I have devoted a significant part of my life to overturning the injustices done to the 34 Essendon players. I was brought up in a family where fair play was not only demanded of me but I was expected to become involved if I saw injustice. Our family’s reason for being was contained in James Russell Cowell’s poem ‘Stanzas of Freedom’. Inter alia, “They are slaves who fear to speak, for the fallen and weak. They are slaves who dare not be in the right with two or three.”
Initially then, when I heard the Essendon players might have taken a banned substance, my reaction was like that of many – if you have, you get what you deserve.
Quickly it emerged they had done nothing wrong, yet the processes – broken to the point of corruption – to ensure the innocent were found guilty drove those young men and their families to despair and depression. Some may never recover.
As I gathered more and more evidence of that corruption, I became more determined to right the wrongs and will continue to do so. In a fair and just society, something we all should aspire too – in fact, one of the very reasons that Audit Offices exist – the innocent must always be protected and the guilty punished.
The guilty in this case are not the 34 Essendon players, but AFL, Essendon and ASADA/SIA officials who behaved abominably and unlawfully and have ever since been involved in a grotesque cover up, all at the expense of the Australian taxpayer.
And let’s not forget the overwhelming majority of the media who failed to do their job
Like so many of my fellow Australian citizens when they see profligate waste of their money, it all makes my blood boil.
I, and those fellow Australian citizens, now look to the ANAO to do what successive ASADA/SIA CEOs refused to do – clean up the reprehensible behaviour of their department, and in doing so, hope it leads to the 34 players being exonerated. All the time, their reluctance to do their job while embarking on a massive cover-up, they were using the full might they have to spend taxpayers’ money. That might though, must come with rights and obligations – accountability. Without that, we are a lesser nation.
The unlawful actions of ASADA/SIA are a blight on not just them, but on Australia; while ever public servants are able to commit grievous wrongs against their fellow citizens and not be punished, the journey to a fair and just country is far from over.
I find it incomprehensible that there are others in Australia who would readily disregard those ideals of justice and fair play at the expense of innocent Australians such as the 34 Essendon players, young men whose ambition to be the best they could be in a game they loved, was egregiously de-railed by a group of people highly paid to serve the public who did the exact opposite.
Now is the time to right that manifest wrong. If ANAO finds that the whole process was corrupted and finds that governance was non-existent, I shall do the rest.
Res ipsa loquitur, Sport Integrity Australia hasn’t established fit-for-purpose governance arrangements.
Essendon AFL Drug Saga 