Tanya Hosch is the AFL’s most senior indigenous executive and she is bringing a lifetime of fighting injustice to her new job

AS a proud indigenous woman, Tanya Hosch knows the pain of prejudice. Now, as the AFL’s commissioner for inclusion, she hopes footy’s example can help shape a more tolerant society.

Tanya Hosch, pictured at Adelaide Oval, is the AFL first indigenous executive. Picture: Matt Turner.

• New AFL racism row after Facebook tirade directed at Eddie Betts
• Port urges Crows fan to come forward over racist slur on Ryder

A RACIST attack is not just a moment in time, it’s a life sentence. It can take a full-grown, well-adjusted, successful adult all the way back to childhood in an instant. To the cruel words in the school yards. To the days when taunts, and teasing and insults were part of the hurdles to be jumped every day.

So that even 40 years after the event, the memories still have the capacity to hurt.

Today, Tanya Hosch is clearly a success. The first indigenous member of the AFL executive, her title is general manager, inclusion and social policy. She is a well-regarded leader at a national level.

Yet, her days in the schoolyard at Gilles Plains Primary still carry an emotional weight that cannot be shrugged off.

“I feel to this day that it’s had an impact on my confidence,” she says. “One of the things about racism that people don’t understand is that it doesn’t really matter what happened as you get older, or how successful you are considered to be.

“When you experience a racist incident it can immediately take you back to that time in the schoolyard where you felt powerless and scared and humiliated.”

It’s a background she could call on recently when, in her new role at the AFL, she worked with Adelaide and Port Adelaide to issue a swift, united response against the racist slurs directed towards Eddie Betts and Paddy Ryder at the Showdown in April.

Hosch was at the Adelaide Oval for the game and says she was not shocked that such incidents still took place at the footy.

“I know there are people who carry these sort of views and think this sort of behaviour is acceptable,” she says.

But that was not the whole story. The positive part was the reaction, and the fact that other fans felt they could report the racist behaviour without feeling threatened. Then there was the show of unity from both clubs to show racism had no part in the game.

“When such fierce rivals stand together, it is a fantastic thing to see and really great leadership and that is probably the best thing to come out of it,” she says.

Hosch had a rough start in life. She was born to a Welsh mother and a Torres Strait Islander father. Her mother travelled to Adelaide for the birth because Hosch believes she had not told her parents she was pregnant. At three weeks old she was given up for adoption, which is when, paradoxically, she got lucky.

She was adopted by an Aboriginal father and a white mother. This was 1970, it was only three years after a referendum had agreed to allow the Federal Government to make specific laws for Aboriginal people.

And, in the hospital, the staff went to pains to ensure the new parents were okay about taking home an indigenous child.

“That suggests some would not have been happy with my cultural background,” she says. The good news. “I was fortunate to land in a fabulous, loving family.”

Dad, Hilton, was a sign-writer. Mum, Jan, a cleaner. It was a blue-collar unionist household in Adelaide’s north eastern suburbs. Hosch attended primary school in Gilles Plains and high school at Enfield.

The primary school days, in particular, were difficult. “(There was) teasing, exclusion, writing things about you on the school walls. Just targeting you as someone who wasn’t worthy, I suppose, of being part of the group.”

Which is not to say she didn’t have any friends. Hosch describes herself as a social person. She was good at talking to people and says she has always had a circle of close, supportive friends. But it’s hard not to conclude that the racism she encountered at school played a part in the difficulties she faced on the academic side.

“On reflection school was something I just wanted to survive rather than excel at,” she says. Hosch failed year 12 but by that stage it was agreed that just sticking out school that long was a triumph in itself.

Adelaide’s Eddie Betts was the victim of vile racist slurs during the first Showdown of 2017.

Her results, coupled with what was a complete lack of confidence in her academic abilities, meant university was not an option. So out of school she took up a traineeship in the State Government and landed a job which involved paying the petrol bill for the police.

Over the next few years Hosch moved around the public service, working in programs for young Aboriginal offenders, and indigenous employment programs.

That brought her into closer contact with the Aboriginal community, something she had “craved” as she tried to form a better understanding of her own cultural identity.

“I was on a very steep learning curve trying to understand my identity and where it fitted,” she says.

But her “fork in the road” moment came when she was 22 and started at the Women’s Information Service. The job started to bring together a lot of the threads she had been thinking about — her cultural heritage, gender and being young. For the first time she was also surrounded by people who were telling Hosch she “was smart, that I was capable and just encouraged me”.

“So suddenly I was around all these amazing women who had a very strong commitment and connection to their personal and political values,” she recalls.

Hosch was an information officer, her job being to refer women who needed help to those who could help them, which meant she was dealing with many who were in danger or deep distress. People who were victims of domestic violence, or who had nowhere to sleep.

There were also less serious issues to deal with, like the woman who called for a bus timetable, or the one who wanted to know where to buy popping corn in bulk.

“That time helped me understand some of the political history behind feminism and how that intersected with Aboriginal rights, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me,” Hosch says.

Racist slurs were directed at Port star Paddy Ryder during the first Showdown of 2017.

It gave her enough confidence to have a crack at university — where she studied social work — even though it “terrified” her.

When she was asked to attend the Reconciliation Convention in 1997 in Melbourne it was another step forward in showing Hosch what was possible.

More than 1800 people from across the indigenous and non-indigenous community attended the event at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.

“I was in awe of seeing this movement of Aboriginal leaders and hearing them speak about what they thought the issues were. I couldn’t get enough of it,” she says.

