Page 987 - Week 03 - Thursday, 10 April 2014
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MR DOSZPOT (Molonglo) (3.58): I thank Dr Bourke for bringing forward this MPI today—namely, the importance of combating homophobia and transphobia in sport in the ACT. It is a timely debate given the move by the four major sporting codes in Australia only yesterday holding a media conference to outline their collective views on this issue. It is apparently a world first that executives from Australia’s major sports codes have come together in this way to make a commitment to rid their sports of homophobia.
It goes to a wider issue, and that is, the elimination of all forms of discrimination in sport. I believe I have some knowledge of the potential for discrimination in sport through my early soccer playing years as a young migrant and, later, as President of Soccer Canberra and as the only non-Indigenous player in Charlie Perkins’s all Aboriginal soccer team, the Canberra Nomads. Another close friend and soccer legend, the late Johnny Warren, wrote a book on his life in soccer, the title of which challenged many publishers in the late 1990s. The book title reflected past views on those who played soccer in Australia. The book was finally published in 2002 and gives an insight into how far community values have progressed since those early days.
However, one would have to be very naive to believe that discrimination does not happen. I know how surprised many people were that in the tough world of rugby league a player, Ian Roberts, declared he was gay. However, equally and pleasantly surprising was the genuine support that was offered to him by his fellow players and followers of the game. There have been other well-known elite sports people that have made similar public statements—diver Matthew Mitcham and swimmer Daniel Kowalski, among others. One hopes and presumes they too had similar positive community reactions.
However, it has clearly not always been so and not everyone gets a fair go, even today. A report, Come out to play, published in 2010 and commissioned by the Victorian health department, tracks the sports experiences of 307 lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Victoria who responded to an online survey. The respondents were evenly split between male and female. Their ages ranged from 18 to 71 years and most sports were covered.
The report highlighted that, indeed, there was a great deal of discrimination, particularly of women who played in sports that were traditionally male sports. Whole teams of women in those sports claimed they were subject to abuse and ridicule. Even those women in traditional female sports who were suspected of being lesbian were isolated, harassed, ostracised and, in some cases, forced to resign from the team.
At the time that report was released, the ACT sports minister, who was also education minister at the time, launched an ACT campaign to stamp out homophobia in schools and on our sports fields. We have seen since then a number of activities, brochures and information intended to raise awareness and drive inclusion. That was first started in 2010, so the ACT has not been lagging in drawing attention to this issue. Fast forward to 2014 and we have the announcement from the major codes—cricket, AFL, rugby league, rugby union and football. I think that it demonstrates how far Australia has come since the nervous days of Ian Roberts in 1996.
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