“This all comes down to which version of our nation’s history you give voice to and bring to the fore.”
– Daisy Pearce, on the AFLW’s decision not to observe a moment’s silence for the Queen.
The AFL observed a moment’s silence in the men’s semi-finals, in concert with a welcome to country and in the Melbourne v Brisbane Lions final, renditions of God Save the Queen and Advance Australia Fair. The contradiction inherent in these gestures was largely ignored.
But when it came to the AFLW’s Indigenous round, fatefully timed to coincide with Queen Elizabeth II’s death, the AFL observed a moment’s hesitation, rather than silence, amid confusion about which version of history had primacy.
At first, there was to be a moment’s silence, as in the men’s finals. Then, it turned messy.
The Bulldogs AFLW players were talking about taking a knee, the symbol for Black Lives Matter. Then 16 of 18 clubs banded together to make suggestions about how a moment’s silence might be respectfully observed.
Finally, the call was made to observe a moment’s silence only for the Friday night AFLW game, but not for the remainder of the round.
Players observe a minute’s silence for the Queen before the AFL semi-final between Melbourne and the Brisbane Lions. Credit:AFL Photos
Daisy Pearce entered the fray, not as a culture warrior but as an AFLW player and commentator who cut to the core of the issues at play. The essence of Pearce’s argument was that there were Indigenous Australians who saw the Queen as a different type of symbol, not a benign one, despite her good deeds, dignity and life of public service.
“I assume that this decision to not observe a minute’s silence was a result of listening to those Indigenous voices within headquarters and within our AFLW clubs and the communities that they were liaising with in preparation for Indigenous round,” she said.
What Pearce’s comments exposed was that the AFL was striving – unsuccessfully – to acknowledge different strands of our history and culture, to honour the Queen, as our notional head of state, while not disrespecting our Indigenous people.
There were further complexities, which Pearce wisely avoided, in that there isn’t a single Indigenous – or even Republican – position on how the Queen’s death ought to be commemorated at a gathering such as an AFL(W) game.
“When lunching with the Queen in 2011, she made me feel anything but pained, traumatised or oppressed,” said Jason Mifsud, who ran the Indigenous portfolio for the AFL and has deep roots in the Indigenous community of the south-west Victoria. “Quite the opposite, actually.”
Others have noted that the Queen was on the side of racial justice on the issue of Apartheid in South Africa and that while she might be a symbol of privilege and colonialism, she did not espouse anything that reeked of exclusion or prejudice.
Pearce, whether you agree with her position or not, clearly understood where the conflict lay and, even as a commentator in mainstream media – with audiences who won’t necessarily like what she said – had the courage to put a stake in the ground, and put forth reasons why she supported the scrapping of the minute’s silence.
The clarity of her position was at odds with the AFL’s embrace of contradictions and the excessive steps the league took in honouring “our” Queen for the Melbourne-Brisbane final.
Pearce’s plain-speaking commentary also was in defiance of the largely fawning – and incredibly voluminous – coverage of the Queen and the house of Windsor by the media since her death. The obsessive coverage was not entirely about convention, either – the Queen was also a global celebrity, Shane Warne times 10, that brings eyeballs and subscribers.
Daisy Pearce in action in her Narrm guernsey against St Kilda during the AFLW’s Indigenous round.Credit:AFL Photos
To have a moment’s silence to honour the life and service of the Queen seemed entirely reasonable, even for those, such as this column, who view the monarchy – and British head of state – as anachronisms. Arguably, the moment’s silence can also co-exist with a welcome to country, though this will hinge largely on one’s perspectives.
But the AFL’s veneration of the Queen went completely over the top by introducing God Save the Queen in a strange tandem with the actual Australian national anthem. It was as if we were suddenly transported back to the 1950s, or ’60s, to an Anglo-centric world that barely acknowledged the demographic changes and creation of a multicultural society wrought by mass migration.
From what one can gather, AFL chief Gillon McLachlan was interested in a further military-style salute to the Queen, but abandoned it in the end. Ever “flexible and agile”, McLachlan’s AFL pivoted quickly when there was a threat of uprising in the more bolshy AFLW.
The episode underscored how the AFL, a competition with considerable cultural clout, is just as wedded to “patriotic correctness” (as the late writer Robert Hughes called it) – and to paying deference to our military and overtly British traditions – as to the new secular faiths of diversity/inclusion, or what is increasingly derided as “wokeness.”
The AFL version of progressive nods, however, is very much in line with the corporate mores of our time. In the same week that the Queen was mourned and we were transported back to a Vegemite time, Qantas – the national carrier that is chaired by Richard Goyder, the AFL commission chairman – raised its airfares between Melbourne and Sydney to exorbitant levels, in algorithmic reaction to Collingwood beating Fremantle.
Did the AFL stand up for the fans who had to buy plane tickets? If they did, we did not hear about it. There was no stand against the rapacious opportunism of the airlines.
The Queen’s death showed how a powerful sport, with commerce at its heart, chooses not to offend anyone, but can end by pleasing no one.
In Pearce – a footballer who nailed her argument, without savaging the other side – at least the game has one figure willing to make a considered stand.
