The media coverage will be relentless. No platypus will be left unturned, no wattle sprig unfeatured. We'll hear stories of athletes born in shoe boxes west of Dubbo who have fought drought and flooding rain to win bronze in the men's trap (having trained with the very .303 Great Uncle Wal used at Gallipoli) in Melbourne (our Melbourne). To leave the telly will be shamefully unAustralian. Many of us will laugh at the absurdity of the nationalist coverage, but there is an Australia that doesn't.

It is the Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi Australia that revels in the nationalist sentiment; craves it. And there is an Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi media that is happy to pander to those cravings. This all might appear funny and playful. Aspects of it are. And there are plenty who would argue that it's only sport anyway. But we live in a time of hypernationalism, and popular contemporary Australian nationalism is characterised by its simplicity and its intensity. At its most extreme, it is rooted in a deep-seated racism, and expressed in debacles such as the Cronulla riots. The Aussie-Oi Australia is politically and culturally significant. Stephen Alomes is associate professor in Australian studies at Deakin University. His principal area of research over the past 30 years has been Australian nationalism. "Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi," he argues, "represents enthusiasm for the tribe.

It was once a Bay 13, outer chant. But it has spread. It is the chant of young Australians. It was once a celebration of 'us', but with that has emerged the awareness of 'them'. Put into a political context of Cronulla, the wearer of the flag as a cape becomes a street fighter." These young Australian men - and it is very much about young men - are angered to the point of violence by complex issues of identity and opportunity. Such an us-and-them mentality finds a simple expression through sport.

Not that a lot of Australians would acknowledge it. Apart from "You're going home in the back of a divvy van", the only other chant Aussie-Oi Australians know is the front-bar mantra that sport and politics should be separate, and that sport and politics don't mix. But that chant is just plain wrong. Sport is political. Sport can be manipulated for political gain. The Commonwealth Games is a highly political event. It has had and still will have political effects at state and local level. But it is the effect at the level of national life that is the concern in this discussion. The nationalism the Games nurtures suits the dominant political mood and the vision of Australia it has fostered. This is a nostalgic vision, a yearning for an Australia long gone, a Macca-on-a-Sunday Australia; an uncomplicated Australia where Australians identify with a set of common values, however narrow.

Sport is a key part of that vision. There are enough Australians who have grown up in a culture that values sport; we find meaning in sport. Other aspects such as family, religious, national and local identity are expressed through sport. Hence sport is a powerful thing. Alomes claims that Prime Minister John Howard is a master at using sport, nation and identity for political gain.

"John Howard has immense political cunning. He can appeal to the tabloid mentality. He is populist and celebratory. He talks about sport as it helps people identify with an old Australia; the so-called traditional Australia that he doesn't want to change. "Sport and nationalism are a device to emphasise the old, to mask globalisation and major changes in the economy. While the magician keeps us looking backwards, he is the one who is orchestrating massive change." Alomes also argues that Howard's nationalism is actually divisive. Events such as the Commonwealth Games might contribute to a feeling of imagined community but they also stir up those feelings that can encourage that division. You are either one of us or one of them.

Such a mindset also serves the Prime Minister's foreign policy objectives. The Howard Government has, on behalf of the Australian people, sent Australian troops to fight in overseas conflicts. He needs to justify and rationalise that decision, while encouraging ongoing support for that military involvement. He consistently uses language that makes clear a divide, whether he is talking about Islamic extremism, terrorism or Muslim women wearing the burqa. The whole reassessment of multiculturalism is also important. Inevitably discussion aimed at some Muslims results in generalisations about the entire Muslim community. This is also the politics of fear, or as Alomes says, "the exploitation of populist xenophobia". Sport works for those in power. It is an effective political tool made all the more effective because it appears benign. It is not benign. It should never be dismissed as only sport.

