As one door opens, another shuts. This week Australia welcomes the world to Sydney for the Olympic Games. There is no bigger international event, and no bigger global audience. The Australians want the world to see just what the Lucky Country can achieve.
A multicultural, New World, enlightened and outward-looking country asserting itself at the beginning of the Pacific century. Pity then, given the timing, that the Howard Government has simultaneously started down another path which seeks to distance Australia from the international community.
Exposing the rawest of nerves, the Administration has reacted to criticism from United Nations committees on Australia's treatment of Aborigines and asylum-seekers, by shooting the messenger.
It will not stand for outsiders' judging its internal affairs, and will cut back its dealings with the UN's human rights committees, requiring them to have "compelling reasons" to visit Australia to examine the handling of indigenous affairs and asylum-seekers.
In terminology more redolent of the leaders of nations such as Indonesia, Fiji, Singapore or Kenya, John Howard declared: "We are for having matters affecting Australia resolved in Australia by Australia through Australian institutions."
Which is arguable, perhaps, if that is how he believes the rest of the world ought to be left to run its affairs. But Australia has, quite properly, been more than outspoken in demanding that the recalcitrant Indonesians bring the terror of East and West Timor to an end.
It has ignored the "we can deal with our own problems" rhetoric emanating from Fiji and urged its leaders to restore democracy. And it has often run foul of leaders in Southeast Asia by lecturing them on everything from political and financial reform to cronyism, capital punishment and illicit drugs.
Australia assumes a regional leadership befitting its economic size, democratic credentials and participation in international institutions.
This latest declaration of autonomy on the issue of race might play well for a domestic audience unhappy at outsiders poking their noses into Australia's affairs.
That is a natural reaction, and one which is entirely conceivable among voters in New Zealand if the UN were to offer its views on this country's commitment to righting the wrongs inflicted on Maori.
Regardless, the Australian move is short-sighted and opens that country to charges of hypocrisy. It not only tends to undermine its foreign-policy aspirations but must start to give more weight to the views of the UN's officials on Australia's treatment of its indigenous people.
What then, did the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights have to say? It expressed deep concern that the 430,000 Aborigines continued to be disadvantaged in jobs, housing, health and education.
It called on the coalition Government to pursue reconciliation between black and white and urged the country to include the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its domestic law. None of which is that contentious in itself.
Could it be that the real objection from the Government is that an organisation from outside its shores has had the temerity to raise internationally what is clearly a thorn in the Olympic host nation's side so close to the Big Day?
From Friday night, when that huge global audience fixes upon Sydney, the thorn may start to feel like a traditional spear to Mr Howard and others.
"Black" Australia is determined to seize the Olympic moment and put its grievances to the world. Every day outside the Games complex, the tent city of Aboriginal activists will give the assembled international media details, personal and compelling, to back the pleadings of the UN committee.
Like it or not, the issues the Prime Minister wants resolved in Australia, by Australia and through Australian institutions will now, more than ever, attract interest from afar.
In the global age so inherent in this Olympiad, no society should expect to progress by turning inward or by withdrawing into itself. Surely the answer is to face up to that criticism and convince the international community that the political and social solutions being worked on by his Government can put right the past pain and current disadvantage. Disengaging from that international debate and turning the argument into one on the merits of the United Nations will not make it go away.
Herald Online Olympic News
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