Many Victorians are incensed by the news that Daniel Andrews has decided to spend Victorian taxpayer money to fill the $15 million sponsorship hole for Netball Australia left by the withdrawal of Hancock Prospecting. And it’s easy to see why: less than a month out from the election, Andrews’ spendthrift splurge is obviously a political move to buy votes. For Victorian taxpayers who are already feeling the weight of record debt, this stings.
It’s obvious why Andrews has committed to such a stunt. Hancock Prospecting withdrew their $15m sponsorship after players refused to wear a uniform with their major sponsor’s logo on it. This came about after players rallied around an Indigenous teammate who did not want to wear the logo, due to historic unsavoury racist comments made by the now deceased Lang Hancock. Gina Rinehart, executive chairman of Hancock Prospecting, is Australia’s richest person, but also notably one of our most generous, humbly engaging in various philanthropic activities. Today, she’s being made to pay for the sins of her father, whose comments were made 38 years ago. As Clinton Wolf – non-executive director of Madalah (an Indigenous children’s charity which has drawn much-needed funding from Rinehart) – aptly said of Mrs Rinehart’s quiet contributions, ‘actions always speak louder than words’.
Not to woke Netballers, they don’t. They want nothing to do with Hancock’s sponsorship. It’s into this situation that Andrews charges, to liberate them from their bigoted patrons — the champion of anti-racism and saviour of the sport. It’s enough to make you scream.
Realistically, the effects of the Andrews government’s economic mismanagement and draconian lockdown measures have been far more devastating than racist comments made by a deceased Australian forty years ago.
Andrews’ decision to fill the void with taxpayer money is preposterous, fiscally irresponsible, and demonstrates a complete contempt for the Victorian people at a time when our debt exceeds that of NSW, Queensland, and Tasmania combined. Victoria’s mid-financial-year update demonstrates the state is on track to record a $9.7b deficit in 2022-23. Australians more broadly should also be shaking their heads, as unnecessary expenditure like this contributes to the volatile levels of rising inflation.
Victorian taxpayers should not be sponsoring Netball Australia. Andrews should have let a private company step in to patch-up Netball Australia’s $7 million in debt. He obviously knew this was an option. He himself conceded there was interest expressed by other states and private companies. But he clearly could not pass up the opportunity to once again be a saviour to the Woke brigade after a highly publicised fallout, to save a sporting franchise from the betrayal of an ‘evil’ mining company. The Victorian government led by Andrews, from the socialist-left wing of the Labor Party, represents a completely different brand to that of Hancock Prospecting, much to the delight of virtue-signallers.
Andrews shouldn’t be spending money like this – it’s fiscal self-destruction. Unfortunately, this extravagance wasn’t even about rescuing Netball Australia. It was about political ambition. As former Labor senator Stephen Conroy explained, the decision ‘appeals directly to inner-city voters; to vote Labor against the Greens in places like Richmond, Northcote, and Albert Park’. And it’s Victoria’s young people who’ll have to pick up the tab for Andrews’ selfishness. They are the ones who will inherit an even larger fiscal deficit, thanks to Andrews’ pilfering of their pockets.
Andrews gloated that the outcome is ‘a really big win for Victorian jobs and our tourism sector’. That’s not likely. As Tom Heenan from Monash University has said, the economic benefits from these types of events ‘are almost always inflated’. Heenan notes The Melbourne Cup is ‘the only event in Australia that delivers consistent benefit … because the infrastructure is all in one place and people can be counted on to eat, drink, gamble and dress up’.
In the end, this isn’t even a clear win for Australia’s netballers. Do they really want to sport a logo of a government that enforced the longest lockdown in the western world and, in so doing, caused much harm to the Victorian community? Indeed, it was established by Peter Shergold – who conducted an independent review into Australia’s response to Covid – that women were one of the most acutely affected groups in Australia’s pandemic response and the lockdowns they entailed – a finding that Andrews characteristically and obnoxiously dismissed, as ramblings from ‘a bunch of academics’.
The fact that the Victorian opposition, alongside the fourth estate, has failed to hold this irresponsible government to account is as depressing as it is humiliating.
Victorians have a right to feel livid. And later this month, they’ll have the right to express those feelings at the ballot box.
Mark Burgess is a contributor for Young Voices Australia.
