Australia risking reputation in United Nations row

Australia risking reputation in United Nations row

By Marie McInerney

ADELAIDE (Reuters): Australia's hardline response to refugees
and UN criticism on human rights issues means it risks a return
to its isolationist past and opens itself up to accusations of
hypocrisy from Asian neighbors.

"On the one hand, Australia is up there telling places like
Indonesia and Malaysia what human rights are all about,"
international politics lecturer Felix Patrikeeff told Reuters.

"And on the other, it is saying 'well, actually, if the UN
tries to meddle in our business, it will run away with a bloody
nose'," said the University of Adelaide lecturer.

"It also means that states to the north of us can be a little
more brazen in terms of their rejection of UN standards of human
rights," he said.

Australia's conservative government, incensed by recent
criticism by a number of UN treaty committees over its treatment
of Aborigines and asylum seekers, announced this week it would
cut back its dealings with UN human rights watchdogs.

Prime Minister John Howard denied his government's stand
marked a new shift towards isolationism.

"It does not represent, as some have suggested, a turning away
by Australia from the principles of the United Nations," Howard
told parliament on Wednesday.

"But it does represent a determination by this government that
matters affecting Australia are resolved by Australians within
Australia," he said.

The government's attack on the United Nations came soon after
police used water cannon and tear gas to put down a riot by
Middle Eastern asylum seekers at a remote outback detention camp.

The riot and Australia's row with the United Nations have
taken place in the full glare of international attention as the
world gears up for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, which kick off
on Sept. 15.

Australia's 430,000 Aborigines, the country's most
disadvantaged group who make up about 2.3 percent of the
population, have vowed to stage peaceful protests throughout the
Games to draw attention to their plight.

Sydney human rights barrister Sarah Pritchard says there has
been a dramatic shift in Australia's human rights diplomacy.

"When countries who have historically been seen to support
international human rights scrutiny start questioning the right
of the international community to exercise supervision, then the
whole system is placed at risk," Pritchard told Reuters.

But the government's new stand is drawing support from some
conservative commentators at home and abroad.

"Australia has signaled it is no longer prepared to be the
grandstanders' paradise it has been," wrote columnist Piers
Akerman in the top-selling tabloid Daily Telegraph newspaper.

"The UN's raggle-taggle riff-raff can abuse the hospitality of
some other country prepared to put up with unrealistic
criticism," he said.

His attack came after one of Howard's Liberal Party
backbenchers described the UN treaty committee system as a theme
park for the global guilt movement.

Australia is remembered bitterly by its Asian neighbors for a
"white Australia policy", a former government policy which was
designed to keep out non-white migrants.

The policy officially ended in 1966, a year before the end of
a statute ruling that Aborigines be governed under the country's
flora and fauna laws.

The white Australia policy was echoed by the short but
spectacular rise four years ago of populist politician Pauline
Hanson, who angered Asia with her anti-immigration views.

Howard's government will be pleasing many of the people who
supported Hanson but critics say events of recent weeks project
an increasingly intolerant image.

Patrikeeff said Australia had successfully developed a role
and reputation on the international stage as an "honest broker"
but would now be regarded as more partial.

"That makes our foreign policy that much more difficult
because in a sense...we really did have a very admirable position
in the international community and that's beginning to tarnish a
bit," he said. "It's a little bit bruised.

But Jeremy Rabkin, law professor at New York's Cornell
University, told Reuters he expected no significant international
outcry over Australia's rebuff of the United Nations.

"My guess is -- there is no reaction -- that this will flag to
everyone, in case they had any doubt about it, that there is no
consequence to doing this," he said after an Institute of Public
Affairs address in Canberra on Thursday. "What country would
jeopardize its relationship with Australia over this?"