‘Sick and tired’ Sam Newman explodes again with divisive call
Sam Newman has launched a new plan to wipe out the Welcome to To Country at the AFL finals, proposing a “uniting” alternative.
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Sam Newman has called for fans to drown out the Welcome To Country ceremony at Friday night’s AFL final at the MCG.
Newman this week sparked a storm when he made a public call for football crowds to boo the Welcome To Country held before the AFL Grand Final.
The former Footy Show panellist has now proposed an alternative he says is to promote unity.
AFL boss Gillon McLachlan on Thursday emphatically condemned Newman’s comments, while Victorian Premier Dan Andrews also said the Welcome to Country was not something to boo.
Newman’s comments have been particularly explosive leading into the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum on October 14.
Newman has now told The Opposition Podcast he wants crowds to drown out the Welcome to Country by singing The Seekers’ 1987 anthem ‘I am Australian’.
The song features the lyrics “We are one, but we are many” in respect to Australia’s multicultural modern society.
It comes as Newman again hit out at the Indigenous Welcome to Country ceremony, labelling it “cringe-worthy”.
“Are we sick and tired of this? I’ve been going on about this for a while now. I find it insulting and demeaning to be welcomed to a country where I live in,” Newman said on the podcast.
“I have lived all my life here. I’ve paid taxes. I’ve contributed to it. Like everyone else we want to be united. One country.
“I don’t know why we try to divide each other on race. I don’t know why the Voice is even part of this narrative.
“And to say that I have to be welcomed to every single thing I step into, restaurants, churches, creches, fetes. It is out of control.
“It’s exponentially getting worse and worse because no-one will push back on it.”
He said his proposal to sing the 36-year-old song would be less divisive.
“If you want to have a song rather than boo people at the Grand Final or slow hand clap. What about, ‘We are one?’,” he said.
“If I was going to advise people, should they boo at the Grand Final, what about when all the Welcome to Country nonsense and crap starts, the crowd breaks into song, singing, ‘We are one, we are many and from different lands on earth we come.
“And we share and we dream and our voice, we sing with one, I am you, you are me, I am Australian’.”
“What is wrong with that song? If people just sang that song when they started the Welcome To Country ceremony and drowned it out, it’d be probably better than booing.”
The former Geelong footballer has branded the Indigenous Voice to Parliament a “push for funds and money“.
“It’s now nothing more than a grab for money. For reparations. For the social elite to cream and skim the top. That’s all it is.”
He went on to say: “There’s stratas and there’s tiers in every aspect of life. It’s the social elites who push this. And it’s just a push for funds and money to control whoever they are trying to control. And to stand there and be browbeaten to be welcomed to your own land it’s cringe-worthy. It’s insulting.”
Newman’s most revolting comment was a claim that there was “nothing here” in Australia before the arrival of the First Fleet in 1787.
“When you think about it, those people are enjoying the spoils of a life that started in this country when settlement came in the 1770s or whenever it did,” he said.
“And everyone has flourished. Some haven’t who are white. Some haven’t who are black. Adversity drives everyone. You don’t have to have a different skin colour to know what adversity is about.
“There was nothing here before settlement. That’s not a reflection of the people who were here before, but this country is because people arrived here and made it what it is.
“Everyone is benefitting from it in some way. And I’ve said this, there are plenty who are not, but that’s not reserved for skin colour.
“There’s plenty of people who are doing it tough. But that’s another matter. That’s a political matter.”
Newman earlier reiterated his view that the booing of Goodes in 2015, which led to the premature end of the AFL star’s playing career, was not motivated by racism and suggested no Indigenous player had ever been booed because of their race.
‘Stolen land’
The radio interview came just after Lidia Thorpe blasted Newman as a “racist” for the suggestion.
“We all are on stolen land, there has never been a treaty, and a Welcome to Country is a way to bring people along on an understanding of the country that you are all living on,” the independent Senator told Nine’s Today on Thursday.
“It’s about peace and the whole message behind a Welcome to Country is about respect and bringing people together. And I think Sam Newman is — you know, he is not a respectful man at the best of times so he needs to educate himself and not be so racist all the time.”
Host Karl Stefanovic said he was playing “devil’s advocate” by pointing out that there was a “school of thought out there — and it’s not from me, let me assure you — that maybe there are too many of these ceremonies, that maybe they lose their effectiveness if there are too many of them”.
“How do you counter that?” he said.
Ms Thorpe replied that it was “up to the traditional owners themselves and the event”.
“I think that it’s important for people to understand that the land that they’re on and the stories behind that,” she said.
“There’s a lot of beautiful stories that go with Welcomes and people learn from that and people have a deeper understanding on how to protect country.
“I don’t think that there’s too many. I think that the stories that are told are important for this country to be able to mature and come together.”
Australians will go to the polls on October 14 to vote in a referendum on an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice.
After weeks of traditional polls showing support for the Indigenous advisory body to Parliament going from bad to worse, news.com.au’s Great Aussie Debate survey of more than 50,000 respondents has revealed the picture is even bleaker still.
Participants answered 50 questions in July, revealing their opinions on everything from work, politics and dating, to using your phone on the loo and wearing shorts in the office.
Their answers have resulted in a snapshot of how the average Aussie thinks, feels and lives in 2023, with some results more surprising than others.
Fewer than one in four people who chose to respond to the survey – which includes a host of other issues and was not specifically or explicitly about the Voice – said they supported a Voice to Parliament. Just 23 per cent.
The two strongest states – NSW and Victoria – recorded just 25 per cent and even in the dripping-wet woke ACT just 28 per cent supported it.
And tellingly the only age demographic in which support for the Voice was strongest out of the options available was 18-29 with 34 per cent in favour, which even by this former arts student’s reckoning is a fair way below 50 per cent.
Originally published as ‘Sick and tired’ Sam Newman explodes again with divisive call
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