking the middle class, President Obama continues to simply sprout lines on why the middle class needs to be saved rather than actually acting on it at a time when poverty rates are at 15% and rising ever higher and the percentage of people not in the labor force is at a 36 year high and continues to rise. The most shocking stat is that just 44% of people consider themselves to be middle class as people start to realise that their dreams of living the high life and the American Dream are just a dream. The middle class in the west will continue to shrink so long as liberalism doesn’t defend it. The problems of poverty and unemployment were the same problems that were the triggers for the Arab Spring revolution.
With all the talk on liberals and conservative neo-liberals, seemingly the mainstream political ideologies today, it maybe time we think about the socialists, whose concept of the working class proletariat rising up to form one “middle class” is a concept that is foreign to the liberal view of the middle class being the educated, aristocrat-like group it has become.
My take is that the middle class is a concept that in its current form is fabricated by liberals to keep the class struggle between proletariat and bourgeois away from the limelight and that really their efforts to keep a flourishing middle class will be undermined, by both the neoliberals, who are the default ideology under capitalism, and the socialists, the radical fringe, who won’t back down from the working class, rather than the middle class being the answer to inequality. Within 50 years, whether we are governed by capitalism or socialism, the middle class in its present form will be a forgotten concept, never to be seen again, or if it does exist it will be a group, not a class.

Defensive Rights in Sports

Whenever I hear someone saying that the AFL’s scores are too low or that these rolling mauls are becoming too much like rugby, my reaction is one of disgust because defence is becoming an endangered species, on the brink of extinction. Defence, together with offense are the main facets of any team game. The critical idea of defence in sport is to stop the other team scoring through any legal means possible, and thus coaches use tactics and structures to minimise the damage by the other team on the scoreboard. Many of these tactics and structures have been banned by sports and leagues to restore a “beautiful aesthetic” to the game. In the AFL, Paul Roos, then coach of the Sydney Swans was criticised by AFL CEO Andrew Demetriou for his team playing “unattractive football”. This by a man, who in his time as CEO, did more than anyone to restrict the role of defence in the AFL. Many supporters of the AFL, mainly of clubs that lost to Sydney during that premiership winning season, agreed with Demetriou, saying the football Roos’ team played was “ugly” and various other denigrating phrases.

Defensive tactics should be and will always be an integral part of any game, but many bosses of sports have put in place draconian measures to make offense the order of the day. One example of this in the AFL is the deliberate out of bounds, to stop teams clearing the danger of an opposition attack to the safest part of the ground. In cricket, there are the ridiculous field restrictions to stop captains and coaches putting fielders where they want to. And from the king of the dumb anti-defensive sport, basketball, there is the defensive 3 seconds rule, basically stopping elite level teams from a zone defence, because most zones revolve around blocking off the key and lay-up opportunities, and also there is the blocking rule, which means an attacking player can run into a defender, and if the defender moves even slightly he/she is charged with a foul.

The second part of the anti-defensive rights movement is the idea spun to us by sporting head honchos that high scoring matches are more popular to watch than low scoring games. This is a fallacy because the reason people go to games isn’t to watch a beautiful looking match, it’s instead to see their team win. To most fans it doesn’t matter if their team wins 23-22 or 125-115, a win is still a win. Evidence of this is that the highest scoring VFL/AFL Grand Final of all time, the 1972 decider between Carlton and Richmond, when the score was 177-150 had a lower crowd than the 1968 one when the score was 56-53. People would rather see a strong battle between offense and defence, but too often in sports, defence is neglected and abused to create the illusion of a “beautiful” game. We need our major sports to find a way to allow more defensive tactical rights to coaches and teams to stop offense having a monopoly on modern sport.

