Why does the only expression of national joy involve a public holiday? How does celebration equate with having a bit of a lie in, possibly nursing a hangover before popping down to the local cafe for brunch with the waiter serving bacon and eggs on double time and a half?
The genesis, the germ of the idea, seems to have taken shape in the excitable mind of Albo after the Matildas’ win against Denmark. Victorian Premier Dan Andrews won’t publicly comment on the thought bubble lest he “jinx” the outcome, which is as weird and egotistical as saying if I sit in a different seat when I watch my beloved Carlton going around, they might not perform at optimum level.
By the way, Carlton have won eight in a row and are banging on the door of the AFL finals series for the first time in ten years. Where’s my public holiday, Albo?
Eyeing extraordinary television ratings, the other state premiers and chief ministers were quick to jump on board with all manner of dodgy caveats. Obviously, our rapidly proscribed public holiday won’t happen unless the Matildas beat England on Wednesday night and then Spain on Sunday night.
It’s dumb political messaging from the PM that relies on an extraordinary performance from a group of women who have already done themselves and their country proud. Albo’s thought bubble could fall over at anytime between Wednesday and Sunday night and in the meantime, he’s set himself up to be picked off in the media and by employer groups.
The wave of popularity the Matildas are enjoying is joyous and I am all for joy. A peak audience of 7.2 million Australians watched Saturday night’s quarterfinal triumph against France, and two million plus over the entire game against the Danes. It’s beautiful and no doubt will lead to a surge of participation among young girls, boys with even a few adults lacing up the boots, too.
How that amplified support for women’s football and women’s sport in general (the Diamonds won the Netball World Cup over the weekend amid an eerie silence around their achievements and off we trudged to work on Monday morning) is a matter for Football Australia who, if their work in the past is anything to go by, will probably let the opportunities escape into the ether.
Soccer’s problem is and always will be, that while participation rates among girls and boys is the highest of all footy codes, the moment the children become adults, participation rates drop off dramatically.
There are good reasons for that and perhaps the best way to explain at least one of them is to ask parents if they would be happy taking their children to an A League men’s match featuring the two Melbourne teams, Victory and City. When the two teams met in December last year more than a hundred spectators invaded the playing arena, and a goalkeeper was assaulted.
Rest assured these are problems that a public holiday is not going to fix.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton said on Tuesday that a public holiday would cost the economy two billion dollars. How did he arrive at that figure? Well, you’d have to ask him, but I am presuming he took the national GDP and divided it by 365. This is not how … never mind.
The Opposition Leader countered Albo’s Big Day Off with a $250 million community sports funding package, inferring the Coalition thinks the nation’s collective functioning memory runs around two years. It’s not pure lexicographical coincidence that sports rhymes with rorts.
How will the money be spent? Dutton said the funding would be made available should the Matildas win, lose or go into an exciting penalty shoot-out again.
It was an odd statement given his mob is not in government. The funding is ethereal – it does not exist in anything other than the hive minds of the Coalition. But we can only presume that the imaginary pile of money would be allocated in the time-honoured practice of receiving grant applications.
If you really want to know how community grant funding works, I can tell you a story which I am assured is true. Anonymity has been extended to protect the innocent and the guilty alike.
One fellow, a luminary in his local area and with assiduously nurtured political contacts, visited the federal parliament some years ago. So well known is he, that he felt sufficiently entitled to march into the relevant minister’s office without an appointment.
The visitor discovered the minister was absent but sitting there was a senior bureaucrat painstakingly shuffling through community grant applications. There were three piles — the largest of which was applications received, the next largest pile was applications rejected with the smallest being applications approved.
The visitor spied an application from within his local area in the rejected pile.
“Put that one in there,” the visitor said, reaching for the rejected application and pointing to the approved pile.
A shouting match ensued with the bureaucrat reluctant to move the rejected application into the approved file. At this point the minister returned to the office.
“What’s going on here?” the minister demanded as the paper tug of war stopped.
The minister reproached the visitor for being a nuisance, plucked the application from his hand and put it in the approved pile.
And that is how the sporting club in the region this chap comes from received funding for a 10,000-seat stadium, sports club and leisure centre, including bar and restaurant facilities which I’m told serves a more than passable chicken parma on a Thursday night. $10 million of the taxpayer’s hard earned. Well done them.
That is how Canberra works.
I can also tell the story of another sporting club, indeed a soccer club with more than 600 members, most of them players, all amateurs, men and women, boys and girls who do not have adequate changing room facilities. The club’s sin is to exist in a safe seat (the federal Labor member for Cunningham holds the seat by a margin just south of 15 per cent).
After the club’s committee — all volunteers — met over many hours and meticulously prepared an application for funding to build lavish creature comforts such as a dedicated changing room and shower facilities for its players, they received a bureaucratic thanks but no thanks Dear John letter. The girls and women who turn out for the club presumably are still getting changed in their cars before running out to play.
That is how Canberra doesn’t work.
I suppose we could grant Canberra a public holiday but would anyone notice the difference?
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