This week the chair of the Olympic Co-ordination Committee, Jacques Rogge, said the potential for minority groups to use the Sydney Olympic Games to air grievances was high. It was an under-estimation. It is inevitable that the Sydney Olympics will be used as a political staging ground. In particular, it is inevitable that Aboriginal groups will use the event to put their grievances to the world news media who will congregate in Sydney for the Games. There is nothing any Australian Government or the Sydney Organising Committee of the Olympic Games can do to prevent it. So it should not bother trying. Indeed, it should announce that it is inevitable, welcome that it will take place and perhaps make efforts to ensure that the world’s media gets every opportunity to to report on the grievances of any group in Australia that wants to make a political point.
The NSW and Australian Government should take pride in the fact that spokespeople for any minority group in Australia are able to make contact with the world’s media and make whatever statement they want. That is the sort of society we are.
Those who have argued that getting the Games in Sydney is a great thing for Australia because of all the commercial spin off must accept that there are two sides to the spin off … positive and negative.
The main aim of the organising committee, though, is to concentrate on transport, communications and the rest of the nitty gritty in running a successful games. Ultimately the messages of those who use the games as a conduit to the world will have to stand on their own merit and not because they got wider coverage during a couple of weeks of international sport.