Article by Gemma Tognini courtesy of the Weekend Australian.
Ever wondered what you could do with 15 million bucks? Bet most of us have at some point or another. Just image. Goodbye mortgage. See ya later, RBA. Just imagine the good you could do. The lives you could change for the better.
Imagine all of that and while you’re at it imagine being in a sport that’s in a well-documented financial pickle, and risking a $15m sponsorship deal it seems the tail is wagging the dog.
We don’t have to imagine the latter thanks to Netball Australia, which this past week offered the corporate and sporting worlds an example of what not to do, ever.
To recap, Australia’s richest woman, Gina Rinehart (renowned for her support of women in sport, and sport more broadly), offered Netball Australia a $15m sponsorship lifeline. The playing group doesn’t want the money, for reasons ranging from Rinehart’s stated views on climate, to things her late father said half a century ago about Indigenous Australians.
Where to start? Perhaps by holding Netball Australia and the playing group to the same standard? Let’s have an immediate wrong-speak audit of every person’s family going back at least one generation to ensure 100 per cent alignment with what the players think is acceptable on a range of subjects. Can’t be too careful …
Obviously I’m being trite but this issue goes beyond Netball Australia’s clumsiness and the behaviour of players who, without such sponsorships, wouldn’t have the privilege of professionally playing a sport that most of Australia chooses not to watch.
It’s about the disconnect from reality, how sport is becoming less about on the field and more about ideology. How everyone and everything is up for cancellation. And frankly, how elite athletes whose individual and team carbon footprints are mammoth in comparison to the average working Aussie, have the audacity to lecture the rest of us on reducing emissions. Spare us.
On that, this week, Cricket Australia was forced to deny it ended its sponsorship with Alinta Energy over pressure by captain Pat Cummins, who will no longer appear in any advertising featuring the energy giant this summer. If they’re worried about emissions just pause international travel. After all, isn’t it about conviction?
Adding to the pantomime, Fremantle Dockers fans started pressuring the club to end its sponsorship with energy giant Woodside. I wonder, do these fans enjoy turning their lights on at night and having hot showers? Don’t stop there. No more carbon-producing flights. It’s a bus trip (hydrogen only) to all their games, interstate too. Values, after all.
As a side note, this episode shows how there’s so little understanding about the ongoing and undeniable contradictions at play around climate.
The EU has conveniently reclassified nuclear and gas as renewable. Funny what a looming European winter will do to climate policy. In fact, the Greens in Germany have decided they’re temporarily OK with nuclear and gas too, because if they weren’t, many in the country would die this winter. Maybe the Australian Greens can sponsor netball? Or cricket. The fact is this debate is and continues to be rubbery and highly politicised, a whole other conversation but in the context of this situation it’s important to acknowledge.
In my day job, we spend not an insignificant amount of time helping clients understand how to best align their community investment spend with values that reflect their business culture and heart. It’s an important conversation and it goes way beyond the dollar amount.
For what it’s worth, I don’t work for (nor have I met) Rinehart but I’m willing to wager Netball Australia wasn’t chosen because she was out of options.
Athletes can and should hold true to their values. This is still a somewhat free country, but true conviction is never free, there is always a cost, and in this case it probably involves finding another $15m – that’s a lot of lamingtons to flog, but when you don’t know the value of a buck, and you’re not responsible for finding the new revenue, gosh, it’s easy to talk about principles.
Let me tell you the final thing about this mess that I find so distasteful. I’ve served on the board of three not-for-profit organisations (unpaid, obviously). The Starlight Children’s Foundation, Salvation Army and Surf Life Saving WA. This is additional to the pro-bono work my team and countless other firms like my own around Australia do with not-for-profit organisations.
These organisations give to the Australian community in ways that are quite literally life-changing and life-saving. They are typically lean, tight, vocationally staffed organisations that rely heavily on community volunteers. Are there guidelines around donations? Well, obviously, but they are rooted in good governance and mature, considered conversations.
If athletes feel strongly on certain matters, then they are free to live by their convictions and stand aside. That’s called paying a price. Like the Manly rugby league players who chose to sit out a game rather than wear a jersey that did not align with their personal beliefs. They didn’t demand the game be cancelled. They simply and respectfully sat that one out.
All it will take to stop this silliness is some strong leadership across all the codes. I won’t be holding my breath.
