‘Picky netball left Gina Rinehart no choice’, say senators

Senators Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Jacqui Lambie have skewered the nat­ional netball team over the collapse of a $15m deal with Gina Rinehart.

Gina Rinehart.

Senators Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Jacqui Lambie have skewered the nat­ional netball team over the collapse of a $15m deal with Gina Rinehart, saying the “picky” and “woke” Diamonds left the country’s richest woman with no choice but to pull her support.

Mrs Rinehart’s mining company Hancock Prospecting walked away from Netball Australia on Saturday after a player union-led revolt against the sponsorship deal, with fear other companies will abandon the sport and leave it with a $25m sponsorship crisis.

While the Diamonds had an outpouring of support for their stance in some quarters, Senator Price said the Diamonds had a “woke sense of self-importance”.

The Coalition upper house MP also said Mrs Rinehart should not have been judged on racist remarks her late father – Lang Hancock – made in the 1980s, and Australia’s richest woman had worked in earnest for the “betterment of Aboriginal Australians”.

“You make your bed, you lie in it,” Senator Price wrote on Facebook. “Unless you’ve got a cool few million in your back pocket to support your sporting code, your woke sense of self-­importance should be your private opinion only.”

Senator Price wrote that “sporting codes, corporates and society in general” needed to grow a spine and “stop pandering to self-righteous individuals on the basis saying ‘No’ to their selfish demands just might attract accusations of racism or bigotry”.

“Wake up Australia! Stop acting like brainless sheeple and get on with the job, whatever job that may be. Stop creating a rod for your backs and the backs of others, especially our children. Stop empowering bullies and demonstrate what it means to be a real person. Clearly self flagellation isn’t working.”

Members of the Australian side refused to wear the new sponsor’s logo on their uniforms in the series against England after objections from Indigenous player Donnell Wallam, citing discomfort over the late Hancock’s record on Indigenous ­issues.

There was optimism on Friday night that the dispute had been resolved after reports Wallam had agreed to wear a uniform with the sponsor’s logo but those hopes were dashed on Saturday when Hancock tore up its proposed four-year partnership “effective immediately”.

The company and its ­majority-owned iron ore outfit Roy Hill ­ also withdrew from its deal with Super Netball premiers West Coast Fever. The company said it had been unaware of “the complexity of existing issues between Netball Australia and the players’ association”.

Senator Lambie also criticised “picky” Australian net­ballers, saying they have “cooked the golden egg”.

“I am not really sure what other options she had – I would say that those girls are going to be doing a lot of sausage sizzles at Bunnings and a lot of chook raffles,” Senator Lambie told the Today show on Monday ­morning.