29th June 2015

MEDIA STATEMENT

29 June 2015

Adam Goodes
Open Letter by ALSWA CEO Dennis Eggington

Imagine being a master craftsman at the top of your game, widely regarded and admired by your work mates and professional colleagues.

You are experienced, hardworking and eager to share your skills and knowledge with younger members of your organisation. In your time away from the office you spend countless hours undertaking community service to help those less fortunate than yourself.

Imagine then as you approach your well-earned retirement, that each time you attend your workplace, random strangers hurl vile abuse and incessantly boo you.

Imagine being Adam Goodes. We wouldn’t accept it in any other workplace, so why is it accepted at the footy?

This disgusting sledging anchored to Social Darwinism, the very ideology that dehumanised Australia’s first inhabitants to such an extent that Aboriginal people were still considered nothing more than fauna up until 1967, is nothing more than blatant racism. To excuse it, to minimise it, to deny it, is to deny the black and white truth.

These taunts display the ugly underside of a country that romanticises a ‘peaceful discovery’ yet feigns outrage at any display of Indigenous culture that doesn’t conform to the coloniser consciousness.

Imagine a country that recognises Adam Goodes for the champion he is on and off the field.

Imagine a country that recognises its First Peoples within its Constitution.

Imagine a country that recognises racism when they see it.

Imagine what our country would be like without racism.

Dennis Eggington.