by PAUL COLLITS – EVEN the most casual observers would have noticed the now rampant mission creep moving progressively – and I do mean progressively – through our once august, now merely tedious, corporate, sporting bodies.
First it was Essendon, egged on by the amoral Victorian Premier, sacking a Christian and then bagging the core beliefs of (real) Christians.
- If you think fossil fuels are going to disappear in the very near future then you’re mistaken.
- Yet Cummins lectures the world on his ill-conceive prejudices against reliable energy.
- He should do it on his own time, and on his own dime.
Then we had Netball Australia’s bedwetters lamenting comments made by the late father of the woman now sponsoring NA, and probably keeping it afloat, about Aborigines. Comments made about half a century ago.
The kerfuffle was especially a thing because the netball team has an Indigenous player on the roster. (Outstandingly, Gina Rhinehart has pulled the plug on her promised sponsorship and has simply walked. Go woke, go broke, indeed.)
LECTURE
Finally, there was Australia’s cricket captain, who has apparently taken it upon himself not only to decide who gets to sponsor Cricket Australia, but also to lecture the world on his ill-conceived, ignorant prejudices against fossil fuels. The targeted culprit in this case is Alinta Energy.
What is it with obscenely rich, jetsetting, entitled, woke millennials not just lecturing others with their clueless views on a range of issues, but actually using their heft to blackmail their employers into bending to their ideologies?
Patrick Cummins, apparently a “known climate activist”, is proving to be the Mike Cannon-Brookes of sport.
Cannon-Brookes, a Big Tech player, does it by buying companies he doesn’t like then determining to pulp them. Cummins does it by blacklisting companies he doesn’t like from being sponsors.
The irrepressible Sam Newman weighed in on Sky News: “Patronising and pompous”: Former AFL player slams woke athletes’ “arrogance”.
Sports stars become climate warriors. Indeed, they do. They should do it on their own time, and on their own dime.
Newman says the “price of being virtuous is hypocrisy”, following objections from some Diamonds netball players to a $15m sponsorship from Hancock Prospecting.
Australian cricket captain Pat Cummins has also expressed concern about a partnership with Alinta Energy.
“I’m sure they use one of their products on a daily basis, so it’s just fraught with danger, all this nonsense,” Mr Newman said.
“The world we live in is being run by patronising and pompous, arrogant people who have no idea really what they’re on about, and make the rest of the people who enjoy life as it is … make it a nightmare.”
Newman also stated it was unreasonable and unrealistic for the mining and energy companies to be rubbed out of sporting deals as the athletes fly around the world competing.
“If you think fossil fuels are going to disappear in the very near future then you’re mistaken because that’s the end of the civilised world as we know it no matter what you think of climate and no matter what you think of global warming.
Again, indeed.
Yes, both things (patronising and pompous) are true. But there is something far more insidious in play.
CAGEY
Not only was Cummins cagey (at best) about his own involvement in this scrap. But, far more importantly, we are witnessing policy normally made by democratically elected politicians being outsourced to corporates who we as voters cannot control or kick out, and now said corporates are ceding control of policy to their employees.
We shouldn’t forget that Cummins is only there (as captain) because the excellent Tim Paine, who almost single-handedly saved the reputation of Australian cricket after we were caught cheating in South Africa, was found to have sent a few lewd text messages to a female work colleague some years ago. None of anyone’s business.
The NSW Treasurer (sadly) still has a job despite being caught out for the same “crime”.
Cummins has the reputation of a clean-skin. Fair enough. He doesn’t carry on with the normal antics of aggro-fast bowlers. He doesn’t sledge. He appears to be honest, though who knows how many of those in South Africa actually knew about the cheating? That, we will never know.
But, like so many of his colleagues, Cummins is a spoilt rich kid who has been made massively wealthy through corporate sponsorship of his sport, by TV rights deals and, of course, by the Asian betting syndicates who managed to con cricket bureaucracies across the globe into creating endless, pointless cricket matches for … betting!
There are now T20 world cups on an annual basis, so it would seem, and T20 competitions in every cricket playing country around the globe, whose teams (sorry, franchises) didn’t exist a decade ago and whose results are meaningless and forgotten by the time the next pointless white ball exercise comes around.
