Regime shames Australia

AUSTRALIA and its allies in the civilised world dismally failed the bleak moral test presented by the murderous dictator Robert Mugabe and his hordes of thugs.

Our nation, led by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, stood by as Mugabe forced the withdrawal of opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai from next week's run-off election with a campaign of brutality that has left more than 80 dead, more than 200,000 homeless and forced more than 3 million -- a quarter of the population -- to flee Zimbabwe. Tsvangirai was detained five times and beaten up and the party's No.2, Tendai Biti, is in jail on subversion and vote-rigging charges and faces the death penalty. Mugabe's thugs attacked other opposition leaders and sent in riot police to break up church gatherings. As Tsvangirai said: ``The bullet has replaced the ballot'' in Zimbabwe and he could not in all conscience ask supporters to cast ballots ``when that vote would cost them their lives''. With the opposition removed, the 84-year-old dictator says ``only God'' can remove him from office and, in the face of the lack of a strong, co-ordinated international response, he is probably correct. The French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has branded Mugabe a ``crook and a murderer'', and the Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa, the chairman of the 14-nation Southern African Development Community, has said it was ``scandalous for SADC to remain silent on Zimbabwe''. But the UN Security Council, which is likely to discuss the matter when it meets today, will probably be blocked by China and Russia from taking any meaningful action. Rudd, who has relished the international attention his ability to speak Mandarin brought him when he visited the US and Europe, has done nothing to dissuade China, Mugabe's largest international sponsor, from supplying the dictator with the arms necessary to cow his opponents into subservience. Indeed, Rudd, who was hailed for mentioning the plight of Tibet during his talks with the Chinese leadership in April, last week reaffirmed his intention to accept President Hu Jintao's invitation to attend the Beijing Olympics with his family. Hu first extended the offer in a half-hour conversation conducted entirely in Mandarin during APEC last September, after which Rudd said: ``As a further indication of some kindness toward myself, he invited myself and my family to attend the Olympics in Beijing next year, which I would be very keen to do.'' Though Australian Tibetan support groups took some heart from Rudd's remarks on the crisis in Tibet, they should have known then that the fix was in and, though Rudd did later speak of hoping that China would enter into dialogue with the Dalai Lama, no such conversation took place before he reconfirmed he would happily go to Beijing for the Olympics. For the dignity of our nation, let's hope that the Chinese don't perversely sit Rudd alongside Mugabe or the murdering leaders of other client states such as the Sudan. Rudd's remarks to the Chinese about Tibet have clearly had as much effect as his threat to ``take the blowtorch to OPEC'' over oil supplies -- zero. Despite being represented by Energy Minister Martin Ferguson at talks in Jeddah at the weekend, the oil producers have made it clear that the problem is not with supply, as Rudd seems to believe, but elsewhere, and there was no mention of any blowtorch wielding Australians in the Saudi Oil Ministry's official communique. Last week, a report released by the Centre for Independent Studies said Chinese crime gangs are the now most active in the Pacific region, smuggling drugs, people and counterfeit goods, and running gambling and prostitution in Port Moresby and Suva. Illegal migration drives the overall crime trend. The Chinese Government has also bankrolled local government leaders in return for their votes at the UN. What is now clear is that in the six-and-a-bit months of the Rudd Government, Australia's moral authority and international standing has taken a huge hit. Just a generation ago, young Australians mounted a courageous and important campaign against apartheid in South Africa. Prominent sports figures, led first by rugby players and joined by cricketers, forced Australia into rethinking its relationship with Pretoria. Former prime minister John Howard played a leading role in isolating Zimbabwe from the Commonwealth as a member of a troika of Commonwealth figures to confront the rogue government in 2002. Howard demonstrated his support for Tsvangirai's brave stance against Mugabe by inviting him to Australia last year and pressuring Cricket Australia to abandon a tour of Zimbabwe. Rudd has shown no such leadership, indeed, his spineless silence on the matter of China's ongoing support for the regimes in Zimbabwe and Darfur and corrupt leaders in the Pacific leaves Australia open to charges of complicity in the crimes being committed in those tragic nations.