Arthur Tunstall's reign of error as Commonwealth Games chief

Organisers of next year's Commonwealth Games on the Gold Coast refer to the event as the "Comm Games", a hint perhaps that these four-yearly festivals of sport for countries formerly ruled by Great Britain now have a commercial, less anachronistic edge.

In 1994, however, at the 15th Commonwealth Games in Victoria, Canada, colonial attitudes prevailed in a major controversy involving 400-metre runner Cathy Freeman and the despotic chef de mission of the Australian team, Arthur Tunstall.

Arthur Tunstall, pictured in 2012, is still embroiled in controversy 18 months after his death.Credit: Janie Barrett

Victoria Island, named after the long-serving British queen, with its quaint red English style telephone boxes and Devonshire tea shops, was the perfect setting for Arthur to rail against a world moving too quickly towards political correctness which he loathed.

A powerful figure in the Commonwealth Games Federation, he tended to influence the vote of African delegates by gifting them bottles of whiskey hidden in cornflake boxes.

The currency of Commonwealth Games was lapel badges and Tunstall dispensed kangaroo pins in the manner of early explorers winning the natives over with beads and mirrors.

He addressed gatherings of team members as "gentlemen", never acknowledging the "ladies" present, despite the best athletes, swimmers and cyclists in the room tending to be women.

He was variously nicknamed "King Arthur", or "Arthur Tunstile" because of his bull at a gate approach to problems.

At the Auckland Commonwealth Games four years earlier, he had offended the Kiwis by declaring the two islands of New Zealand, should be "the seventh and eighth states of Australia".

The Victoria Games had barely begun before Tunstall, then 72, caused a major controversy, referring to the non-abled bodied athletes competing in separate events as "an embarrassment".

Defiant in the face of fierce criticism, he later said: "I have got admiration for disabled people. I spoke to them at the Games every day. It is great what they did. But I still say there should be a disabled Commonwealth Games.

"You don't see them at the Olympics."

When Freeman won a gold medal in the 400 metres and carried both the Australian and Aboriginal flags on her victory lap, Arthur exceeded even his own high standard to offend.

He ordered the Australian Athletics team officials to inform Freeman not to display the Aboriginal flag in future events, such as the 200 metres. If she repeated her celebration with an indigenous flag, she would be sent home.

His reprimand of Freeman angered even his closest allies.

Asked if he had a problem with Freeman carrying the indigenous flag, Ray Godkin, the president of the Australian Commonwealth Games Association, said: "I fail to see any problem with it.

"We see people run around with the boxing kangaroo flag all the time. It's not the official flag, and there are never any problems with that."

Parliamentarians, state and federal and from both sides of politics, joined the debate, all criticising Tunstall.

He remained recalcitrant, arguing that "probably 40 per cent" of Australians would be against him and 60 per cent in his favour.

Trump like, he claimed the publicity was a product of "distorted" reporting.

"The rules are laid down very clearly," he said.

"If the Bulgarians [members of the Australian weightlifting team who had recently gained Australian citizenship] had come out with the Bulgarian flag, you would have condemned them. How would the Canadians feel if the Quebecians (sic) flew their flag?"

As for Freeman, she kept a dignified silence, telling friends she carried both flags to show her elation in what was probably the most significant moment of her life to that point.

She said she sought to encourage young indigenes to make something of their lives, "to achieve something".

Six years later, Freeman was chosen to light the flame at the Sydney Olympics and earned the nation's enduring gratitude by winning a gold medal in track and field, the No.1 sport on the program in terms of prestige.

Tunstall survived for another four years as a ACGA official, basically ruling the organisation for the second half of the 20th century.

Along with wife Peg, he ran the ACGA office from their home in Double Bay, Sydney, before the organisation was modernised in 1998 with a full-time professional administrator.

Today, the ACGA is renamed Commonwealth Games Australia and is headed by former AOC secretary-general Craig Phillips whose offices are in Melbourne.

The GOLDOC budget of more than $2 billion is controlled by its chief executive, the very experienced former ASC executive, Mark Peters, while the chair is former Queensland Premier, Peter Beattie.

Unlike the thoughtful, consulting Beattie, Tunstall more closely resembled former Queensland Premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen – like a steel ball in an amusement machine, he bounced off the rubber cushions, seemingly undamaged by the collision.

But Arthur rarely held a grudge and several years later convivially appeared with Freeman in an advertisement, promoting tea.

He died in February 2016, aged 93.