Sometimes rugby league explains everything but this week, our national game reveals our utterly borked values, brought to us by NRL head Peter V'Landys.
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Example one: The NRL banned Newcastle NRLW player Caitlin Moran for one match because of her social media comments about the Queen in the hours after the monarch's death. Straight after the announcement of her ban, the NRL put out a statement. "Regardless of any personal views, all players and officials must adhere to the professional standards expected of them and on this occasion the public comments made by the player have caused damage to the game."
Example two: Taylan May was found guilty of assault in a Queensland pub, fined $3750 by the NRL and ordered to undergo immediate counselling and education with a two-match suspension, deferred until next year so he can play in finals.
Immediately, a statement: "All players and officials must adhere to the professional standards expected of them and on this occasion the assault by the player has caused damage to the game." Just joking. There was no such statement.
Rugby league has supported philanderers, rapists, those accused and convicted of domestic violence. Yet one Indigenous woman speaking out causes damage to the game? I am baffled. I love league but seriously, it tests my affections on the reg.
I hope V'Landys is not a barometer for Australia because if he is, there is no hope as we proceed to vote on a First Nations Voice to Parliament. I thought we were ready to move on from being a monarchy. Sydney University emeritus professor Rod Tiffen thinks it's on our mind anyway as we see the weird behaviour of the governor-general, around an invisible leadership program and the former Prime Minister's equally invisible multiple ministries.
Yet the response to the death of Queen Elizabeth II has been delirious. And the response to First Nations people who don't want to tug forelocks, bend knees and play pleasant has been appalling.
"It's a reflection on our failure to deal with racism in this country," says Hannah McGlade, a a Kurin Minang Noongar woman and Curtin University associate professor of law. "There are rose-tinted glasses about Australia as the land of the fair go instead of one guilty of severe human rights violations."
McGlade, a member of the UN permanent forum for Indigenous issues, says attempted silencing of First Nations voices proves the need for the Voice to Parliament.
"Voice is the only answer and the way forward for us. We have to begin this formal commitment to our dialogue," she said.
"Let's develop our race relations and promote increased respect for human rights. It is time to get real and grow as a nation."
Author of Talkin' Up to the White Woman, distinguished professor at the University of Queensland and Goenpul woman Aileen Moreton-Robinson says she gets why non-Indigenous people react in the way they have. "Their investment in the monarchy is an investment in themselves. They love the Queen because of Australia's roots," Professor Moreton-Robinson says.
"Britain stole our lands and conferred property rights to colonists whether they came in chains or free and their descendants continue to benefit from that theft. Most of the original parcels of land were government grants allocated to colonists but the myth is that they paid for it, family dynasties were founded on these grants."
Moreton-Robinson says the groundswell of support for a Voice is a belated recognition of the status as the original peoples of these lands in the preamble to the constitution. "But l fear that if the referendum is successful there will be a similar reaction to when the prime minister Kevin Rudd apologised. Australia has given a formal apology so Aboriginal people need to move on.
"There is a lack of empathy and commitment to social justice for Indigenous people in this colonising country," she says.
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Australia, says Moreton-Robinson, is still fundamentally a British outpost and there is a real sense of entitlement from Britain [yet] Aboriginal people are not entitled to anything.
"We are only permitted to talk about Indigenous issues. We can't have a position on the death of the Queen, on climate change, on migration or economic policy, we should only talk about Indigenous matters. Aboriginal people are not supposed to have an opinion outside of the box Australia has created for us," she says.
The idea that Aboriginal people owned the land, had their own economies and a very sophisticated social organisation and kinship structure, far more complex than the notion of private property, is unknown to most of Australia.
Sandy O'Sullivan, Macquarie University professor of Indigenous studies, ran the famed IndigenousX Twitter account the night the Queen died and was surprised at the response, huge engagement, incredible amounts of hate. This included death threats, directed at O'Sullivan, a nonbinary Wiradjuri person.
"It was along the lines of 'colonisation is over, get over it'. 'You are better off, at least you've got the wheel'," O'Sullivan says.
How on earth could we expect Indigenous people to be magnanimous about the monarchy?
"They have their opinions and many aren't celebrating. They did not see that this was a lie to be celebrated."
So what does this mean for the vote for the Voice? O'Sullivan says we don't know detail.
"A lot of non-Indigenous people seem to think it is a vote for our rights. People don't know what the Voice is for ... [non-Indigenous] people think it is their gift to provide [those rights]," says O'Sullivan. "No-one would be ready to vote tomorrow."
"The vote for Voice won't fix things. It won't close the gap. A lot of people think 'we are going to give you wonderful things and everything will change'. We certainly don't know what may be planned to change for everyday Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
"I'm 56. I don't want young people to go, in relation to the Voice, 'why did you sell off this bill of goods and do nothing'."
Yet Hannah McGlade is optimistic.
"We have a commitment to Voice, Treaty and Truth with this government. Exciting times are ahead notwithstanding all the ruffling that will happen. Even if people aren't ready, it is time. We have allies, friends and supporters of our unfinished business."
- Jenna Price is a visiting fellow at the Australian National University and a regular columnist.