“I remember (indigenous leader) Patrick Dodson who was chair. He was speaking at the end of the conference and saying how important it was that everybody did something on this issue.”

It was an instruction Hosch took to heart. When she came home to Adelaide she contacted her local council in Tea Tree Gully and proposed it establish a reconciliation committee.

It was a bold move for a young person still lacking in confidence.

“Next thing, I have to present to the council,” she says, two decades later. “I don’t think I had ever spoken in public before.”

That committee is still in operation.

Hosch’s career branched out into consulting, governance and fundraising within a variety of indigenous causes. She is a board member of the Indigenous Land Corporation and the Referendum Council.

For four years before she joined the AFL this year she was the joint campaign director of Recognise, the organisation set up to persuade Australians to vote to officially acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the constitution and to remove elements within the century-old document that still allow for racial discrimination.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who supports the change, had planned to hold a referendum on the subject this year. But he faced internal revolt on the topic then was rolled by his party and replaced by Malcolm Turnbull. There is still no date set.

The long wait clearly frustrated Hosch. “All expectations were that the referendum would have happened by then,” she said.

Her work at Recognise was a highly demanding job for the 46-year-old married mother with a nine-year-old daughter.

“The other job (at Recognise) felt like it just took everything, not just of me but of my family,” she says. “I really had to ask myself what was in the best interests of me and my family.” Yet, the decision to walk away from Recognise was difficult, because Hosch didn’t like leaving the job incomplete.

But the AFL had another task in mind, having been made brutally aware of the issues of racism in football with the abuse of Sydney Swans star Adam Goodes.

When the AFL’s indigenous adviser Jason Misfud left, it was decided to upgrade and broaden that role. AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan already knew Hosch through Recognise, and so he approached her — and a few others including former Labor senator Nova Perris — to see if she would consider taking on the new role. She took some time to decide, but when she was appointed in June last year, McLachlan said she was the “standout” candidate.

“Tanya’s extensive experience in public policy and advocacy in women and indigenous affairs is a major step for the AFL,” he says.

It helped she had always been a fan of the game but she also understood the power of the nation’s most popular sport to be a force for change.

Former Sydney Swans champion Michael O’Loughlin worked with Hosch at Recognise where he was an ambassador. He is convinced she will make a strong contribution to the game.

“She was actually in the trenches, rolling up her sleeves and getting things done,” O’Loughlin says. “If she was in a footy club she would be the captain I think, she is that type of person.”

He also says that Hosch has the ability to communicate with all sectors of society.

“She can hold her own in a football club, talking to the prime minister, talking to CEOs around the country. She has a unique touch.”

Hosch wants to leverage the great love of footy held by so many to, as she says, “have challenging conversations” about subjects that can be tough to address in other fields.

“The AFL has an enormous amount of reach across the country,” she says. “It just makes sense to me to see if I can be someone who helps facilitate those important social conversations through people’s engagement with sport.”

But her job is broader than indigenous issues. It covers gender, multiculturalism, diversity, sexuality, transgender, disability.

Hosch and then Opposition Leader Tony Abbott at a Recognise meeting in Canberra.

“I just feel like the world has changed so much, there are a lot of issues confronting us as a nation and if we can get some of that right through footy it will stand as a really good example.”

The fight against racism in football, and broader society, is the highest profile example of the challenges she faces in improving the AFL’s inclusiveness. The racist abuse directed at Goodes by thousands of football fans in his last year in the game was deplorable, as was the slow response at the time by those at the top of the AFL.

Hosch watched the treatment of Goodes from the outside in her last job, and wasn’t impressed at the time by how her new bosses reacted. The AFL and its boss Gillon McLachlan was slow to condemn the behaviour of those fans who joined in the booing, not recognising the damage it was doing to one of the most decorated players to ever play the game.

“In that context, what we saw was some slow leadership, at best,” she says. “That shows that as a community we have an enormous way to travel.” But again, even in the Goodes scenario, there were positives. McLachlan did recognise his fault and apologised in the AFL’s annual report. And beyond that, Hosch says there was also the support for Goodes from many other football fans, who were appalled at his treatment.

“The whole ‘I stand with Adam’ (movement). The people wearing the number 37, making it clear to Adam that they were not okay with what was going on.”

The AFL’s appointment of Hosch is seen as another step in that direction; a further acknowledgment that while intentions and words on racism are all well and good, visible action is also needed.

There is clearly much work to do, a fact that was illustrated again in April at the Adelaide Oval when indigenous players Eddie Betts and Paddy Ryder were racially abused by idiots in the crowd. It was the second time in as many years that Betts had been attacked.

This time, though, the reaction was quick and decisive. Adelaide and Port Adelaide presented a united front condemning the behaviour, as did McLachlan and the AFL Players Association.

Hosch was heavily involved. Betts says she phoned him daily for two weeks just to check he and wife Anna Scullie were going okay.

“We are trying to stamp this stuff out of the game … you don’t want this stuff brought on you,” Betts says.

He has known Hosch for five years and, like O’Loughlin, is thrilled she has risen to a position of influence within the traditionally male-dominated world of the AFL.

Betts says he is “looking forward to seeing what she can do in the future”.

“I can’t speak highly enough of Tanya,” he says. “She is a fantastic, strong, powerful Torres Strait Islander woman, and for her to be appointed in a strong role in the highest rungs of the AFL, and especially being indigenous, is amazing.”

For Hosch, the mission is clear.

“Footy has been the lightning rod for many important and challenging conversations,” she says.

“So if I can help and support clubs, players and obviously the AFL institution, why would you not want to do that?” ●