Tensions Over Racism Rock Australian Netball |
 | | Donnell Wallam, center, arriving on court for warmup before the netball match between the Australian Diamonds and the England Roses in Newcastle, Australia, on Wednesday.Darren Pateman/EPA, via Shutterstock |
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| The Australia Letter is a weekly newsletter from our Australia bureau. This week's issue is written by Natasha Frost, a reporter with the Australia bureau. |
It was the sort of game-changing moment that in a movie would seem improbable: With just seconds to go in Wednesday night's netball match between England and Australia, Donnell Wallam, making her debut for the Australian team, snatched the ball from her opponent to score a final tiebreaking goal. |
"I was kind of relieved to finally get my chance on court," Wallam, 28, told reporters after the match. "It's been one of the toughest few weeks of my life." |
Even in the countries where it is popular, netball, a sport resembling basketball that is played mostly by women, tends not to grab headlines. Yet for the past few weeks, Australian netball has been mired in controversy as the national team engaged in a public standoff over race with an Australian billionaire who sponsored the women's team. |
And Wallam, who is just the third Indigenous netballer in the history of the sport to play for Australia's national team, has become the reluctant face of that controversy. |
Weeks earlier, Wallam had privately sought an exemption from wearing the logo of one of netball's largest sponsors: Hancock Prospecting, a leading Australian mining company owned by Gina Rinehart, a mining magnate and Australia's wealthiest person. (One well-known comedy sketch calls her "Gina Minehart." A key punchline: "What's mine is mine, what's yours is also mine. What's in the mine is mine, and what's not in the mine is also mine.") |
Rinehart is the daughter of Lang Hancock, the founder of the company, who died in 1992. Not known for his shy and retiring nature, Hancock held aggressively racist views toward Indigenous Australians, in 1984 suggesting that waterways be poisoned to sterilize Aboriginal people. |
"Those that have been assimilated into earning good living and earning wages among the civilized areas and have been accepted into society and can handle society, I'd leave them well alone," he told a documentary team. "The ones that are no good to themselves," he added, "I would dope the water up so that they were sterile and would breed themselves out in the future, and that would solve the problem." |
Rinehart, who avoids media interviews, has never apologized for or distanced herself from her father's comments. |
On Oct. 15, in a game against New Zealand, the Australian team, which is known as the Diamonds, appeared in old uniforms, rather than new ones which bore the Hancock Prospecting logo. As speculation grew, Netball Australia released a statement acknowledging "cultural sensitivities raised by a Diamonds squad member in respect of the Hancock sponsorship uniform logo placement," and vowing to work through those sensibilities. |
When Wallam, the goal shooter, had asked not to wear the uniform with the company's logo, her teammates had chosen to stand by her in solidarity, players said. |
"We're supporting Donnell with everything that's going on," said Liz Watson, the team captain, at the time. "We're supporting her cultural sensitivities around the program, around the partnership, and we want her to be herself and feel comfortable and strong." |
"The Diamonds have a 'sisters in arms' mantra," Kathryn Harby-Williams, a Netball Players Association spokeswoman, told The Australian. The other members did not want Wallam "to have to make her debut for Australia wearing a different uniform," she added. |
Intense media scrutiny followed. Though netball is hugely popular as an amateur sport, it struggles to make ends meet in the professional sphere and reported a year-over-year loss of 4 million Australian dollars in its last financial report. Hancock's sponsorship, of 15 million Australian dollars over four years, was seen as a vital contribution. |
The partnership had never been without controversy — former players had cited concerns about Hancock's environmental record. But the new focus pulled the sport, kicking and screaming, into the spotlight. |
Asked in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about "behind-the-scenes" discussions, Watson, the captain, said only, "There has been a lot going on," and reiterated a desire to make the partnership with Hancock work. There were growing reports that Wallam and her teammates would capitulate and wear the Hancock logo on their uniform. |
The mining company, meanwhile, pointed obliquely to its work with Indigenous Australians. In an unattributed statement last week that appeared to criticize Wallam, a company representative said: "There are more targeted and genuine ways to progress social or political causes without virtue signaling or for self-publicity," citing various Hancock programs with Indigenous people as examples. It also said that Hancock had never insisted that the logo be worn on the Diamonds' uniforms, and that players had never resisted doing so. |
Then, in a turnaround that few anticipated, Hancock said it would be pulling its support, citing netball's "disunity problems." |
"Accordingly Hancock has advised Netball Australia," said another statement issued the same day, "that it has withdrawn from its proposed partnership effective immediately." |
The players, in a statement of their own, said they were disappointed by the outcome, adding that "The singular issue of concern to the players was one of support for our only Indigenous team member." |
The episode has divided Australian commentators. Those on the right, many of whose comments Hancock has shared on its website, have roundly criticized Wallam and her teammates, labeling them a "righteous brigade" or encouraging Indigenous people more generally to look beyond the past and avoid being "shackled by the racism of history." |
But others have applauded the players' tenacity and bravery, as well as their courage in standing up for their values. "When it comes to netball, I think Donnell Wallam is just so courageous," David Pocock, a former captain of the Wallabies, the national rugby team, who is now an independent senator, said in an interview with the A.B.C. |
Even Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, weighed in on the issue. "I think it's all unfortunate," he told the Australian news media. "I would hope that people can come together in a sensible way and talk through these issues for the mutual benefit which is there." |
Such a reconciliation now does not seem especially likely. |
But on Wednesday night, after she had scored eight goals in a single quarter, the controversy was — thankfully — far from Wallam's mind. |
In a courtside interview after the match, as she blinked back tears, she said, of the winning moments: "It kind of makes the last couple of weeks feel like a bit of a blur." |
And now for the week's stories. |
 | | Brittany Higgins, center, a former parliamentary staffer, arriving at court in Canberra this month.Mick Tsikas/AAP Image, via Associated Press |
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- Spend 36 Hours in Sydney. Swim in a magnificent ocean pool, slurp a curry laksa and meet new friends in a teeny mezcal bar: Australia's largest city is back.
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 | | Photo Illustration by Aubrey Trinnaman for The New York Times |
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