Israel Folau

And I'm sure the Parramatta have got the skill and the managerial man to put something in place.

I know he's going to rehabilitation, but to watch him, like if you're on an alcohol ban for 12 months, they're going to test you, aren't they? So the same thing with Israel.

Okay.

All right.

So I'm currently a month away from submitting my dissertation.

And the topic of that is looking at how the New Zealand media covered Israel Folau's termination from Rugby Australia.

Now, with whāwhāwhine come in is that, you know, we have the existence of queer identities within the Pacific, but then you also have religion intertwined within that.

And so it's very complex, it's layered, and it's a conversation that needs to happen more often, I think.

Let's have a listen to the highlights.

Israel Folau off to Melbourne next year.

Jason Robinson debuts in finals today and it's Melbourne receiving the kick off from the Warriors and they're guarding the river end of the ground and it's gone over the dead ball line.

That's the golden area.

It sounds to me like an adult conversation and God knows we're due for one.

The most powerful part of Dennis Richardson's speech last night was when he reminded the audience that no one was too worried about the feelings of Christians when rugby player Israel Folau was quite literally run out of the country for posting a religious message online about homosexuals.

And yet, compare with how this was handled.

In November 2023, an Islamic preacher posted on social media comments about Jewish people, which in mid-2025, a federal court judge found to be, and I quote, "...fundamentally racist and anti-Semitic and devastatingly offensive and insulting," unquote.

But as the Herald does remind us today, Julian Lisa has certainly questioned why Justice Bell didn't call controversial clerics such as Wism Haddad and Sheikh Ibrahim Dadun to give evidence at the hearings.

Now, of course, we await the Justice's final report, but I think Richardson is right to highlight the disparity in coverage given to, say, Israel Folau in 2019 when he posted quotes from the Bible about homosexuality compared with the limited column inches that were devoted to Haddad when he posted inflammatory comments about Jewish people in 2023.

I mean, I guess the inference being that in modern Australia, we seem to find it easy to criticise some religiously-centric commentary more than others.

But of course, if we are to progress as a united community, we've got to ask why that is.