The Charlestown City Blues club lodged a racial discrimination complaint on behalf of the Italian community to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) in a bid to have Azzurri (which is Italian for blue) reinstated therefore challenging the FFA’s Regulations, which bans ethnic, national, political, racial or religious connotations in club names, logos or emblems.
Background
The Football Federation Australia (FFA) is set to review its controversial National Club Identity Policy (NCIP) which precluded the use of club names, insignias and other identifiers that had an ethnic or religious or political origin.
The NCIP was an unpopular policy with the Australian football landscape since Australia is a multicultural country, and a huge range of migrant communities established football clubs that participate in national and state football leagues.
The NCIP’s objective and application aimed to ‘promote and strengthen the reputation of football in Australia by making the sport of football inclusive for all participants. Therefore, although the FFA acknowledged the multicultural nature of Australia and the valuable contribution that various communities have made to the historical development of football in Australia, it had a responsibility to protect and grow the reputation of the sport of football in...
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