Winmar conviction creates Cook conundrum

The Cook Government has known for more than a year this moment might arrive.

When former AFL star Nicky Winmar was charged over an alleged assault last May, a political risk emerged alongside the criminal proceedings.

Winmar is not just another sporting great; He is the only individual honoured with a permanent statue at Optus Stadium, a monument supported by the State Government to commemorate his defining stand against racism in Australian football. It was unveiled by then-Premier Mark McGowan.

Now that Winmar has been convicted of assault offences against a female, the government can no longer avoid the question.

Does the statue stay?

Whatever answer it gives will come with political consequences.

If the government leaves the statue in place, critics will ask why Western Australia’s premier sporting venue continues to honour a man convicted of assaulting a woman. 

Ministers regularly speak about respect for women and the importance of tackling family and domestic violence. Those statements will inevitably be measured against the decision they make about Winmar.

But removing the statue presents an equally difficult political challenge.

Winmar remains one of Australia’s most significant Indigenous sporting figures. His stand against racism in 1993 changed Australian football and became part of the nation’s broader story about race and reconciliation. 

Imagine, for a minute, Winmar’s became just the second statue to be taken down in Western Australia because of the poor behaviour of the subject. The first featured Captain James Stirling, who led the 1834 Pinjarra Massacre for which Governor Chris Dawson has recently apologised.

Statues of John Septimus Roe (a member of the massacre party who didn’t fire a shot and also the surveyor-general charged with carving up land stolen from the Indigenous people) and the Explorer’s Monument at Fremantle that commemorates Maitland Brown (who led a punitive raid in which up to 40 Indigenous people were killed in retribution for the murder of three explorers) are still standing.

And that is where the Cook Government finds itself wedged.

This is a government that has already discovered how politically volatile Indigenous issues can become. The Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act remains one of the defining political failures of its time in government, leaving ministers understandably cautious about decisions that intersect with Indigenous recognition and symbolism.

Against that backdrop, removing one of the city’s most prominent statues of an Indigenous person would be politically risky.

Leaving it untouched may prove no less so, and doubtless they will wait for the appeal period to expire before making the call.

Meanwhile, the AFL is no less wedged. The country’s highest-profile sporting body commissioned the statue and, presumably, still has a stake in its appearance at the stadium. Its position on this matter, given the slew of issues it has had with the poor behaviour of men, deserves scrutiny.