The Silent Revolution

Jeff must have set his alarm too late. That revolution began long ago. What’s more, with a disregard for nuance politicians of his ilk like to call “straightforwardness”, he conflates the new “dob-in-your-neighbour” dictatorship of the outraged and justified with sport’s latest approach to corporate citizenship.

We’ve often discussed sport’s departure from “core business”. It’s been a political tool for liberals and Liberals; a means of recruiting for warfare, a vehicle for loud interest groups, a mouthpiece and showcase for the politically correct left and patriotically correct right.

The AFL have … allowed themselves to become a sort of social centre for every social issue in the community, whether it’s same-sex marriage, racism, crowd behaviour, and that’s not their job. Their job is to oversee the running of the competition.
– Former Victorian Premier, Hawthorn President and Beyond Blue founder, Jeff Kennett.

It still is. But the news isn’t all bad. The model for sport in Australia has undergone something of a Copernican shift. Whilst our appetite for the spoils of success won’t diminish in a hurry, the focus has broadened with acknowledgement of sport’s conferred prominence, its transforming power, and recognition of the aspects of society that need transforming.

Despite the unwillingness of Australia’s public intellectuals who hold forth on art, society and politics to address sport’s real-world consequences, these cannot be ignored. Sport’s potential as a social healer has always been recognised in crises. Now athletes and the teams they represent seem to be giving new people new reasons to venerate it. Sport has been revitalised with a sense of new possibilities, and is passing it onto communities who need just that.

Is this such an onerous onus for little ol’ sport to bear? It mightn’t have a choice. Where governments and social institutions have fallen short, it has proved robust and resilient, a unifier. Initiatives designed to address problems, express experience and foster leadership and community are turning to sport to help expedite them.

AFL clubs, with their off-the-rack infrastructure, provide real places and real activities for people other than footballers; safe transitional spaces for those with shared social or ethnic backgrounds.

But not everyone enjoys the luxury of a welcoming infrastructure. On the battleground of perception, work is to be done in the trenches if sport’s gains are to become broader society’s. Savannah Pride in Blacktown, Sydney, operates in that nexus, and today it’s more than a mere basketball club. When Mayor Chagai, straight off the boat from a Kenyan refugee camp, founded what began as an ethnic-specific club around 12 years ago, he did it out of frustration. He and his friends had nowhere to play, were excluded from facilities and didn’t even know how to join a club. “We never had. “We tried to find outdoor courts. I came from an organised team with a coach. We played against big cities in Kenya. We approached the PCYC to give us a space once a week. Even that was hard until a police commander helped us out.”