The NRL in Western Australia has banned a volunteer for 12 months after he responded to a decision to cancel Australia Day fireworks by saying Indigenous Australians would “just be drinking petrol and sniffing paint like any other day”.
Fremantle council voted last month to cancel the 2017 fireworks out of respect for the distress the celebrations cause its Indigenous residents.
The volunteer replied to a post about the decision on a public Facebook page, saying: “Why cancel it now? They’ll just be drinking petrol and sniffing paint like any other day.”
He continued: “What’s next no Anzac celebrations because of the Indigenous don’t like it! Soon Xmas will be cancelled because Santa is white.”
John Sackson, general manager of the NRL in WA, said the man had been stood down from official volunteering duties for 12 months and ordered to undergo cultural awareness training.
He said the league had a zero-tolerance approach to racism: “We believe it’s very important in these cases for volunteers to be required to undertake cultural awareness training so that similar incidents don’t occur again,” Sackson told Guardian Australia.
The man has since apologised to the NRL and Indigenous players.
“It was a brain snap, pretty much,” he told Guardian Australia. “I am more concerned about the impact that it has had on people that read it and people that were offended by it than on myself, but obviously there were consequences that have come from it.”
He said he was “massively sorry” and had been in contact with the league’s cultural awareness advisor.
Fremantle mayor Brad Pettit told the ABC of the council’s Australia Day decision: “For them [Indigenous residents] there was a real sense that Australia Day is not a day of celebration for everybody. In fact, for them it is a day of sadness and in many ways, a day that marks the start of much of their dispossession.”
Pettit said the $100,000 fireworks budget would be allocated to a more “culturally appropriate” and “inclusive” celebration on another date.
Last month, a woman received an indefinite ban by AFL club Port Adelaide for throwing a banana at Indigenous player Eddie Betts during a match against the Adelaide Crows at Adelaide Oval.
In 2015, the repeated booing of Sydney Swans star Adam Goodes by AFL fans in WA, which continued through his second-last game against Fremantle, prompted the Indigenous star sit out the round 18-match before retiring from the sport at the end of the season.
