- Tony Jones says AFL must address Welcome to Country controversy
- Saturday night’s pre-match ceremony sparked outrage
- Jones said the Welcome did the opposite of unifying the nation.
Tony Jones says the AFL has a big problem to address following the country’s welcome ceremony that sparked outrage in Sydney.
Brendan Kerin, a cultural educator with the Sydney Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, gave the speech before the GWS Giants and Brisbane Lions game on Saturday night and said such ceremonies were “not for white people”.
The frequency of the welcomes has been criticized by some fans, and Kerin addressed this issue in her speech.
“I’m here this afternoon to perform a welcome to country ceremony… a welcome to country is not a welcome to Australia,” Kerin said.
‘In Australia we have a lot of Aboriginal lands and we refer to them as ‘country’. So we always welcome the lands we have gathered on.
‘Welcome to the country is not a ceremony that we have invented to satisfy white people.
‘It’s a ceremony we’ve been doing for more than 250,000 years BC, and BC stands for Before Cooking.’
The speech sparked laughter in the stands, while high-profile football figures such as Tony Shaw branded the AFL a “weak and politically correct organisation” after the speech.
Tony Jones says there is an ‘issue the AFL needs to address’ amid Welcome to Country row
The ceremony hosted by Brendan Kerin divided opinion in Australia on Saturday
Jones believes the ceremony should unite the country, but Saturday’s ceremony did the opposite.
And Nine presenter Jones believes the AFL needs to be tougher to prevent county homecoming ceremonies becoming “personal agendas”.
“I get the feeling there’s some sort of protest going on after we welcomed the country to the AFL semi-final on Saturday night in Sydney,” he told 3AW Melbourne.
‘Now, regardless of whether you agree with Welcome to Country or not, I think there is a certain amount of respect shown by football fans. But there is a problem. There is a problem and the AFL needs to address it.
‘This is a celebration during Saturday night’s Welcome to Country… there was laughter, and I’ll tell you why: because these Welcomes are not, and should not be, personal agendas.
‘They shouldn’t be there for political statements per se and I’m not sure if the AFL vets the scripts, maybe they will from now on because those comments didn’t go down well with a number of people in the crowd.
“I think on that basis alone it’s counterproductive. If this is all designed to unify Australia, I think it’s creating division when we see or hear receptions like that.”
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson weighed in on the saga with a scathing attack on social media.
“As I have said in the past, these Welcome to Country and Recognition of Country performances are one of the most racially divisive features of modern discourse in Australia,” he posted on X.
“Australians are fed up with them. They are fed up with being told that Australia is not their country, which is what these things effectively do.
“Welcomes and recognitions deny the citizenship and sovereignty that all Australians have equally, and must end.”
