Golf clubs lead the vax drive

Victoria is firmly entrenched in second place in most COVID-related statistics including progress on vaccinations and timing for a road map out of lockdown. More happily, it’s also trailing New South Wales in daily case numbers.

Golf clubs will be adopting “no jab, no play” policies.Credit:Illustration: Joe Benke

But there is one category where the Education State is unashamedly out in front. Victoria’s golfing set has led from the front on mandating vaccinations on the golf course. Royal Melbourne set a cracking pace earlier this month introducing a “no jab, no play” policy requiring members to show proof of at least one dose before playing. Club captain Andrew Kirby said there would be exemptions for those with medical conditions.

“A legitimate medical reason will not be: I am waiting for Pfizer; I could not get a vaccination appointment yet; I don’t trust the vaccines, the vaccines are a conspiracy to embed us with 5G network tracking devices etc,” the affable barrister told CBD.

Now, neighbouring courses are following suit. Commonwealth Golf Club captain Paul Rainey informed members last week the club was part of an alliance of courses on Melbourne’s golf-mad sand belt which had written to the sport’s peak body Golf Australia.

“Last week … clubs wrote to Golf Australia indicating that they supported a rapid vaccine roll out and that if the Victorian Government permitted golf from 23 September, or sooner, under the conditions of ‘no jab, no play’, then these Clubs would be supportive of such a decision,” Rainey wrote to members.

Royal Melbourne set a cracking pace earlier this month introducing a “no jab, no play” policy.

His reason was two-fold. The club wants to re-open as soon as possible. The committee also wants to minimise any risk of COVID-19 infection at the club.

Unvaccinated members, staff members or guests “will be precluded from access to the facilities of the Club until such time as vaccination occurs”. Except for legitimate medical reasons.

The letter quickly made its way around golf clubs both in Victoria and NSW, where high-profile Sydney clubs were considering their position. “Club captains [in Victoria] have had some criticism from members, but it’s a handful of naysayers compared to the two thousand or so other members who are in furious agreement,” one NSW club captain told CBD.

CLIMATE ENVY

When News Corp wants to pivot, the media giant is shameless.

Witness this pirouette from News Corp global chairman Rupert Murdoch regarding British broadcasting loudmouth Piers Morgan

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THEN: “Piers Morgan seems unemployed after failing to attract any audience in U.S. Seemed out of place. Once talented, now safe to ignore.” Murdoch on Twitter, September 10, 2014.

Piers Morgan’s standing in the eyes of Rupert Murdoch has vastly improved. Credit:AP

NOW: “Piers is the broadcaster every channel wants but is too afraid to hire. Piers is a brilliant presenter, a talented journalist and says what people are thinking and feeling.” Rupert Murdoch, last Thursday, announcing a global deal to hire the Meghan Markle-denier.

Now we wait and see just how genuine the news behemoth is about pursuing a clean, green take on climate change. News Corp’s executive chairman Australasia Michael Miller said the company would launch a “major editorial project” to inform Australians about key environmental and climate issues and would examine options Australians “would need to consider in order to reach a zero emissions target” in a “conversation which Australia needs to have”. Certainly, News Corp must have been having such conversations with advertisers, given how big spenders such as Coles are spruiking clean green credentials.

Sounds like a big deal. But not according to The Australian’s former editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell, who last week insisted the pivot was no real change to the status quo.

“Journalists at the News Corp papers have for decades accepted CO2 is linked to atmospheric warming … While News does employ a couple of outright deniers they do not write about climate for its newspapers,” he said. Seriously?

SOCIALIST PLOT

Crazy climate columnists have a rich News Corp heritage. Recall then some choice extracts from former ABC chairman and part-time Oz columnist Maurice Newman who argued in Mitchell’s broadsheet that “climate change signals part of socialist plot” and a “delusion”. Another? “While CO2 may be a greenhouse gas, it seems that natural forces dominate climate change, not mankind’s emissions. Henrik Svensmark’s theory of cosmoclimatology (the role of cosmic rays) may be right.”

Lucky for Newman, he hung up his boots as a columnist in September of last year.

But as it turns out some columnists have been given a leave pass.

Miller was at pains to “correct” some of the reporting in this newspaper, and said that all News Corp columnists would be in fact “encouraged to participate” and “their views will not be ‘muzzled’” .

The green awakening has not been welcomed by Sky News host Andrew Bolt.Credit:Justin McManus

Take Sky News host Andrew Bolt who raged on air, “Am I now expected to reframe my expectations that global warming is a wildly exaggerated crisis? I don’t think so,” he said. “If that is what the Murdoch media will ask of me, I am out of here.”

Bolt’s on air missives in the past two weeks have ranged from calling climate change a “scare” being exploited by China “to make the west weaker and this dictatorship stronger”.

Then there was this flourish from Bolt being Bolt about his master’s campaign. “If I’m still here, you’ll know it was all untrue. If I’m gone, worry.”

But with such outspoken star columnists, decontaminating the papers of climate craziness is going to be as hard as decarbonating the atmosphere.

ALL GONE

It’s been ultra-low profile from Anthony Albanese on the romance front since being snapped enjoying a romantic evening on Sydney’s Woolloomooloo Bay Wharf in June last year with strategic partnerships expert Jodie Haydon. In fact, the South Sydney Rabbitohs fans haven’t been seen in public since treading the red carpet at the premiere of Hamilton in March. But to be fair, since then, there has barely been anything public to be seen at.

But this month the opposition leader unwound the last of his financial ties with his ex-wife of 30 years, former NSW MP Carmel Tebbutt. Disclosures added to Albo’s register of interests revealed the pollie pair had offloaded their Marrickville investment property and discharged a mortgage held with CBA. Albo still owns in Marrickville which sits in his electorate of Grayndler. A good thing.

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Stephen Brook is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. He is a former features editor and media editor at The Australian, where he wrote the Media Diary column and spent six years in London working for The Guardian.Connect via Twitter or email.Samantha Hutchinson is a CBD columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. She recently covered Victorian and NSW politics and business for News Corp, and previously worked for the Australian Financial Review.Connect via Twitter or email.

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