Give Woodside the Heave Ho!

You might ask what a love for Fremantle and a passion for our local footy team – Freo Dockers – have to do with a gigantic, rich and highly controversial fossil fuel company.

Most fans know the answer – they walk around, especially on game days, with Woodside plastered all over their team gear – freely advertising one the of the world’s worst polluters and contributors to fast tracking our planet’s extinction. Our silence, our acquiescence to Woodside sponsorship needs to change.

I’ve lived in Fremantle since 1980. I grew up on the beaches and my father worked in North Freo Fords. I belong here and so does my family and friends, many who went to school and work here. I love Fremantle’s passion both for justice and for sport. We are unique, tolerant and diverse. We are strong, creative and stand up for community and humanity.

Football (and sport generally) for me is part of my sense of belonging since climbing the walls behind Freo Hospital and in front of the Prison, to watch fiercely contested local derbies.

With the long awaited emergence of a Freo Women’s team, I couldn’t be more proud.

Unfortunately over the last few years I have become more uneasy and compromised – surprisingly not by the actions of the players, the supporters, or even the team admin, but by the dominant influence of Woodside sponsorship on our club. I want to change this.

I am not naïve. I am aware sport in Australia, (the world), is a multi-million dollar industry. I can see the ordinary member and grass roots supporters have less and less say in the management and direction of a club. But my team wears my community, my town’s name and Fremantle has integrity and history for standing up for what is right and learning from our mistakes. We have bled purple and endure the ongoing contempt from other teams and other states, but we have maintained the passion. It’s not the money which ultimately keeps the loyalty. I am as discomfited by Woodside as I would be by any gambling, alcohol or drug company sponsor. This is an unhealthy relationship. If we expect integrity in our players, team and supporters, and hold them accountable for their behaviour, then I expect the same from those who give a lot of money to the club. At what price are we prepared to accept sponsorship?

Early in March this year, I wrote to Dale Alcock, Club President to outline my concerns after hearing Tim Winton’s closing address at this year’s Perth Festival’s Writers Weekend, adding my voice in opposing our ongoing reliance on sponsorship from the fossil fuel industry, specifically Woodside Petroleum.

Winton noted that unlike the WA arts sector, the state’s financial institutions, super funds, shareholder groups and banks were severing their relationships with the fossil fuel industry in droves. I feel we at Freo FC are also out of step and beholden to a fossil fuel company that has made unprecedented billions of profit while helping to drive climate change. Now the momentum is building to challenge the deals done by corporations to ‘advertise and buy social license’, as David Pocock, ex-Australian Wallaby captain has put it, via our sporting codes.

Our dilemma at Freo is now one of many. The Diamonds and an Australian player from WA, Donnell Wallam, are not only world and Olympic champions but inspirational role models who refuse to wear the logo of Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting. She’s the richest person in Australia who is a denier of global warming and who inherited her wealth from her controversial father. Pat Cummins and cricketers are also challenging Alinta and now Aramco sponsorship. This local concern is reflected worldwide with sport ‘sponsorship’ being used to similarly whitewash authoritarian states like Qatar (FIFA world cup) and Russia (Winter Olympics). Unfortunately sport is political.

Tim Winton is also a local Freo person (I have copies of all his books!) and he has stated the obvious about Woodside and its Scarborough Gas Project which will increase production and knowingly contribute to carbon emissions polluting our state and our planet. To quote Winton, the fossil fuel companies are “pushing hard to kick on to exploit more reserves, to drill more seabed, to frack more country and to unleash more of the CO2 and methane already cooking our planet.”

Peter Garrett said the same thing at the Midnight Oil farewell tour recently.

It is shameful for Woodside to give a ‘pledge’ for zero emissions by 2050 while expanding production. This is too little too late as I sit at home watching the increasing fire and flood events and record hot temperatures. The pain of fellow Australian’s suffering is too hard to watch and I feel guilty to support a club directly linking itself to this unrelenting catastrophe.

This sponsorship money by Woodside is not a ‘partnership’. Football – sport in general – is about a healthy, fun lifestyle, about quality of life and future for generations of younger people. Woodside’s carbon-producing emissions are not about a healthy future, they’re about short term profits at great cost to future generations.

Associating themselves with our beloved footy teams – Freo Women and Men – is a cynical and conscious strategy to keep us supporters and community beholden to them. It is feeling like a bribe, so that we might turn a blind eye to the damage they are causing and unfortunately, until now, it seems to have been effective.

Banks, super funds and the finance sector are deserting the fossil fuel industry here in Australia and worldwide for economic and ethical reasons. It is becoming less attractive to be associated with this industry. I would like to think that my local footy club is also able to make ethical decisions in the interests and welfare of its members and community now and into the future. However, I read with despair late last year that our Freo Dockers extended this ‘partnership’ and that we members were told that this is ‘really important’ and that we are ‘better together’. I strongly disagree.

I give credit to Dale Alcock for responding to the concerns raised, acknowledging the complexity of the issues for the Club and rightly so knowing the Board needs to make future decisions not just in the financial interests of the Freo Dockers but equally respecting its social and cultural responsibilities.

Given our on field success this year and our optimism for the future, I imagine these concerns couldn’t come at a worse time. I get it. Look around you at the next game Dockers Women at the Freo Oval. It is our club, with or without Woodside. I am asking the Fremantle Football Club – What price our future? I ask Fremantle supporters and community – Is it about winning at any cost?

I do not agree that our club is better with Woodside’s involvement. I feel this is blood money in the same way that ‘sponsorship’ (now rebranded as ‘partnership’) promoted the alcohol industry and the tobacco industry and now the gambling industry. All of which seek to influence public opinion through paying sports organisations in so called sponsorship.

Abusing and exploiting our love of sport is unAustralian. I do not want nor choose a ‘partner’ that robs our children (and their children) of a future. I will not wear Woodside to support my team. Surely we can all demand that the club not wear the Woodside logo.

I understand money speaks but at what cost? Freo FC is sacrificing its (and its members) integrity, our health and our future. At the very least, the Club needs to actively stop the ‘partnership’ propaganda which compromises our community. The Club needs to act now so there is truth in our stated purpose to “enrich our community and make the Freo family proud”.

Find another sponsor worthy of us.

* By Ruth Ellis

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