Opinion: Qld Cricketers Club at mercy of woke agenda with ban

What exactly is going on at the Queensland Cricketers Club, where they banned a visiting speaker on anti-Semitism, asks Mike O’Connor.

The Queensland Cricketers Club has declined to host a speaker on anti-Semitism.

The great Australian tradition of a fair go was hit for six by the Queensland Cricketers’ Club last week, belted out of the ground and into the weeds in a gutless display of craven submission.

At issue was a request by Australian Jewish Association to hire a room in the club’s Gabba headquarters in which to hold an evening with British journalist and author Melanie Phillips, in Australia on a speaking tour titled “How to Combat Anti-Semitism and Defend Western Civilisation” while promoting her latest book which deals with issues facing Christianity and Judaism in the Western world.

No problem with that, surely. Phillips is a well credentialed speaker, the AJA is a reputable body and the Gabba is ultimately owned by Queensland taxpayers, who could rightly expect it to conduct itself without fear or favour.

As it turned out there was plenty of fear on display and an absence of favour when the QCC, which modestly bills itself as one of Brisbane’s oldest and exclusive clubs, received the request from the AJA. Incredibly, it refused to accept the booking at the Gabba or the Allan Border Field at Albion, with a spokesperson telling The Australian that it worked with many multi-nation sporting associations and wouldn’t take the booking in case it was perceived as controversial or insensitive to stakeholders.

“With some influential members of the team having voiced strong stances on the overseas conflict previously, it would not be appropriate to be linked to hosting this particular guest speaker,” she said.

For “influential members” you could safely read Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja, who was banned by the International Cricket Council from wearing a pair of shoes in the colours of the Palestinian flag

AJA chief executive Robert Gregory has rightly denounced the decision as cowardly: “It’s political correctness gone mad.

“Melanie Phillips is a mainstream, well-respected speaker. The topic is combating anti-Semitism.

“If that’s controversial to some of the stakeholders, then I would suggest perhaps that’s an issue with some of the stakeholders.

“I would really hope that the QCC is not appeasing certain groups or people, and hope that’s not playing into their decision, because it really shouldn’t.”

Melanie Phillips

Stakeholders? Influential members? What exactly is going on at the Queensland Cricketers’ Club?

If Phillips had been dealing with Islamophobia would she have been banned? Would that have upset the stakeholders and influential members, or would the booking have been waved through?

Here we have a club purporting to being one of the city’s finest refusing to accept a function discussing anti-Semitism because the subject might upset some people.

Synagogue bombings, cars torched, a caravan found filled with explosives, Jews terrorised in their homes, warnings of terrorist attacks and the flannelled fools at the QCC are worried about upsetting stakeholders and influential members.

If the club has attracted the sort of stakeholders that find an address about combating anti-Semitism upsetting, I suggest it cut them loose, and do so quickly. If I was a member, I’d resign.

While the QCC was collapsing in a spineless heap, another scenario was being played out in our fair city involving not cricketers and their precious sensitivities – but chemists.

Appearing before an inquiry into anti-Semitism on Australian university campuses, Queensland University of Technology vice-chancellor Professor Margaret Sheil was asked if she believed conflating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism undermined efforts to combat racism.

This followed upon a symposium organised by QUT’s Carumba Institute titled Unifying Anti-Racist Research and Action featured a slide on stage about “Dutton’s Jew” and which has drawn complaints of anti-Semitism.

“It’s not my area of expertise, I’m a chemist,” Prof Sheil replied.

Chemists, apparently, have difficulty with the twin concepts of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

Surely as the head of one of the state’s leading universities, and one enjoying a salary of $1.23m, Prof Sheil would be able to enunciate for all – students, staff and the tax paying public – just what her views and those of the university which she oversees were on a subject which is front and centre of the national political stage.

It was not to be, because she is a chemist.

When the president of Harvard University in the US, Claudine Gay, was asked if calls to kill Jews violated the university’s rules, she said it all depended on the context.

She was forced to resign a short time later.

Wrong answer, Claudine. You should have said you were a chemist.