John Coates apologises for ‘sheltered workshop’ comments

Besieged AOC president John Coates has apologised for using the term ‘sheltered workshop’ in an email.

John Coates: “It was the wrong choice of words”. Picture: AFP

Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates has apologised for using the term ‘sheltered workshop’ in an internal email.

Coates has been criticised by the federal government and Australian Paralympic Committee for using the phrase in the leaked email.

“It was the wrong choice of words,” Coates said on Thursday, in a statement reported by the ABC.

Former AOC chief executive Fiona de Jong released a chain of emails on Wednesday in which Coates, referring to a cancer-suffering AOC staffer, said that she didn’t work in a “sheltered workshop”.

Australian Paralympic Committee chief Lynne Anderson said the phrase denigrated the disabled.

And federal Sports Minister Greg Hunt said “some language has been used which is inappropriate”.

“I want to make it absolutely clear that language which flippantly casts aspersions on those with disabilities is not appropriate and has no place in Australian public or private discourse,” the minister told reporters in Melbourne on Thursday.

“It was inappropriate in the past, it’s completely unacceptable in this day and age.” Coates used the term in an email response to De Jong about to an unnamed AOC lawyer who was suffering from cancer.

In an email, Coates criticised the woman’s performance.

And when De Jong emailed Coates to defend the woman, he replied: “(The woman) is a solicitor, hardly a junior member of staff. If she’s offended it’s probably time for her to get out in the real world. Ours is not a sheltered workshop.”

Coates is facing the first challenge to his AOC presidency since taking the role in 1990.

Olympic hockey gold medallist Danni Roche is seeking to oust Coates with an election to be held on May 6.

AAP