Australia Day honours: I put this with the year I won the grand slam, says Margaret Court

Margaret Court says she is praying for Daniel Andrews because his beliefs have skewed ‘so far left’ he has lost touch with Australia’s values.

Margaret Court. Picture: Danella Bevis

Tennis legend Margaret Court says she is praying for Daniel Andrews — and politicians like him — because their beliefs have skewed “so far left” they have lost touch with Australia’s values and forgotten that it is wrong to lie.

The Victorian Premier last week criticised the decision to award Ms Court the nation’s highest honour — the Companion of the Order of Australia — saying he did not consider her worthy of such a prestigious honour given her opposition to same-sex marriage and religious beliefs regarding homosexuality.

“I do not support that. I do not believe she should be honoured,’’ Mr Andrews said.

“I’m sick of having the discussion. I don’t give out those gongs, that’s a matter for others … you might want to speak to them about why they think those views, which are disgraceful, hurtful and cost lives, should be honoured.”

Ms Court, 78, who compared receiving the award in Tuesday’s Australia Day honours with winning the tennis grand slam in 1970, said the attacks on her beliefs amounted to cheap political point-scoring and she was not prejudiced against any section of the community.

“I do pray for Daniel Andrews and those other premiers,” said Ms Court, who is leader of a Pentecostal church in Perth. “People like him, they think you just say that but, no, I do pray for them … because I feel they have gone so far left they’ve forgotten our traditional values and, you know, that it is wrong to lie.

“I love my nation and I want to see our nation as a lighthouse nat­ion to others, and that we can show other nations how to do things right. That’s the most important thing, and it’s very sad when a minority group gets to dictate how the country is run.

“The (political point-scoring) really saddens me because I don’t hold anything against anyone and the work we do (at my church), we’re there to help everyone. Our community services have been open throughout the pandemic.

“Before the coronavirus, we were going through 30 tonnes of food a week, and now we are giving out 75 tonnes of food a week to people in need. It doesn’t matter where you are from or who you are: whether you’re homosexual, transgender, Muslim or whatever.

“We work with everyone in the community and I really enjoy that. But the people who use me for political point-scoring don’t want to know about any of that.

“I try not to let it faze me anymore because I think, these people, they don’t know you and they don’t know your heart, and a lot of these things come out of bitterness and resentment so I try to forgive and forget.”

Even though Ms Court has already been appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia, the second-highest award in the honours system, she compared receiving her AC to her greatest sporting accomplishment: her grand slam.

“I do put this with the year I won the grand slam because it was an incredibly hard thing to do to win all of them in the one year,” she said. “That’s where I put receiving this award because that’s where, to me, it stands.

“The AO was for my community work so it’s a great, great honour to be receiving one for my involvement in tennis because I love my nation and I always felt proud representing my nation.”

While Ms Court has not played tennis in “a couple of years”, she said her court-side days might not be over just yet.

“I’ve got a friend who said she’s going back to play in the over eighties and we always had a hit together. So I said, ‘Oh, well, you never know. I might have to get the racquet out again’.”