John Howard loves sport. He also knows Australians love sport. A man of his political skill doesn't take long to work out that sport can benefit him politically. There is no reason to doubt Howard's interest in sport. He describes himself as a cricket tragic and seems to have a genuine love of the game. For many years ABC cricket commentator Jim Maxwell has invited politicians to spend some time at the microphone, particularly during the Sydney Test. Some have been more comfortable than others. R.J.W. Hawke really knew cricket. John Hewson had a rather limited idea. "John Howard has always jumped at the chance." Maxwell says. "And he's like (Geoff) Boycott: once you get him in there, you can't get him out. He is well enough versed in the history of cricket to suggest he knows the game. He spent days on the Hill when he was a boy. He's played cricket." Maxwell's special comments sidekick Kerry O'Keeffe certainly helped the PM build his credentials. On seeing a photo of Howard's bowling action, he said (on air) that "among post-war prime ministers, he was, without question technically the best of the off-spinners".

Howard shows enthusiasm for rugby league: he is a life-time supporter of St George. He is a keen attender of Wallabies matches, and such a supporter of the green and gold that he came under some criticism for the perma-grimace he wore while presenting the Englishmen with their victory medals at the last World Cup in Sydney. He is not a big fan of Australian football but can be spotted in the crowd on big occasions. It is likely he will become very interested in soccer over the next few months, but may be less interested if Australia doesn't make the second round of the World Cup in Germany. Doctor Brett Hutchins, lecturer in communications and media studies at Monash University, has written widely on sport in its social context. He agrees that Howard knows sport. "But more importantly," says Hutchins, "he knows how to use sport strategically. He wants us to think of him as an ordinary bloke. And ordinary blokes love sport. Sport gives him a free kick. Sport is gold. It is seen as transcending politics. It can't be criticised."

A key part of that strategy over the past decade has been the priority given to the funding of elite sport through a network of national sports institutes and academies. (The states also have their own academies.) Talent has been identified, supporting scholarships granted. In particular, the focus has been on the main traditional sports and Olympic and Commonwealth Games sports, particularly those in which Australia has a chance of doing well. Sports such as orienteering and skateboarding have lost their funding. This is a systematic approach to winning gold medals and international competitions. It is the sort of approach for which the Eastern bloc nations were criticised during the 1970s and '80s. The Australian approach doesn't require the guise of military service; there is public support for it. Gold medals seem to satisfy the community. Poor performances (such as at the 1976 Montreal Games) don't. Hero-athletes serve governments well. Reflected glory has been a part of politics forever and a day. But success at sport contributes to a strong sense of nation, which is what Howard wants. At a time when grassroots sports clubs and organisations are crying out for better funding, to give Australians opportunity to participate, resources continue to be channelled to the elite.

Senator Kate Lundy is the shadow minister for sport. She sees the Government's approach as having bigger implications. "I think the mainstreaming of support is deliberate," she says, "and part of John Howard's attempt to create an Australia in his own image. There is a conscious effort to whitewash Australia." Although Labor's sports policy appears more holistic and participatory, Labor also knows the electorate wants to gorge itself on success. Its attitude to the funding of elite sport will no doubt be driven by polling.

Howard's use of sport to promote the type of Australia he wants has, at times, been quite subtle. In his book Don Bradman: Challenging the Myth, Hutchins explains how Howard appropriated The Don, knowing that the great cricketer had broad appeal. Bradman became the most versatile hero, onto which Howard's mythical view of the nation could be projected. Bradman was a sportsman. He came from the bush. He could play the piano. He had a military career (of sorts). He worked hard. He believed in individual effort. He accumulated wealth. He looked after his family. At the end of the 20th century the Prime Minister described him as the greatest living Australian. The public outpouring of grief at the time of Bradman's death in 2002 suggested Howard's political judgement had again proved to be on the mark. Many of the qualities attributed to Bradman were either exaggerated or manufactured. That is the nature of myth. Whether Howard appropriated the cricketer strategically or sincerely, the effect remains the same.

