Rita Panahi: If Netball accepts the sponsorship money they are endorsing what’s happened under Daniel Andrews’ reign

The $15m Dan Andrews pledged to Netball Australia may not be his money but it’s tainted — and accepting it makes our top netballers look like hypocrites.

Australia’s top netballers need to find their courage or be seen as world class hypocrites.

If they accept Victorian taxpayer money from Dan Andrews then they are endorsing what’s happened under his reign.

It’s the netballers who chose to inject politics into their sport and sponsorship arrangements; they cannot now indulge in selective activism and ignore what has happened in this state.

How can they refuse to wear Hancock Prospecting logos because they object, not to what Gina Rinehart has said or done, but to what her father said many decades ago – and then turn a blind eye to Andrews’ many scandals?

The $15m the premier has pledged may not be his money, but it is nevertheless tainted. He has led an inept and deeply dishonest government which has treated citizens with a combination of disdain, neglect and outright cruelty.

If they accept Victorian taxpayer money from Dan Andrews the netballers are endorsing what’s happened under his reign. Picture: AAP

Many of Andrews’ worst policies during the pandemic disproportionately impacted women and children, from his government’s absurd playgrounds bans, to the longest school closures, to IVF bans that devastated women desperate to start a family.

Even the most irrational restrictions were only overturned after a public backlash. This was a man governing by focus groups and polling, not the best available advice.

This is a premier who forced the sick and elderly to die alone, without their family and friends by their side, and politicised our police force to the extent that many law-abiding citizens have lost trust in the thin blue line.

This is the premier of the state where police crash-tackled people for being maskless outdoors and shot scores of protesters in the back with nonlethal rounds. This is the man who kept thousands of Victorians stranded for months in NSW unable to cross the border to go to their own homes.

Australia’s netballers chose to inject politics into their sport and sponsorship arrangements. Picture: Mike Egerton/PA Wire

And then there are the many integrity failings of the Andrews government from the “red shirts rorts” to branch-stacking scandals to the collective amnesia that afflicted Andrews, his ministers and top bureaucrats at the Coate inquiry.

Under the premier’s incompetent leadership Victoria has accumulated the highest debt of any state with a health system in deep crisis.

And what do the moralising players feel about Andrews’ issues with women from the late and courageous Jane Garrett to former health minister Jenny Mikakos to Kaushaliya Vaghela? And they’re all Labor women.

If the netballers feel entitled to grandstand about a businesswoman’s dead father then they can surely take an interest in where this taxpayer largesse comes from and how they are being cynically used by Andrews to strike a blow in the culture wars.

For Victorian taxpayers this “sponsorship” represents about as much value as the billion dollar cheque Andrews signed for the road that was never built.

You don’t have to have an MBA majoring in marketing, though I do, to understand why this is a terrible deal for Victorian taxpayers. The return on “investment” will be negligible. It’s essentially a gift to Netball Australia and one Victorian taxpayers can ill afford.