Last Wednesday,Kennett sent a letter to members addressing the report and saying the club would conduct “further inquiries to see if there might have been other incidents affecting our past First Nations players”.
On Sunday he spoke about the report at the club’s president’s lunch before the Hawks played St Kilda at the MCG and he said he was confident that Hawthorn’s current players would report any incidents of racism to senior staff.
“We are,Hawthorn are,doing what we can to listen,to learn what has happened in the past but,right now,we are very much convinced,although we may still trip up,that over the last few years that our players feel not only safe at Hawthorn,culturally safe,but they feel so safe that if something was said or done that they thought caused them harm,they would be confident to go and report it to any number of senior people at the club,” Kennett said.
“That is a real test because in days gone by,some of those issues were not reported,so you weren’t able to deal with it because people kept them to themselves.”
Kennett said he rejected any suggestion the Hawks were a racist club and made reference to the AFL mandating clubs appoint full-time Indigenous officers to support players.
“I do not accept and I completely,absolutely,utterly reject that I am in any way racist. It’s an awful slur for anyone to have to bear,” Kennett said.
“And nor is our club racist and nor do I think the AFL community is racist,nor St Kilda. But we have a job to do and we have to keep working hard to improve the circumstances of our First People.