My Take: The Left’s troubles with unity

Ever since the very first political party, approximately 1500 years ago, the issue of unity, has been a key part of the battle for power. In Australia, with the most recent Labor government from 2007-13, we saw disunity raise its ugly head with two elected Prime Ministers knocked from the party leadership, some of which due to bad poll numbers, but mostly because of selfish traitors, namely Simon Crean and Bill Shorten who put their own promotion ahead of the team and it’s ability to govern and gain support. At 2013 Federal election, Labor was smashed winning just 55 seats to the more unified Coalition’s 90, much of this was put down to the crippling disunity that destroyed its reputation and dropped Labor’s first preference vote to its lowest point since 1934. The Coalition has had its disunity troubles too, namely recently when Malcolm Turnbull attacked Prime Minister Abbott’s best media buddies Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones, but their troubles are nothing like Labor’s.
While this lack of unity behind political leaders is a major issue, my take is that the bigger issue is the unity or disunity on policy issues, otherwise known as ideology. Again, Labor comes across to me as a party that aims stridently for ideological unity, an impossible idea when your party has 44,000 independently thinking members. This has led to two main factions, the Left and Right and further factions have sprung from these. In recent years, these factions have been in a bitter brawl, with the Right faction generally dominant. The difficulty for the Left is that on the conservative side of politics there are certain policy views that a large majority share, like low taxes, capitalism, low spending on services and small government. Now, of course, there are differences, but they are the exceptions not the rule. There are so many different positions, for higher taxes for the rich, for lower taxes for all, for small-l liberalism, for democratic socialism and so on. On the Left, differences are the rule, not the exceptions. This is why unity of thought will always be difficult, particularly for left-wing organisations. Why doesn’t the Left, like Socialist Alternative, value their differences and not try to always unify with a party that is similarish, because in modern left-wing politics, purity of thought should be everything.

My Take: Where’s the Vision?

With the Australian Labor Party ahead of the Liberals in the polls at both state and federal government levels, you would think the future of Labor couldn’t be rosier. However, the party’s status as the social democratic party of Australia, coming under threat with such inhumane policies as their take on asylum seekers, and a lack of leadership and vision from their leaders. The issue of particular focus in this article is the lack of vision. Every successful political party, whether on the left, centre or right needs an understanding and a vision of what their perfect country would look like. The centre-right Liberal Party of Australia sees an Australia which adheres to laissez-faire capitalism, a land where individual wealth isn’t taxed, and people who can’t pay for services are left behind in society. The middle left Greens sees an Australia where the environment is preserved for future generations. Who knows what Labor wants? One minute they’re passing the carbon tax, next minute, when Liberals attack it, they just let it die a miserable death. Gough Whitlam, when he was elected in 1972, had the vision of a multicultural social democratic country, with healthcare for everyone with Medicare and an Australia that controlled more of its resources through the failed nationalisation of mining and other resources. Bill Shorten and the modern Labor party have become the party without a vision, apart from simply attacking the Liberal Party.

My take on Labor is that under its current caucus and senior leaders, it will not become a party of vision, like the one Whitlam was a part of. Ever since the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd fiasco it has constantly tried to simply restore its reputation, rather than take the opportunity to revitalise the party and revamp its image. Politically, they have been the whipping boy for the Liberals and a party that even though it is the biggest in Australia, its vision means right now the political landscape is very much favouring the party in blue. This is seen, most clearly by the barrage of attacks on everything from workers rights to the environment to education and healthcare. Right now, the party with a vision to change the world isn’t the Labor party, it’s the Liberals.

Penny Mackieson On: Equalisation in the AFL

The Australian Football League (AFL) oversees the most popular and lucrative sporting competition in Australia, and that’s no mean feat in this sports-crazed country. Yet the AFL knows that to continue its dominance over the other football codes – soccer, rugby league and rugby union – it must ensure the ongoing viability of each of its 18 constituent clubs. There are a variety of means by which this may be achieved and the AFL has been devoting considerable time and effort to exploring the off-field options, including a fact finding tour in the United States. The primary focus has been on the financial elements – how to maximise club memberships and sponsorships; whether to cap football department spending by clubs (similar to the salary cap for players which has long been in place); how to maximise gate takings from attendances at matches and ensure a fair distribution of the profits to the clubs; how to balance maximisation of profits from sale of the match broadcasting rights with match fixtures that facilitate strong spectator attendances and fair allocation of the profits and preferred broadcast times among the clubs…

It all sounds very complex and it is, especially when also taking into account the vested interests and inordinate power of the larger – and, by definition, more financially successful – AFL clubs, which have already indicated their determination to hang on to their wealth, rather than commit to financial redistribution measures.

Frankly, I think the AFL is on the wrong track. To my mind the best way to facilitate equalisation is on the football field, rather than off it.

