Latest news with #APAN
Daily Mail
03-06-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
Grace Tame's contract with Nike under threat just six months after she was made an ambassador as sports brand launches probe into her views on Israel
Grace Tame 's role as a Nike ambassador may be at risk after the sportswear brand started a probe into her views on Israel. The former Australian of the Year is an outspoken advocate for survivors of sexual assault and has shared several posts on social media in solidarity with Palestinians. Nike released a statement on Monday stating Tame's team were being spoken to, although it's not been confirmed exactly what sparked the probe. 'Nike does not stand for any form of discrimination,' a spokeswoman told The Australian. 'We take this matter very seriously and are in touch with Grace's team to understand the matter further.' Tame has been an ambassador for Nike for only six months after she was appointed by Nike in January. The Australian athlete has been vocal in her support of Palestinians and last month joined a panel of speakers at the Feminism in the Time of Gaza forum. At least 450 people heard from four speakers at The Edge in Federation Square, Melbourne at a forum organised by the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN). Tame said this was the first time she had spoken publicly about Palestine and revealed she had been asked not to speak about the Gaza-Israel conflict at several events. 'Empathy should have no boundaries,' Tame, who won the 2024 Victorian Great Ocean Road Ultramarathon, said. Tame joined Bundjalung Widubul-Wiabul woman Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts, a lawyer and human rights advocate and Randa Abdel-Fattah, a writer and advocate for Palestinian people. Jordana Silverstein, a senior research fellow at the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness at the University of Melbourne, also sat on the panel. On Monday, the same day Nike released a statement, Tame shared a quote from climate activist Greta Thunberg who is on board a Freedom Flotilla aid mission sailing to Gaza aimed at breaking Israel's blockade. 'We are doing this because no matter what odds we are against, we have to keep trying, because the moment we stop trying is when we lose our humanity.' The World Health Organisation has warned Gaza is at risk of famine as a result of the blockade. Three-quarters of Gaza's population is at risk of suffering 'emergency' or 'catastrophic' food deprivation. Last week, Tame reposted a statement on Instagram from Palestinian writer Mohammed el-Kurd, in which he critcised journalists who reported on the fatal shooting of an Israeli embassy couple in Washington DC as a 'random anti-Semitic attack'. Sarah Lynn Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum when they were shot dead. Elias Rodriguez, who police say shouted 'free Palestine' after being taken into custody, was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. In November 2023, Tame added her voice to Oxfam Australia's demand for a ceasefire in Gaza. Daily Mail Australia contacted Nike and Tame for comment. Tame had shared a gushing message in January after revealing she was the new ambassador for Nike. 'I couldn't be more excited to announce that I am officially an ambassador for Nike. This has been a long time in the making,' she wrote. She thanked her manager, Lauren Miller, and cousin Eloise Nairn-Smith, who founded the website Ritual Runners and who Tame called her 'coach and hero'.
Al Jazeera
02-05-2025
- Business
- Al Jazeera
Australia's election will show if PM Anthony Albanese has won back voters
Australians are heading to the polls shortly in parliamentary elections which will decide if Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's centre-left Labor government will return for a second term. Labor's main rival is the country's conservative coalition, led by opposition leader Peter Dutton, which came into the election campaign polling strongly but is now lagging slightly behind Labor. If Albanese does win, it could mean Australia is following in similar footsteps to Canada, where the Liberal party reversed its prospects in recent weeks, amid concerns about the effect of United States President Donald Trump's policies on Canada's economy. Amy Remeikis, chief political analyst at the Australia Institute, an independent research centre, told Al Jazeera that polls indicate President Trump is 'an increasing concern for Australian voters' and that 'Labor's gamble of holding a later election to allow some of Trump's policies to start to impact has paid off.' In comparison with Canada, where both major parties tried to distance themselves from Trump, Remeikis notes that Australia's opposition leader Dutton has courted 'favourable comparisons' to Trump for months. But, he has been 'badly damaged by the 'Temu Trump' label' – a reference to the Chinese online shopping website known for selling cheap copies of original brands. War on Gaza and the price of eggs Uncertainty around Trump's tariffs on Australia has only compounded the concerns of many Australians around the cost of essential items, including housing, food, healthcare and childcare. In the final televised leaders' debate, a week before the election, both Dutton and Albanese stumbled when asked to guess how much a dozen eggs might cost at a supermarket. Albanese was closer, guessing 7 Australian dollars, nearly two dollars less than the actual price of $8.80, while Dutton guessed $4.20, less than half the actual price. Cost of living has 'trumped everything' leading into the election, says Josie Hess, who comes from the Latrobe Valley, a coal-mining region in Victoria, and who also works for advocacy group Environment Victoria. For a number of Australians, the most important issue on election day will be beyond Australia's borders, says Nasser Mashni, the president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network (APAN). Mashni told Al Jazeera that 'the genocide that is occurring in Palestine' has seen a 'new constituency' emerge in Australia that understands that Israel is 'a settler colonialist movement doing exactly what occurred here [in Australia] 238 years ago'. APAN has developed a scorecard of where the major parties stand on Palestine. Of those, only the Greens received a tick from APAN on every issue. The scorecard for Labor was mixed, while the conservative Liberal-National coalition did not meet a single criterion. 'We've asked for people to make Palestine their number one issue and to find a candidate that best reflects a just and humane position for Palestine,' Mashni said. 'Certainly, the easiest candidates to find will be in the Senate, but I am sure there'll be somebody in every seat where they can vote a little bit better for Palestine, and in some cases, very well for Palestine,' he added. Dozens of minor parties and independents from across the political spectrum are also vying for votes. Remeikis said there is a 'late surge to the nationalistic, far-right, One Nation party', which has been aided by Dutton's conservative coalition preferencing votes for One Nation, and vice versa, in outer suburban and inner regional seats. Next year marks 30 years since One Nation's leader Pauline Hanson was first elected to federal office in Australia. But Remeikis says the late surge is unlikely to affect the outcome of the election, with polls suggesting Labor will win with a minority government. The Greens, along with some independents running on pro-climate action platforms, will also be hoping to repeat successes in Australia's 2022 election, which followed many months of devastating fires and floods. With climate change remaining a key concern for many Australians, Dutton, whose party has long delayed taking action on climate, has chosen to focus on campaigning to build Australia's first-ever nuclear power stations in areas where coal power stations are closing down, such as the Latrobe Valley, in Victoria. This week, organisations representing more than 350,000 emergency and health services workers released a letter calling on Dutton to drop his plan to introduce nuclear energy to Australia, saying 'Australia's current emergency services do not have the support or resources to respond to nuclear disasters.' Josie Hess, a Latrobe Valley local who works for Environment Victoria, told Al Jazeera that people there still have questions about the viability of Dutton's proposal. She says people in the valley 'desperately need jobs' but the timeline to build nuclear means that it would do little to help workers now. 'We have some people who support nuclear but for the most part, the Latrobe Valley is not a monolith, and there is clear and demonstrable opposition to the proposal,' she said. And while economic issues are a concern, she added, there is also an 'intrinsic link between climate security and cost of living and housing'. Melissa Sweet, who runs public health news site Croakey, told Al Jazeera that climate change remains a key issue for Australian health workers heading into the election. 'Heatwaves, floods, and bushfires are already driving up demand for emergency care, mental health services, and chronic disease management,' Sweet said. The recent US cuts to 'public health, global health and climate action and science generally' under Trump mean it's 'more important than ever' that the next Australian government invests in these areas, Sweet added.
