Just in case this period of time hasn’t been filled with enough uncomfortable lessons about Australia’s deeply unsatisfactory state with regards to race relations (the occasional egging aside), now reports have emerged that ticket sellers at Adelaide Oval were instructed to turn away would-be attendees of Aboriginal appearance.
Last July. For the NAIDOC Week AFL game.
Adelaide Oval box office staff told 'not to sell tickets to any more Aboriginal people' at NAIDOC week AFL game.#Indigenous #Aboriginal #AFL #Racismhttps://t.co/TftKsn7NxC via @abcnews pic.twitter.com/O885JkkFnh
— ABC Indigenous (@ABCIndigenous) March 28, 2019
NAIDOC stands for National Aborigines and Islanders Day Observance Committee, and the game was part of the annual celebrations.
Except that a whistleblower on staff at Adelaide Oval has revealed to the ABC that orders were given “not to sell tickets to any more Aboriginal people” at the Eastern gate. Anyone coming to the counter was told to say the game was sold out. When she objected she was told “just follow the directive anyway”.
First it was racial segregation in an Alice Springs hotel, now @olgordon can reveal staff at the Adelaide Oval box office were told not to sell any more tickets to Aboriginal people during a NAIDOC week #AFL game https://t.co/WjLJKQzIfd
— Background Briefing (@BackgroundBrief) March 28, 2019
The game was between Adelaide and Geelong last July, but the actual incident took place during the curtain raiser game, where APY Lands and Maralinga representative football teams were playing one another.
This story has been confirmed by McArthur Recruitment, who staffed the ticketing part of the operation for Ticketek.
They’ve confirmed that the directive was mistakenly in place for at least an hour and have put it down to a “miscommunication” with management, adding that the supervisor that issued the directive had been suspended for a fortnight. So that’s probably fixed everything.
Adelaide Oval have released a statement condemning racism, reiterating that they welcome everyone, and that they have “taken steps to ensure this situation doesn’t arise again.”
NAIDOC’s John Paul Janke, however, told the ABC: “I’m keen to learn of what processes or cultural competency training has since been put in place to ensure this never happens again.”
Actually, Adelaide Oval, we’d be pretty interested in hearing about that too.