Conclusion: Cosmopolitics in the New Millennium

Abstract

Australia’s increasing openness to the globalization of market capitalism has been accompanied, ironically, by a progressive narrowing of the state’s vision of global social justice, particular as it informs domestic matters relating to the management of the cultural matrix. This anti-cosmopolitan turn is encapsulated by John Howard’s repeated assertion of the nation’s authority to determine the parameters of asylum seekers’ (human) rights: ‘We will decide who comes into the country and the circumstances in which they come.’ Here, the sovereign power of the nation-state is used to validate a legalistic stance that admits no overriding ethical or moral claim to hospitality. The government’s retreat from humanitarian responsibility is matched by the literal shrinking of the nation-space through the redefinition of its borders in an effort to prevent valid asylum applications.¹ This (white) arrogation of sovereignty has been challenged by several indigenous leaders who point to the constitutive violence of colonialism, now being revisited in the regime of mandatory detention, as undermining the validity of government determinations of land rights/rights of landing. The presence of indigenous participants at arts events, public rallies and vigils in support of refugees confirm that there is strong feeling on this matter within sections of the Aboriginal community.