Everyone feels wronged: Why Hawthorn can’t move on

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The timing was as poor as it was inevitable. On the very day the Hawthorn Football Club should have been rejoicing at the selection of a plucky small forward with pick five in the national draft, and at bringing home the sons of two former stars, the Hawks were instead drawn back into the unresolved scandal of the recent past.

This should have been a time to focus on regeneration. A time when the Hawks enthused over Nick Watson, dubbed the “Wizard of Waverley” on the club’s website, and a haul of draftees that also includes Will McCabe, son of former Hawk and current football director Luke, and Calsher Dear, whose late father, Paul, won the 1991 Norm Smith Medal.

Former Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett has clashed with his successor, Andy Gowers.Credit: Digital artwork: Stephen Kiprillis. Photos: Justin McManus, Wayne Taylor

With an influx of young talent to aid the team’s promising growth under coach Sam Mitchell, there should have been further cause for optimism, with soil to be turned and construction to commence on the Hawks’ new Dingley home before the next men’s season begins. A formal announcement will be made by the club soon.

You could be forgiven for feeling a hint of déjà vu. Almost exactly a year ago, before a bitterly fought board election, the club made a similar announcement after signing with a builder, ADCO Constructions, and declaring construction of the Kennedy Community centre at the sprawling 27-hectare site would commence in February.

Since then, the president, board members, football director and CEO have changed. Complex pre-construction issues such as methane gas extraction and water drainage have been dealt with.

The imminent turning of the first sod at Dingley is a moment of symbolic significance for a club eager to present itself as forward-looking. Instead, the Hawks this week had to deal with more public fallout from the 2022 cultural safety review, in which former First Nations players and their families alleged they were mistreated by former Hawthorn staff, all of whom have strenuously denied the allegations.  

A 2022 artist’s impression of the proposed Hawthorn training and community centre at Dingley.Credit: Hawthorn FC

The latest flashpoint was about life membership for former president Jeff Kennett. He had qualified under the club’s constitution but was told by new president Andrew Gowers that the board had decided that while he would get his life membership, it was inappropriate for it to be awarded now, while an AFL investigation continues into the club’s handling of the cultural safety review, also known as the Binmada Report, and while legal matters flowing from it remain unresolved.

The blow-up was a reminder that Hawthorn remain a club manacled to the trauma of their recent past.

These are issues that will not quickly go away because they involve people on all sides of the Hawthorn racism scandal who remain wounded and indignant at having suffered a grave injustice. Everyone feels wronged.

The club remains either estranged from or at the very least strained in its relationships with some First Nations former players, and former staff including Alastair Clarkson, Chris Fagan and former welfare manager Jason Burt, who denied the allegations and were cleared of wrongdoing by the AFL.

Jeff Kennett and Alastair Clarkson in 2012.Credit: AFL Photos

Kennett described the withholding of life membership as petty.

The report for the AFL by Bernard Quinn KC, which was reviewed by former judge John Middleton KC, made no findings against Clarkson, Fagan and Burt. Thus, Kennett said, the Hawks were cleared.

He’s right up to a point. Quinn did not make findings against the Hawthorn staff or club. But the AFL did apologise to Indigenous players and the league committed to continue an investigation into Hawthorn’s handling of the matter.

There is a Human Rights Commission case being brought by the First Nations former players with mediation set down for February next year. The HRC cannot make rulings against either party but will seek to broker a mediated outcome. If that does not happen the case can go to the Federal Court. Procedurally the matter needs to go to the HRC before it can go to the Federal Court. So the club remains embroiled in legal issues.

There is still open an investigation by AFL chief in-house legal counsel Stephen Meade. That inquiry is into Hawthorn’s handling of the racism claims. It began in May but has not formally concluded, or recommendations been made public. Why it has taken this long is unclear.

This investigation is not into the veracity of the racism claims, for the Quinn inquiry attempted to canvass that. The AFL investigation is into Hawthorn’s behaviour once complaints were made. It looks at the choice of Phil Egan, the former Richmond player from consultancy firm Binmada, to conduct the report, the methodology or terms of reference for that report, and the safeguards put in place for dealing with potential trauma.

Hawthorn have previously said the report was only intended as a “temperature check” of all First Nations former players or staff, and they did not anticipate the sorts of responses they got from their ex-players. Thus, they were shocked at the content of the report and allegations made in it and handed it to the AFL integrity unit.

An AFL source not authorised to speak publicly said the inquiry would consider whether that was good enough. Should they have had a better expectation that they might uncover unpleasant traumatic responses, and commissioned experts equipped to support people who might have suffered trauma? Should they have sought to corroborate any allegations?

As Caroline Wilson reported in The Age last month, part of that AFL inquiry will recommend Hawthorn “make good” through compensation payments to all aggrieved parties – their First Nations former players and Clarkson, Fagan, ex-welfare manager Burt, and potentially former chairman, now AFL commissioner, Andrew Newbold.

This riles Kennett.

“I know the AFL has been putting pressure on the club to make payments as a form of compensation to shut everyone up and I am very much opposed to that,” Kennett said.

“Unless something is proven this ‘run to money’ is not a good precedent. They think that by imposing on Hawthorn financial penalties that it will solve the issue, the reality is it will only create precedents to come back to bite the AFL and others.”

Kennett pointed to the concussion issue as a problematic example for the AFL if they have a proven history of making payments to aggrieved people without a finding of fact to support the claim.

“Hawthorn should be paying nothing at all because we have been found to have done nothing wrong and in fact what we were found to have done was absolutely correct. In other words we were told there was an issue at the club, and we decided to investigate to hear the stories of those who might have been subjected to racial abuse, we got a report done, the report was given to the club, the report was given to AFL integrity and before integrity could respond [it was reported in] the press and that’s when the firestorm started.”

Egan, who authored the cultural safety review and who is separately facing fraud charges, said it was not for the AFL to arbitrarily order compensation.

Egan told the ABC in February that a police investigation into allegations he siphoned funds from the Murray Valley Aboriginal Co-operative was baseless, and insisted he would be cleared of any wrongdoing.

In a recent interview with The Age’s Jack Latimore, Egan said: “Given the processes and the lack of transparency around the so-called investigation of the Hawthorn cultural safety review, the only place there should be any discussion around compensation or outcomes … should be in a court of law with a hand on the Bible, and truths must be told. That’s my comment.”

A Hawthorn source not authorised to speak publicly said the Gowers board wanted to be more conciliatory and to make good with its people. The question was whether that required compensation or other mediated redress. Gowers and his board were attempting to reach a negotiated outcome with all sides rather than warring with everyone.

So as the Hawks prepare to break new ground in Dingley, they are still covering over old ground. It is only by coming to terms with their past can they ever hope to look to the future.

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