One Nation is concerned by Left-wing American political trends coming to Australia, such as Colin Kaepernick’s ‘kneeling’ protest disrespecting the national anthem and flag. Already Anthony Mundine and ABC/Fairfax sports writers have advocated for this practice: athletes kneeling during the Australian anthem before each game.

At the Rugby League Indigenous match in Melbourne on 15 February, the team captain Cody Walker and other players refused to sing the Australian National Anthem because they felt “uncomfortable”. Walker said, “It doesn’t represent me or my family”, claiming, “It just brings back so many memories of what’s happened (in Australian history)”.

Yet if Australia is so bad and the national anthem can’t be sung, why do Walker and other Indigenous players accept the many benefits of our nation post-1788, like huge rugby league salaries, TV coverage/fame, lucrative advertising contracts and modern stadium facilities? They are shocking hypocrites, all of them.

If they feel so strongly about their ‘principles’ and ‘Indigenous history’ they shouldn’t be participating in games, facilities and communications technology developed by European and Western civilisation. Instead these opportunists are having it both ways: lining their pockets with sporting money while also protesting about the nation and culture that made the money possible.

In any case, people pay good money to go to sporting contests to get away from things like politics, not for it to become part of the event, with cheap-jack political protests.

Under One Nation policy, any sporting body that allows these disrespectful stunts to occur publicly at their events should no longer have use of NSW Government facilities. If players and codes want to enjoy publicly-funded facilities and earn huge publicly-sponsored salaries, they should properly respect the nation and State that provided these opportunities for them.