Swimming Queensland chief Kevin Hasemann says ‘I’ve never been to a gallery’ and furore has ‘evolved into something I could never have imagined’

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The head of Swimming Queensland has defended a campaign that saw Olympic champions lobby the National Gallery of Australia to take down portraits of their patron, Gina Rinehart, because they were deemed “offensive”.

An acrylic colour portrait by Vincent Namatjira of Australia’s richest woman was the target of the campaign along with a second black and white portrait by Namatjira in ink and pencil.

Neoprene is made from toxic chemicals, hard to recycle and, with 400,000 tonnes made a year, a growing problem. So can surfers and swimmers find green wetsuits?

I have been hesitating for months. The wetsuit I swim in every week to keep me toasty warm in the winter and safe from jellyfish stings in the summer is riddled with holes. Yet I can’t bring myself to buy a new one because I’ve learned that comfortable, flexible and insulating neoprene is manufactured using some of the most toxic chemicals on the planet.

Neoprene, a synthetic foamed rubber, is made from the petrochemical compound chloroprene. Exposure to chloroprene emissions, produced during the manufacturing process, may increase the risk of cancer, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).