MANSIONS
Absent betting syndicates, ridiculously generous sponsors and venal cricket corporates, these players are not buying Bronte mansions worth around $10m.
As Domain reported in 2021: “None of this [the COVID property boom of 2021] has stopped Test cricketer Pat Cummins from buying into the Bronte market, with sources pinning the purchase of historic Victorian manor Figtree House on the fast bowler for about $9.5m.
It’s a handsome upgrade for Cummins and his fiancée Becky Boston from the Clovelly apartment he purchased as a first-home buyer in 2013 for $1.36m.
No wonder Pat and his peers eschew local and state cricket – Cummins never plays for his home State of NSW in real (Sheffield Shield) cricket – preferring to pursue top dollar at the endless “white ball” charades.
Perhaps, like the Pope, Cricket Australia believes that traditionalism is a crime and needs to be purged from whatever context in which it still appears.
Back to climate change, and useful idiocy.
Cummins may genuinely imagine that climate change is real, man-made, dangerous, linked to extreme weather events and susceptible of human control.
MEGAPHONE
If he does, he might be considered by those who know a little more about climate science than he does to be an idiot, or more politely, a low information pundit with a megaphone. Just like most of the rest of his entitled, under-educated generation.
But more importantly, having the Cummins of the world doing the heavy lifting for the renewable energy scam makes him and his fellow warriors very useful idiots indeed.
He is an influencer. God help us all, he might end up in parliament one day, like the bloviating wokester from Canberra (David Pocock) who used to play rugby. Canberra. Where climate policy used to be made.
The father of cricketers, and himself an inveterate cheat, WG Grace, once remarked, as he replaced a bail, having been bowled first ball, “they came here to see me bat, not you bowl”.
Well, we came here to see our cricketers shut up and play cricket. Even, occasionally, perhaps turn out for their clubs and their States.
And to keep it all real and grounded.PC
Combining this climate change indoctrination with the Cultural Marxism that has infiltrated our corporatised sports bodies – we are now watching their destruction in slow motion. Political and social activism is the order of the day.
Cummins should not play any day/night games – what is powering the electric lights at the various venues? Mainly coal.
Some of our leading sports men and women, many who are millionaires and some who are broke, are questioning whether their sport should accept sponsorship from companies, which as individuals, they have concerns regarding how and from where, their sponsors derive their income. Like Alinta who burn coal and gas and Gina Rinehart who exports iron ore.
The sponsors need not worry. If they are looking for a cause which will give them a much higher and lasting profile in the public arena than sport; huge media publicity, massive local government support and immense community gratitude, which will last for ever, not just a season, then all they need to do is give me a phone call.
Our not for profit community housing company will accept the millions of dollars these sponsors currently provide to sport and we will build houses. Houses for the homeless and the disadvantaged; houses for those with special needs; houses for the Mums and their kids who sleep in their cars and for the old folks who cannot find shelter they can afford.
I will guarantee that the houses, the streets, the parks, and the community halls, playgrounds and sports facilities that we build will all, forever, carry the sponsors name. Be it Alintaville, Gina Town or Rinehart Crescent, they will never be forgotten.
In making this great contribution to all the people of Australia, our benefactors will join the ranks of the world’s great philanthropists; the Cadbury family who built Bourneville and the Lever family who built Port Sunlight, both in the UK. They would stand shoulder to shoulder with the great American Christian philanthropist, Millard Fuller, who during his lifetime built 170,000 houses in 100 countries, all for those in need.
Roger Crook.
It’s the education system as indicated by the falling standard of achievement by students here compared to students in many other countries.
Climate, gender and other woke subjects are more important than the basics.
Ask a builder how difficulty it is to select a suitable young apprentice for training.
Cummins is what is termed a “useful idiot” – someone who supports and encourages the very same lefties who undoubtedly hate him because he’s rich and famous – the natural enemy of the Marxists. What a dope!
We certainly if a motley crew of cricketers (and I use the term loosely), Cheat Warner, Hopeless Finch, Now and againers Maxwell, Stoinis and Wade, Hit me unless conditions suit Starc, Hazlewood and the woke hypocrite Cummins, know all Zampa, Unproven David and the only thing consistent about Marsh is injuries.