Australian rules football has evolved from a simple game with only 10 rules when first conceived in 1859 by members of the Melbourne Football Club to a complex game with well over 100 rules and an AFL ‘Laws of the Game Committee’, which regularly adds new rules and disseminates videos at the beginning of each season in order to explain the key rules and the ‘interpretations’ of those rules expected to be made by the umpires. These days AFL umpires have to be almost superhuman. The pace of games has become so fast that the umpires run marathon distances in order to keep up with the play, as evidenced by the prevailing body type within the umpiring ranks – small and lean. In addition to pounding up and down the spacious fields, the umpires must simultaneously remain alert to potential infringement of any of the 100-plus rules of the game with every play of the ball and every exchange between the combined 36 players of the two opposing teams. Truly, the umpires also need to be multi-processing computers as well as elite distance athletes – in effect, sophisticated robots. But, of course, they are only human and the result is consistently inconsistent ‘interpretations’ of the rules, not just between seasons but between matches and between, and even within, quarters!

Again, it all sounds very complex and it is, especially when also taking into account that the AFL has (at least since May 2007 when the then head of its umpiring department, Jeff Gieschen, discussed the matter during a media interview), a ‘protected species’ list of star players, or ‘ball movers’, which it believes draws spectators to attend AFL games. In conjunction with this list, the AFL holds the philosophy that when play during a match slows down the umpires should adjudicate with a view to getting the ball into the hands of one of its identified star players. The AFL now, as would be expected, verbally denies such a thing, tantamount as it would be to admitting systemic bias in matches and institutionalised match-fixing.

I genuinely pity the umpires, not least because so many of us passionate football supporters can’t help but vent our frustrations on them in regard to their erratic decision-making. I’m not proud of my inability to contain my anger at times, though I do not blame the umpires personally and appreciate that they are doing the best they can in impossible circumstances.

The solution is, to me, a no-brainer. The AFL should ditch both its ‘protected species’ list and its philosophy of umpiring to get the ball into the hands of the players on that list; it should stop adding ever more rules to the game; it should encourage the umpires to blow the whistle each and every time they see an infringement of the rules, regardless of the rule or the player who commits the infringement.

In this way the apparently unintended on-field favouritism towards the already large and financially robust clubs, which have – by definition – more star players, will be eradicated. The umpiring will be simplified; as a consequence there should be more consistent adjudication of the rules of the game; and so supporters who have fallen away through frustration will return to the stands in greater numbers to enjoy the spectacle of a truly fair sporting contest each and every time our great AFL game is played. It might even widen the field of contenders for the Brownlow Medal, the AFL’s award for the fairest and best player each season voted upon by its umpires.

My Take: Cochran vs. McDaniel, Mississippi Senate 2014

Establishment Republican Thad Cochran’s recent win over Tea Party firebrand Chris McDaniel in the Mississippi Senate Republican runoff, isn’t getting much press in Australia. Not surprising given the lack of coverage on U.S events full stop, but this could be one event that is interesting to note, given yesterday’s strange alliance between Clive Palmer and former VP of the U.S.A Al Gore.
The reason this is interesting was Thad Cochran’s strategy of reaching out to African American voters, a demographic that overwhelmingly votes Democrat. During the original primary, Chris McDaniel got 49.5% of the vote, to Cochran’s 49%, which forced a runoff due to no candidate getting 50%. In the runoff, Cochran got 50.9% to McDaniel’s 49.1%. The runoff had 60,601 extra voters than the original, many of these African Americans who didn’t want to see the Tea Party gain ascendancy in the state.
My take is that there are two things to take away from this:
1) The major party’s blatant attempt to attack third parties in any way they know how.

2) The people’s willingness to keep the major parties in power

Now the Tea Party might well one of the largest third parties in terms of popularity worldwide, and certainly the largest one in the United States, but still the Republican Party sees the need to cheat or at least push the boundaries of the rules. In most primaries, including in Mississippi, you are supposed to vote in the primary of the party you are going to vote for in the general election. This makes the large surge of African American voters, up to 40% in some counties, look awfully suspicious. One last point is that even with all of Thad Cochran’s enticing and political game playing, voters still had go to the booth and maybe put in a vote for a party and a person they had never voted for before. Imagine if we had public primaries in Australia, and there was a crazy radical leftie, running for let’s say, the Australian Labor Party nomination, and because this socialist could get in, Liberals started putting their vote in for a more moderate Labor member. This is what happened in Mississippi and it goes to show the power of a grassroots movement, like the Tea Party, that it can scare the stuffing out of a mainstream party to such an extent, that they had to cheat.