Steve Price slams AFL over Voice to parliament memo

Steve Price has slammed the AFL over a memo sent to clubs urging them to take a position on the Voice to parliament.

Steve Price made the remarks on Sharri Markson's Sky News Australia program. Photo: Sky News Australia

The AFL have been slammed over a memo sent to AFL clubs urging them to determine a position on the Indigenous Voice to parliament.

The memo, sent by the league’s General Manager of Inclusion and Social Policy, Tanya Hosch, asked clubs to advise the league whether they will be taking a position on supporting the ‘yes’ campaign.

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“We invite and encourage you to advise us if your club will be taking a position to support the referendum yes campaign,” the memo read.

“As the AFL will be considering this in the coming weeks, your advice on this will be gratefully received.

“This information is supplied to provide guidance regarding language to support building awareness of the Referendum during Sir Doug Nicholls Round in 2023.”

Steve Price made the remarks on Sharri Markson's Sky News Australia program. Photo: Sky News Australia

Sky News commentator Steve Price said he was “shocked” when he learned about the memo, before questioning why a football body “requires such a person”.

“A senior executive has given AFL clubs until May 8, so a week away, to reveal before their Indigenous round if they will be ticking Yes on a Voice question that’s still being debated for a referendum without a date that is dividing Australia like no other referendum has,” Price said.

Price said the memo “disgracefully” does not pose a question about what kind of position the clubs may take.

“It’s urging a Yes position to be taken,” he said.

“It will be fascinating to see if any of the clubs decline to reveal any position at all and why should they?

“I’m a member of an AFL club with 100,000 financial members … I contribute three of those 100,000 memberships.

“Is my club going to run a poll of its own financial members and sponsors at great expense to see if a majority of us want the club to push the Yes case on the Voice? I bet they won’t.”

Price also said he found it “fascinating” that the memo came out around a similar time that the Prime Minister announced federal funding for an AFL stadium in Hobart, paving the way for the state to become home to the 19th AFL team.

You have to wonder if the two things might be linked somehow,” he said.

“You want the stadium money, then you make sure your clubs and you, the AFL, get behind the Yes campaign (that) we the Albanese Government, are running hard with.”

Price is a Richmond supporter, and often posts on Instagram of his attendance at the club’s home games.

He has previously criticised the club for “woke virtue signalling about things like climate change” after the club concluded an 11-year major sponsorship with car manufacturer Jeep in 2021 in favour of extending an existing deal with health insurer NIB.

Club CEO Brendon Gale said at the time that Jeep and Richmond’s “values closely align”, and the club made no mention of climate change in its statement on the partnership.

Price has been criticised for his views on football in the past.

AFL General Manager of Inclusion and Social Policy, Tanya Hosch (right) alongside AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan. (Photo by Sarah Reed/AFL Photos/via Getty Images)

In 2015, he suggested Adam Goodes was to blame for the abuse he received from crowds that would eventually drive him from the game.

“I think people are booing him because he has decided to parade his indigenous credentials strongly,” he said on The Project at the time.

Goodes would receive an “unreserved” apology in 2019 from the AFL and its 18 clubs for “failing to support him adequately in the face of (the) abuse.”

Price last year wrote in a newspaper column “high school boys were better to watch” than the women’s AFLW competition.

“AFLW is not elite sport and the female version of the Australian game of football is substandard,” he wrote.

“It is not deserving of the attention and funding it gets.

“The women’s game has been promoted, funded and supported outrageously by an AFL pandering to political correctness and the age of equality and inclusiveness in all aspects of our lives.”

Price is not the only commentator to criticise sporting bodies for taking positions on the referendum.

Former Labor Party president and Liberal candidate Warren Mundine told a parliamentary inquiry that elite athletes have told him they are afraid to reveal they do not back the Voice.