Sam Newman suggests fans sing popular 80s hit ‘I Am Australian’ as he doubles down on drowning out Welcome to Country at AFL Grand Final

Controversial AFL personality Sam Newman has doubled down on his call to drown out the Welcome to Country at the AFL Grand Final, claiming the formal ceremony is divisive and patronising.

The former Geelong Cats star has continually defended his stance against the Welcome to Country being used at events around the country after he called on footy spectators to boo or slow clap when it is read out.

In a new pitch, Newman told The Opposition podcast AFL fans could instead sing The Seekers’ 1987 hit I am Australian.

“If you want to have a song rather than boo people at the Grand Final or slow hand clap what about We Are One?” he told the podcast.

“If I was going to advise people should they boo at the Grand Final what about when all the Welcome to Country nonsense and crap starts we the crowd breaks into songs singing ‘We are one, but we are many… I am you, you are me, I am Australian’.

“What is wrong with that song? If people just sang that song when they started the Welcome to Country ceremony and drowned it out and it’d be probably better than booing.”

Newman’s ceremony comments were first voiced on his You Cannot Be Serious podcast on Wednesday where he labelled the Welcome to Country as “the nonsense that has suddenly taken over in the last 20 years from a completely harmless introduction by Ernie Dingo some years ago”.

Since Wednesday Newman spoke to several media outlets to defend the stance, claiming the Welcome to Country ceremonies divide Australians based on their heritage and skin colour.

“It is just cringe-worthy to stand and have someone welcome you to your country you’ve been in, who is younger than you in the first place whether it be Auntie or Uncle some someone else,” he said.

“When you think about it those people are enjoying the spoils of a life that started in this country when settlement came in the mid 1770s… and everyone has flourished.

“Some haven’t who are white, some haven’t who are black adversity strikes everyone you don’t have to have a different skin colour to know what adversity is about.”

The 77-year-old’s comments have caused outrage from several politicians and AFL figureheads.

Indigenous Senator Lidia Thorpe slammed Newman’s comments telling him to “educate himself” as “we are all on stolen land”.

“I am not sure why he is in the news. He is irrelevant to any debate of the time,” she told Nine’s Today Show.

“A Welcome to Country is simply that, we all are on stolen land, there has never been a treaty, and a Welcome to Country is a way to bring people along on an understanding of the country that you are all living on.

“So it’s a peaceful – it’s about peace and the whole message behind a Welcome to Country is about respect and bringing people together.”

AFL CEO Gillon McLachlan also hit out at Newman’s comments declaring the Welcome to Country is a “glistening part of our game” and something that would not be banished.

“I’m not going to dignify those sorts of individual responses out in the community other than to say I disagree very definitively,” McLachlan said.

“I think that the Welcome to Country across the finals series and the anthem have been respected significantly… people stand, they clap, they feel included.

“It rolls into the anthem and then it rolls into the start of our game, it is a glistening part of our game now.”

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews told reporters on Thursday he was confused as to why anyone would want to boo “one of the oldest continuous cultures in human history”.

A reporter then mentioned how Newman believed it was repetitive and tokenism.

“Well that might be his view, but that’s not my view,” Mr Andrews said.

“I don’t think that celebrating all that ownership, custodianship of Aboriginal people had given to us today – those Songlines, that history, the warmth with which Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture is shared with the broader contemporary community, that’s not something to boo.

“That’s something to be proud of. It’s something to celebrate.”