Will Australian athletes face a similar ban on participation in the Olympics for their government’s wars of aggression? Anthony Albanese’s government is violating the Olympic Charter by supporting bans on Russian and Belarusian athletes attending the Paris games in 2024. Since 2015, the Olympic Charter’s Article Six states, The Olympic Games are competitions between athletes in individual Continue reading »
Arts and Sport
There was a bothersome moment on television late in last week’s first cricket Test between Australia and India in Nagpur. It occurred when Allan Border expressed the opinion that Steve Smith’s behaviour in recognising with a thumbs-up sign that an opposing bowler had beaten his bat and scored a small victory was “ridiculous” and “stupid”. Continue reading »
Australia’s major literary festival is facing backlash as it prepares to host renowned Palestinians writers Susan Abulhawa and Mohammed El-Kurd. Once again Israel’s crimes against Palestinians are absent from the media storm, writes Randa Abdel-Fattah. Next month’s 38th Adelaide Writers’ Week is historic. For the first time, one of Australia’s major literary festivals is programming Continue reading »
Several developments in recent times suggest that T20 is a potential danger to cricket. The shortest of the game’s three main formats (there are also the Hundred and T10, but they have barely spread from their places of origin) has done much to promote cricket beyond its traditional support bases in the countries in which Continue reading »
So we have just had our first presentation of Australian Honours under the new Labor government. Under the Morrison government, there was little recognition of artists in the national honours awards, any more than there was in arts policy (non-existent except by implication from in/action) and funding (in continuing decline). Artists even had to fight Continue reading »
In cancelling its scheduled March series of three one-day matches against Afghanistan, Australian Cricket takes us into familiarly problematic territory. It brings to mind the battle, fought for two decades against South Africa’s apartheid regime, where cricket and rugby boycotts played a significant role. Back in the 1970s, Sir Donald Bradman was head of the Continue reading »
Although netball is highly popular among Australian girls, it also has a history of failing to retain and protect First Nations players. Few First Nations participants advance beyond the grassroots, with only three playing on national teams since the first international match against New Zealand in 1938: Walbunga and Bidigal woman Marcia Ella-Duncan (1986-87); Dunghutti Continue reading »
Test cricket is sometimes its own worst enemy, regularly shooting itself in the foot. Can ‘Bazball’ save it? And can the playing conditions be applied more effectively? These days, two lines are frequently heard about Test cricket, the long-format version of the old game. The first is that it is dying and will not survive Continue reading »
“This is quite shocking,” declared South Australia’s Attorney-General and Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Kyam Maher. “These caves are some of the earliest evidence of Aboriginal occupation of that part of the country.” That evidence was subtracted this month by acts of vandalism inflicted on artwork in Koonalda Cave on the Nullarbor Plain, claimed to be the world’s largest Continue reading »