ABUSE, COMPLAINTS AND INDEPENDENCE THE FOOTBALL AUSTRALIA STORY
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When James Johnson took over as Football Australia CEO in January 2020 he said he was “not here to manage the sport, but to change it”.
We invited Johnson to be a guest on the Sport Integrity Australia podcast On Side to talk about his decision to establish an independent complaint handling process and how this line in the sand could change the sporting landscape forever.
When confronted with bullying and abuse allegations within the national women’s team in October 2021, Johnson decided that the traditional in-house approach to handling complaints was not going to be enough, with the Australian community expecting a greater level of independence. He approached Sport Integrity Australia and the National Sports Tribunal the next day to assist.
“We’d been thinking about how we can evolve our complaint handling processes for a while now, because complaint handling is an area that has to evolve and keep up with times.
SPORT INTEGRITY MATTERS | ISSUE 7
WHAT WAS YOUR REACTION WHEN YOU FIRST HEARD THE LATEST ALLEGATIONS?
“I’d actually reached out to David Sharpe [CEO of Sport Integrity Australia] to have a general meeting and a catch-up about how we could improve our processes in case we had a similar situation [to the US sexual misconduct case]. I didn’t know it at the time but it was only the next week when the specific allegations by some of our former players were made public. “It hit the sport like a tsunami and we had to respond quickly and I was comforted by the fact we were already in touch with Sport Integrity Australia about how we could improve in this area, so we were able to enter a partnership very quickly.”
WHY DID FOOTBALL AUSTRALIA TURN TO SPORT INTEGRITY AUSTRALIA? “Areas such as bullying, harassment, intimidation and discrimination need to be treated differently than sporting integrity issues that happen on the pitch. They are complex human interactions which are sensitive, existing both outside and inside the sport. I question whether sports governing bodies are set up to adequately deal with these complex human interaction matters.”
