Opinion: Ashley Browne

What I’m thinking

with Ashley Browne

Playing the political game

Football will take a back seat this weekend as the nation focuses on the federal election.

The VIP list at Richmond president Peggy O’Neal’s pre-game dinner on Saturday night stands to be a bit thinner than usual for one of the marquee games of the home and away season.

Politicians of all persuasions usually flock to the Dreamtime Game like bees to a honeypot.

Even those with only a passing interest in footy eagerly take up their invitation to get to the MCG.

Call us cynical, but Grand Final day aside, there is no other game that politicians like to be at and, more to the point, be seen at.

But not this time.

The opening bounce at the MCG on Saturday night will clash with the first returns for the 2022 federal election and politicians everywhere will have their eyes glued to a contest of a different type, one that even we at the Record concede is more important than the nine games to be played this weekend.

It has created a dilemma for Channel Seven, the long-time broadcaster of the Dreamtime Game. For the first time in three years, the game is back at its birthplace, the MCG.

Darwin (2020) and Perth (2021) delivered magnificent spectacles in the interim, but the MCG, with its revamped LED lightning, will stage what should be the best pre-game ceremony yet.

Seven will have to carry the lead-up and the match on a secondary station, leaving the election coverage to its main channel.

Football certainly plays its part in how people cast their votes.

At the previous federal election in 2019, which also took place during the season, about 40 per cent of votes were cast beforehand. Doubtless, many of those who voted early did so because of their football commitments.

In terms of election promises, the federal government has committed $15m to the next stage of the Whitten Oval redevelopment, which will include the proposed Western Bulldogs Community Foundation Centre, to replace the old Gent Stand, as well as a women’s health and leadership hub.

For its part, Labor has called for a review of Australia’s sports broadcasting rules, amid fears that too many AFL games will become locked behind pay TV and streaming paywalls.

It is a timely call considering the League is in the midst of negotiating its next broadcast agreement and the number of free-to-air games in the new arrangement will be closely scrutinised.

It would be a stretch to say that Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese are diehard fans of Australia’s national game.

Both are primarily rugby league people – Morrison of his beloved ‘Sharkies’, also known as Cronulla, while Albanese is a supporter, and former board member, of South Sydney.

When it comes to the AFL, the Opposition Leader is a Hawthorn supporter, although whether Albanese would recognise Sam Mitchell or James Sicily if they walked past him is unclear.

The Prime Minister used to claim an allegiance to the Western Bulldogs because he knows former coach Rodney Eade, but is honest enough to admit that these days he is agnostic when asked who he barracks for.

Still, both the current and prospective prime minister enjoy coming to the football when they can and those who have shared their company say their interest and knowledge passes muster unlike, say, one former Prime Minister whose passion for Collingwood ebbed and flowed depending on how his polling numbers were in Victoria.

There is always a footy angle to be found at every federal election.

The independent candidate for the bayside Melbourne seat of Goldstein is Zoe Daniel, whose father Peter Daniel played 100 games for Essendon from 1968-74.

She is a passionate Bomber who took to Twitter recently to congratulate them after their comeback win over Hawthorn.

Daniel is one of the ‘teal independents’ who might end up holding the balance of power in the next federal parliament.

Monique Ryan is another and she is given a huge chance of toppling Federal Treasurer and Liberal Party Deputy Leader Josh Frydenberg in the blue-riband seat of Kooyong.

Frydenberg is regarded by some as a future Prime Minister and should he get there he would be following in the footsteps of former prime ministers Sir Robert Menzies and Malcolm Fraser, who were also diehard Carlton supporters.

It has been a long and occasionally nasty election campaign and some of the vitriol between supporters of the various parties has matched that between fans of football teams. It has looked and sounded all too familiar.

Thankfully it should be over by Monday when normal order will be restored and football will resume its rightful place … on the front page of most newspapers.

POLITICAL FOOTBALL:

Prime Minister Scott Morrison joined Bombers champion Michael Long on the walk to the ‘G for the 2019 Dreamtime Game, while (below) independent candidate Zoe Daniel is a passionate Essendon fan.