Michael Warner: AFL’s hypocrisy in era of identity politics is turning fans against one another

The AFL’s bosses have tied themselves in knots conforming to identity politics, moral grandstanding and radical left ideology, writes Michael Warner. It’s clear a majority of fans have come to resent it.

Only the permanently outraged would have taken offence when an AFL umpire attended a private, post-season “characters of the 2000s” party in an Osama bin Laden mask.

Predictably, it triggered an investigation (and a one-match suspension) at AFL HQ where the game’s administrators have tied themselves in knots conforming to the era of identity politics, moral grandstanding and radical left ideology.

But recent world events and last year’s failed Voice referendum reflect how a growing majority have had enough of progressive lectures and the rise of divisive social agendas and their endless demands.

Persistent Welcome to Country ceremonies, Pride rounds, pre-match knee-dropping and race-baiting doesn’t unite Australians – it creates a growing level of resentment, turning us against each other.

Leigh Haussen was suspended after wearing a post-season party costume. Picture: Naomi Jellicoe

The AFL would do well to follow other corporations in disbanding their DEI department headed by its so-called “executive general manager of inclusion and social policy”.

Football’s capture by the woke movement has always reeked of hypocrisy.

The AFL is currently defending itself vigorously against a racism class action led by Indigenous North Melbourne great Phil Krakouer. But how does that correlate with its public undertakings to believe all First Nations players?

It’s hard to espouse your private view when preaching the complete opposite.

It’s like how the league waved its finger at the Hawks while releasing themselves from future liability during the botched Hawthorn racism probe.

In the year of the Voice they couldn’t bring themselves to reveal that not one but two secret reports had cleared former Hawks officials Alastair Clarkson, Chris Fagan and Jason Burt of devastating claims of racism.

The two reports went into a lead box and were buried, leaving us all to ponder whether a culture of systemic racism had indeed thrived at Hawthorn during the club’s golden premiership era of 2008-15.

Then there’s their love of the gambling dollar.

It was AFL Commission chairman Richard Goyder who pushed the clubs to reduce their dependency on poker machine revenues, only to oversee a boom in the code’s lucrative relationship with sports betting companies.

AFL Commission chairman Richard Goyder. Picture: Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images

As pokies baron Bruce Mathieson put it, it’s like saying gin is bad but vodka’s good.

You can only laugh when betting odds are plastered across the AFL website alongside the Indigenous place names of match venues. The Wurundjeri Cup brought to you by Sportsbet.

When a practising Muslim AFLW player sat out the league’s annual Pride Round because the rainbow-themed uniform did not represent her faith, the league could only explain that inclusion was a complicated matter.

Complicated like how one club pockets massive sponsorship dollars from the state-owned airline of Qatar, where homosexuality is banned and openly gay men and women face dire consequences, while its players slip on rainbow socks in matches.

Remember the furore when six Manly rugby league players from the Pacific Islands refused to wear a pride jersey on religious grounds? They were heavily condemned, so why not the Muslim AFLW player?

The Swans play in a pride game every season. Picture: Phil Hillyard

Qatar Airways remains one of Sydney’s major sponsors. Picture. Phil Hillyard

Rampant illicit drug-use is also tolerated within football, where some AFL club doctors conducted secret match-eve tests to ensure cocaine-addled stars don’t risk suspension under the world anti-doping code. So drugs are in, but poor taste costumes are out.

And what about the devastating scourge of concussion?

The league’s very own head-knocks tsar was exposed in an international plagiarism scandal, while in coronial inquests and concussion court cases the AFL plays hard ball to minimise its liability from suicides and debilitating brain injury, which would be fair enough if they didn’t carry on about how compassionate they are to everyone else who suffers in society.

The rules of wokeism don’t allow for debate (or even the views in this column), but a growing number of fair-minded Australians know that the nation’s biggest sport has been an active participant in the overreach of the DEI age.

Originally published as Michael Warner: AFL’s hypocrisy in era of identity politics is turning fans against one another