A loyal ally, mate (Australia and why it rules)

WASHINGTON -- In the Australian House of Representatives last month, opposition member Julia Gillard interrupted a speech by the minister of health thusly: ``I move that that sniveling grub over there be not further heard.''

For that, the good woman was ordered removed from the House, if only for a day. She might have escaped that little time-out if she had responded to the speaker's demand for an apology with something other than ``If I have offended grubs, I withdraw unconditionally.''

God, I love Australia. Where else do you have a shadow health minister with such, er, starch? Of course I'm prejudiced, having married an Australian, but how not to like a country, in this age of sniveling grubs worldwide, whose treasurer suggests to any person who ``wants to live under sharia law'' to try Saudi Arabia and Iran, ``but not Australia.'' He was elaborating on an earlier suggestion that ``people who ... don't want to live by Australian values and understand them, well then they can basically clear off.'' Contrast this with Canada, historically and culturally Australia's commonwealth twin, where last year Ontario actually gave serious consideration to allowing its Muslims to live under sharia law.

Such things don't happen in Australia. This is a place where, when the remains of a fallen soldier are accidentally switched with those of a Bosnian, the enraged widow picks up the phone late at night, calls the prime minister at home in bed and delivers a furious unedited rant -- which he publicly and graciously accepts as fully deserved. Where Americans today sue, Australians slash and skewer.

For Americans, Australia engenders nostalgia for our own past, which we gauzily remember as infused with John Wayne plain-spokenness and vigor. Australia evokes an echo of our own frontier, which is why Australia is the only place you can unironically still shoot a Western.

It is surely the only place where you hear officials speaking plainly in defense of action. What other foreign minister but Australia's would see through ``multilateralism,'' the fetish of every sniveling foreign policy grub from the Quai d'Orsay to Foggy Bottom, calling it correctly ``a synonym for an ineffective and unfocused policy involving internationalism of the lowest common denominator''?

And with action comes bravery, from the transcendent courage of the doomed at Gallipoli to the playful insanity of Australian-rules football. How can you not like a country whose trademark sport has Attila-the-Hun rules, short pants and no padding -- a national passion that makes American football look positively pastoral?

That bravery breeds affection in America for another reason as well. Australia is the only country that has fought with the United States in every one of its major conflicts since 1914, the good and the bad, the winning and the losing.

Why? Because Australia's geographic and historical isolation has bred a wisdom about the structure of peace -- a wisdom that eludes most other countries. Australia has no illusions about the ``international community'' and its feckless institutions. An island of tranquility in a roiling region, Australia understands that peace and prosperity do not come with the air we breathe, but are maintained by power -- once the power of the British Empire, now the power of the United States.

Australia joined the faraway wars of early-20th-century Europe not out of imperial nostalgia, but out of a deep understanding that its fate and the fate of liberty were intimately bound with that of the British Empire as principal underwriter of the international system. Today the underwriter is America, and Australia understands that an American retreat or defeat -- a chastening consummation devoutly, if secretly, wished by many a Western ally -- would be catastrophic for Australia and for the world.

When Australian ambassadors in Washington express support for the U.S., it is heartfelt and unalloyed, never the ``yes, but'' of the other allies, perfunctory support followed by a list of complaints, slights and sage finger-wagging. Australia understands America's role and is sympathetic to its predicament as reluctant hegemon. That understanding has led it to share foxholes with Americans from Korea to Kabul. They fought with us at Tet and now in Baghdad. Not every engagement has ended well. But every one was strenuous, and many quite friendless. Which is why America has such affection for a country whose prime minister said after 9/11, ``This is no time to be an 80 percent ally,'' and actually meant it.

