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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-11-02 Daily Xml
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Australian Diamonds Netball Team Sponsorship

The Hon. J.E. HANSON (15:29): Whether you like South Australian personality Cosi Costello or not, last week he created some controversy when he decided to throw his support behind a prominent Western Australian businessperson. Hancock Prospecting entered into a multimillion-dollar sponsorship arrangement with the world-beating netball team, our Australian Diamonds. A player on the team, Donnell Wallam, a proud Noongar woman, took objection to the idea of wearing the company logo on her guernsey. Ms Wallam privately sought an exemption from wearing the logo. According to accounts in the media, the exemption was not granted. The team stood by Ms Wallam. In response, my understanding from media reports is that the company's sponsorship was pulled shortly after.

Ms Wallam's objection was not about mining of First Nations land, as Cosi somehow mistakenly understood. The objection that Ms Wallam held was about the notion of a basic degree of respect for the humanity, and indeed the right to exist, of Australia's First Nations people. Lang Hancock, the founder of the company and father of its current executive chairperson, held some shocking beliefs in relation to Aboriginal Australians. By today's standards, they are abhorrent, and the company's executive chairperson has been unwilling to apologise or publicly distance herself from those views promoted by her father.

Let's be clear about the sort of ideas Ms Wallam objects to. In a filmed interview some time ago, the late Mr Hancock said:

Those that have been assimilated into earning a good living and earning wages among the civilised areas and have been accepted into society and can handle society, I'd leave them well alone. The ones that are no good to themselves and can't accept things…I would dope up the water so that they were sterile and they would breed themselves out in the future, and that would solve the problem.

Now, these comments aimed at any people or culture are by today's standards indefensible. What Mr Hancock advocated is genocide. The direction of Mr Hancock's comments was solely toward the First Nations people of Australia. Views like this cannot be tolerated in modern Australia. The statements by the late Mr Hancock needed to be not only addressed but denounced. That seems to me a pretty basic social and moral responsibility on behalf of the company that bears his name. We cannot just move on.

Cosi Costello does, and has done, a great job promoting our state and long may his advocacy continue, but as much of our nation gets its head around the concept of truth telling and listening to First Nations people, Cosi's support of a prominent Australian who refuses to do so is disappointing. Worse than disappointing, it is also the wrong signal to send to Cosi's fans. As a state, as a nation, and as a society, how can we honestly say we are listening to our First Nations people if we cannot even apologise for the wrongs perpetrated against them by our forebears? What kind of signal does it send to my son, or any of our kids, if they learn that this dispute is all about money for netball and not about facing up to the unthinkable cruelties against our First Nations people committed by the those who came before us?

Further afield, this unfortunate episode was also reported on in TheNew York Times. So even if we are unwilling to look at ourselves, let's be clear: the world will be looking at us. Truth telling is a necessary and fundamental first step on the long journey to reconciliation, and denialism is one of the most significant roadblocks.

Donnell Wallam, in her diplomatic and thoroughly justified refusal to wear the Hancock Prospecting logo, is asking us to simply hear the truth and to confront it. If we do not, then where are we? We are nowhere. And do you know what: we will stay nowhere until we are ready to recognise that Ms Wallam's position is not only correct, it is uncontroversial. Calling out racism in 2022 is uncontroversial. Defending racism and defending racists is what is becoming increasingly controversial.

I commend Premier Andrews and the Victorian Labor government for stepping in to cover the $50 million in lost sponsorship for the Diamonds, an act of genuine leadership. I commend Netball Australia for standing by a person who was, at the heart of it, simply seeking to access her right to an emotionally safe workplace. And I commend Donnell Wallam for all that she has done to progress the conversation around these fundamentally important matters. Whether it is what she intended or not, we should all be listening to her, and the next time an opportunity comes to publicly stand on the right side of history I hope that Cosi—and all of us—take it.

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