John Pilger: How the "Chosen Ones" ended Australia's Olympic Prowess!

The ferries that ply the river west of Sydney Harbor bear the names of Australia's world champion sportswomen. They include the Olympic swimming gold medalist Dawn Fraser and Shane Gould, and runners Betty Cuthbert and Majorie Jackson. As you board, there is a photograph of the athlete in her prime, and a record of her achievements. This is vintage Australia. Often shy and never rich, sporting heroes were nourished by a society that, long before other countries won victories for ordinary people: The first 35 hour working week, child benefits, pensions, secret ballots and, with New Zealand, the vote for women. By the 1960's, Australians had the most equitable spread of personal income in the world. In modern day corporate Australia, this is long forgotten: "We are the chosen ones," sang a choir promoting the 2000 Sydney Olympics. One of the ferries is named after Evonne Goolagong, the tennis star who won Wimbledon in 1971 and 1980. She is Aboriginal, like Cathy Freeman, who won a gold medal in the 400 meters at Sydney. For all their talent, both belong to a carefully constructed facade, behind which Australia's secret indigenous history is suppressed and denied. The late Charlie Perkins, an Aboriginal leader who played first division football in England, told me: "There's an ambivalence that consumes many of us. I was so pleased to be back home, seeing that wonderful light, hearing the birds, seeing my mates, but felt the racism more than ever. For one thing, no white person ever invited me home for a meal, for anything. Blacks weren't even allowed in the grandstands, not even in the blacks only sections." In the 1960's Charlie led "freedom rides" into the north-west of New South Wales, where "nigger hunts" were still not uncommon. Abused and spat at, he stood at the turnstiles of local swimming pools and sports fields and demanded that a race bar be lifted: "In South Africa, at least you knew were you stood," he said. "In Australia, you can have a friend and an enemy all in one person, especially if you are like me, of mixed blood.