IT WAS dark at 6.35am yesterday. Those in the closely packed crowd were still and attentive, their eyes fastened on the big screen. The score was 2-1, and Croatia was ahead.
Then Harry Kewell belted Australia's second goal into the net. The Melbourne crowd erupted in a roar that merged into a wall of sound with another roar coming over the speakers from the crowd in Stuttgart. Globalisation has its moments. Teenagers leapt into the air, jumping up and down on the spot like human pogo sticks, screaming their delight as their fists punched the sky.
Men hugged and tried to clamber on to one another's shoulders. Young blokes sang out in triumph: "Nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah, hey hey hey, goodbye!" Earlier the crowd had been calling for Harry. "Harry Kewell, Harry Kewell, Harry Kewell," they had sung, to the tune of the soccer theme Here We Go. And Harry came good for them.
But it was too soon to say goodbye to Croatia. Kewell's goal came 11 minutes from the end of the game. The tension began to build again, wound up by fears that the result could be snatched away at the last moment. People gasped and cursed as the ball sped around the pitch. "How long to go?" they called out to each other, angry that the screen was slow to display how much time was left. Some photographed the screen with their mobile phones to catch history in the making.
"Come on, Aussie, come on," became the last and most urgent chant of the night. Some in the crowd received text messages of the chant, sent to them by friends watching from home. Others made calls to let friends hear the crowd. This was sporting history in an age of constant connectivity.
Because of uncertainty over whether the referee had awarded a third goal to Australia or whether he was blowing the final whistle, it took spectators several seconds rather than an instant to realise that Australia had snatched the draw it needed to proceed to the next stage. Then the reaction erupted and spread through the crowd like the swift-moving crack of an earthquake. Flags were waved, confetti was hurled, trumpets were blown. This time, would-be passengers actually made it on to their friends' shoulders, shaking their arms at the gods in joy over the performance of their gladiators. The drumbeat that had thrummed insistently throughout the match went mad.
This had been a game with a false calm, like the eye of the storm. The Croatians had the first thunderous roar. As they saw their first goal — the game's first goal, only two minutes after it started — cries rang out from their small enclaves in the great crush of green and gold. A mother and her children, all decked out in red-and-white checks, chanted in triumph: "Mir Hrvati! Mir Hrvati!" ("We Croatians!") Others hurled plastic bottles, rolls of unfurling toilet paper and hot-pink phosphorescent flares at the big screen in Federation Square. This was their moment.
Some nearby Socceroos fans were less than generous in spirit. "Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!" a few jeered in unison. But by and large it was a good-natured crowd of about 9000 young people who had crammed into the square. Many had waited for hours. Garth Howells and his friends, all 15, of Coburg, had caught the last tram of the night at 1am. Bianca Nankervis, 21, had driven from Bendigo with a friend, taking the night off from her bartending job to watch the game in a crowd, "for the atmosphere".
A group of Croatian boys from Dandenong had waited patiently in the square from 11.30pm. At least they were blessed with mild weather — and the serendipitous alignment of the World Cup and Melbourne's school holidays. Thousands more were turned away by police who had instructions not to let the square get too crowded. Most trudged off in search of two big screens at Birrarung Marr but a couple of hundred die-hards — some in green-and-gold tinsel wigs — watched from behind the temporary barriers.
The crowd fell quiet after that first goal. Then came the penalty that gave Australia a levelling goal, and it was time for the Socceroos fans to let rip. A young man striding to an exit was pulled back by the wave of sound. "I was about to go home, but not any more!" he told a friend. Then Croatia scored its second goal. "Nooooo!" wailed a young woman, as pink flares blazed their triumphant path across the sky again. The Croatian colours disappeared quickly from the crowd when the game was over.
One 16-year-old boy from Dandenong, who lingered a little longer, admitted disconsolately: "I am upset. That last goal killed us." Katie Juric, 18, of Mill Park, was more philosophical. She was wearing a woolly scarf knitted half in green and gold and half in Croatia's red, white and blue. Either way, this match was a win for her. The drummer turned out to be Maurice Vera, 17, of Delahey, who carried the instrument away on his head, his smiling mother beside him. "I am from South America, and we have a passion for going crazy," he said. Most of the crowd were in their teens or early 20s. Many saw it as an event they would never forget.
Said Bianca Nankervis: "It was awesome. I've never seen anything like it. We don't really follow Australian rules but soccer has really caught our imagination … It was worth having the night off work. Australia has made world history." By 8am, the young revellers were gone. The square had been picked clean by workers and seagulls. The portable electric sign on the corner of Flinders and Swanston streets said, with the finality of a schoolmarm, "Event over." But in the nearby Young and Jackson pub, which had been selling grog and sausages since 4.30am, the party roared on. Young men carried life-sized photos of Guus Hiddink's face on sticks and sharply corrected anyone who failed to give his first name its abrupt European vowel. The Dutch master who coaches what used to be derided as "wogball" is a newly minted national hero with his own fan chant, a rapid-fire: "Guusguusguusguus!"
Outside in the street, under the grey light of morning, Melbourne had been primped back to its sedate, orderly self. Until Tuesday morning.

Go the Socceroos!!!

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