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Home  binformed Minister: Gay is OK
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Wednesday, 02 April 2008 |
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Victoria’s sports clubs will soon adopt an anti-discrimination policy, but former St Kilda captain Nathan Burke says change will take 10 years. A group of experts from the RJM Trust, set up by former local football club president Rob Mitchell to lobby for anti-discrimination guidelines, met the Minister for Youth and Sport James Merlino last week.
The group successfully securing the introduction of anti-discrimination measures on the grounds of sexual orientation in all sports in Victoria.
The group included Anne Mitchell and Lynn Hillier from Gay & Lesbian Health Victoria, Sue Hackney of rural gay youth project Way Out, Peter Sagar from OutGames and former St Kilda captain Nathan Burke.
After the meeting the Minister wrote to Mitchell promising action.
“Sport & Recreation Victoria will soon commence a project that aims to develop a resource manual to assist sporting leagues and clubs on a wide range of governance issues. I anticipate there will be a chapter in the manual on the topic of combating discrimination in all its forms …it would be useful to get your group’s input into the drafting of this particular chapter.”
Mitchell hopes the group will form the core of a permanent reference group to keep the minister informed on issues around gay and lesbian participation in sport.
Former AFL footballer and St Kilda captain Nathan Burke is included because of his experience within AFL during the crisis over racial and religious vilification. Burke now uses his experience working for a consultancy that specialises in cultural change.
He told bnews that writing sexual orientation into governance policy is only step one.
“Nothing’s going to change just from that,” he said. “If you can find some leaders to really push it, keep it in front of mind, that’s important, but the most important part is education. Getting out there, talking to the sporting clubs and leagues.”
Burke also stressed the need for a system of sanctions and penalties, saying that some people would change as a result of education but others would need disciplinary measures before they would take notice.
That was how measures to combat racial and religious discrimination had worked, he said.
“They went down a three-pronged path: one was that they put in regulations, then they had a couple of high profile Aboriginal players like Nicki Winmar and Michael Long to keep it front of mind. And thirdly they had education,” he told bnews.
“Eventually through the education process it started to change attitudes and then over 10 years new players came in and they saw that attitudes had changed, and it wasn’t OK to call someone a racial or religious name. So that’s how cultural change happened, slowly, over 10 years.”
Rob Mitchell agrees that education is the key to achieving anti-homophobia in sport.
“We’ve got to keep the pressure on and ensure the follow-through and the training happens,” he said.
“The clubs have got to get training on this every year: your board members, coaches and captains. That means it’s constantly reinforced, and then if something goes wrong, not only are there procedures to deal with it, but also there’s no excuse.”
Mitchell has already managed to get gay anti-discrimination measures into the manuals for several Victorian football leagues, including Ballarat, Central Highlands and Maryborough, and he’ll be taking that material to Arden Joseph, the Director of Sport and Recreation Victoria to use as a template for the section in the new governance manual.
“And that will be the standard governance model that all sporting clubs use, not just football, but any sporting clubs in Victoria,” he said.
“For the first time there’ll be some accountability, and that’s really positive. And it’s smart sports administration to have clubs not allowing their members to be abused, whether it’s gay, religious, racial or whatever.”
by DOUG POLLARD |
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