The confrontation between the Australian government and a Norwegian cargo ship carrying 438 mainly Afghan refugees it wants to expel from Australian waters has dramatised the issues at stake as few recent events have done. Australia's image as a welcoming multicultural society has suffered badly as a result. It will only be retrieved if the refugees are allowed in, subject to the country's strict policy of detaining refugees in camps and relatively liberal record in processing asylum claims. That would be in keeping with international conventions and best humanitarian practice.
Such a change of view by the Australian government will be difficult, given the political stakes involved. Mr John Howard's right-wing Liberal government faces national elections in December, having recently lost three state contests. Immigration has become a central issue, following a recent sharp increase in the numbers of boat people seeking asylum. Hostility to them has crystallised in recent years with the emergence of the far-right One Nation Party.
Mr Howard's decision to refuse the Norwegian vessel entry, backed up by a highly publicised deployment of special troops, is a populist response reminiscent of Mrs Margaret Thatcher's conduct of the Falklands war ahead of the 1983 election in the United Kingdom.
Yesterday there was heartening evidence that it could backfire, as sections of public opinion and opposition parties - more conscious of the human rights issues involved - began to swing away from him, aware of the damage being done to Australia's international reputation and interests. Mrs Mary Robinson's plea from the UN conference on racism in Durban yesterday that Australian people should exert pressure on their government to change its policy graphically underlines the new emerging of universal rights.
Australia is itself an immigrant society, which has shifted its emphasis away from a whites-only policy since the 1970s. It currently accepts about 8,000 asylum-seekers a year, a figure which compares well with other developed states. Many of these come from poorer Asian countries, of which Afghanistan is the most traumatised.
Australia is by no means the only state in the region to have tightened up its entry policies in response. But Mr Howard's cynical exploitation of this crisis for political advantage breaches the international norms that have been carefully constructed to handle the growing number of refugees throughout the world, most of whom have been absorbed by neighbouring states rather than the most developed ones.
Praise is due to the Norwegian captain, his company and the Norwegian government for their affirmation of humanitarian values through these events.