Australia

Charlie Perkins was, in many ways, Australia’s Mandela. Indeed, had the Australian racial composition, been reversed, as in South Africa, he would have surely fulfilled that role.

According to the folksy writer Matthew Engel, the glories of the Olympic Games have a cathartic effect on nations. The 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles ‘helped the US regain the confidence it lost in Vietnam’.

Australia is gearing up to host the 2000 Olympics, yet its own sporting history is far removed from the spirit of the Games. Some of its greatest sportspeople were denied the chance to make their mark. Why? Because of the colour of their skin. And even today, to be aborigine, is to be a second-class citizen.

Epidemics of disease ravage Aboriginal communities in Australia as they did the slums of 19th-century England. No wonder there are riots in Sydney.

John Howard, Australia’s PM, is the mouse that roars for America, whipping his country into war fever and paranoia about terrorism within. 

Few asylum-seekers actually reach Australia’s shores, and if they do, their treatment beggars belief.

There has been a lot of political partying in Australia this year. First, there was the centenary of Federation, the coming together of the Australian states in 1901 as “a proud independent entity”.

Australia, once the land of the “fair go”, has collaborated with Guantanamo more closely than any other western government and is guilty of human rights abuses of its own.

Aboriginal children today have the same life expectancy as white children in 1900. Yet most Australians can’t understand why there was an uprising in Sydney this year.

My mother, aged 19, sold her books to pay the fare to her first teaching job in the bush. The currency of her generation was determination and courage.