Sydney’s Olympic bid documents emphasised that Aboriginal peoples and
multicultural communities fully supported the bid and would be included
through an Olympic cultural programme.17 The Aboriginal human rights campaigner
and former government bureaucrat Charles Perkins was appointed to the
Sydney bid committee and he and Aboriginal tennis great Evonne Goolagong-
Cawley were used in Sydney’s formal presentation to the International Olympic
Committee in 1993. Through the incorporation of many leading Aborginal
personalities the bid committee sought to pre-empt any protests. At the time of
the 2000 Games many groups—ethnic communities in particular—were not
given the chance to contribute effectively to the decision making for cultural
programming. As Darren Godwell points out, no Aboriginal Australian was
included as one of the directors for the bid or on the subsequent Sydney
Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (SOCOG). Rather, SOCOG
created the National Indigenous Advisory Committee (NIAC) and developed a
list of Aboriginal ‘elders’ to liaise with indigenous communities. SOCOG also
created a Multicultural Commission but, as with NIAC, its role was merely
advisory and poorly adjusted to the changeable agendas of decision makers.