Article by Julian Linden courtesy of the Herald Sun.
Kieren Perkins was secretly criticised by high-level investigators for comments while he was still president of Swimming Australia that they claimed discouraged whistleblowers from testifying.
While the panel found Perkins did not intend to intimidate potential witnesses, Australia’s highest-ranked sports official was still singled out for the impact of the comments in which he disputed the notion there were cultural issues in the sport.
The criticism of Perkins has been kept a closely-guarded secret until now, even though it has been almost two years since the independent panellists revealed how some informants withdrew from the inquiry because of what Perkins had said in a radio interview just after the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
Perkins was speaking just days after the independent panel had begun calling for informants to step forward.
“Swimming is in a great place at the moment,” Perkins said at the time. “That doesn’t mean that we’re perfect, it doesn’t mean there’s not challenges, but to suggest that there’s some kind of deep endemic issues is miles away from the mark … I defy anyone to suggest there’s a cultural issue in swimming at the moment.”
Investigators said Perkins’ comments unwittingly reinforced fears that any complaints would not be taken seriously in a sport with a long history of male chauvinism.
“Some people who had requested interviews cancelled them as they considered these views demonstrated the very issues they wanted to ventilate of the closed ‘boys’ club’ which refuses or denies that there are any valid issues to be raised,” the investigators wrote.
Perkins initiated the independent review but he also rejected the recommendation to let the public know everything that was in the report, arguing it could identify some of the courageous whistleblowers.
Perkins and Swimming Australia did issue an unreserved apology to the generations of women who suffered mistreatment and irreparable harm.