He also appropriated Mark Taylor, forming a relationship that appeared to be of more significance to the Australian Prime Minister than the Australian cricket captain. Taylor is one of four sportspeople to have been made Australian of the Year during Howard's time, along with Cathy Freeman, Pat Rafter and Steve Waugh, all from mainstream Australian sports. Howard has helped maintain sport's lofty position in Australian life. So much of Howard's leadership has been about promoting a simple view of Australia: home and family; church and school; work and weekend sport; beach in January. He even wants people to accept a particular version of Australian history. In the debate over Australian history he denounced the so-called black armband view in favour of a more celebratory position.

Doctor Daryl Adair is senior lecturer in humanities at the Centre for Sports Studies at the University of Canberra. "John Howard wants an agreed history," Adair says, "an issueless history. But history without issues is like politics without debate." Historian and Adelaide Oval museum curator Bernard Whimpress described Howard's understanding of the past in a recent letter to the editor as "the white-flannelled view of history". If Howard seeks to consistently affirm a mainstream view of Australia, he certainly finds assistance from the sporting media. The performance of national teams and sportspeople, particularly in the traditional sports, are reported very closely, a reality that is totally understandable. That is what the people want. In giving it to us, the preference is sustained.

The approach of Dwayne Russell and Gerard Healy, who host 3AW's Sports Today, is illustrative. It is unashamedly populist. Footy is king, its authority never questioned. There is no doubt Australian football has a significant place in the Australian psyche. It has enormous historical and cultural meaning. But Sports Today's approach is exclusive rather than inclusive. Soccer is the pauper. It receives little coverage on 3AW, or the other mainstream radio stations.

There is an age-old question posed in the Australian sports media: is soccer a threat to footy? (It is sometimes even posed as a talkback topic.) The question itself is value-laden. Rather than celebrating the diversity of the football codes, it confers legitimacy on footy, suggesting some sort of danger brought about by an increased popularity of soccer. It is symbolic of a consistent failure to acknowledge the complexity of a multicultural society. This is about power and commercial advantage; power in the professional sports milieu and, given what footy and soccer stand for, entitlement in the broader community. (Another talkback topic that bobs up six minutes before show's end, when the boys have exhausted all ideas, asks, "Which is better, footy or soccer?" Callers ring to explain their preference. Soccer goes to a 5-1 lead, but footy storms home to win 6-5. As it does every time.) Russell and Healy are intelligent men and quite capable broadcasters. They often play roles. Sometimes it's Good Soccer Cop-Bad Soccer Cop.

In the week of last November's final World Cup qualifier in Sydney, the soccer was the principal story and just couldn't be ignored. While acknowledging the national significance of the tie, Bad Soccer Cop Healy explained there just wasn't enough scoring in soccer and that soccer administrators should change the rules. Perhaps get rid of the offside rule. Make the net bigger. He effectively trivialised the game. As playful as he may have been, a position was being broadcast. That position has an effect. But populism brings dollars. Station management began to read the national mood. There was such public interest in the qualifier that even 3AW couldn't ignore the match, and by Tuesday 3AW was sending a commentary team to Sydney. The match won an enormous television and radio audience.

For a short while soccer entered the mainstream, tapping into people's sense of Australianness, which was, for once, expanded rather than narrowed. The coverage made visible the whole soccer culture and brought into focus the regular fans. Soccer means as much to them as footy does to others. Recently Hutchins was involved in a seminar, "Sport as a Universal Language", which was broadcast on SBS Radio. While Andrew Demetriou asserted that sport could be a unifier, Hutchins spoke about the differences it can highlight. He was encouraged by the response. He received an email from a listener: "Finally someone speaking about sport rationally". In this country, to criticise glorious sport and its heroes brings popular derision. But Hutchins doesn't mind. "Usually I cop it between the eyes from sports fans," he says. "The level of discussion that goes on around sport in the majority of the commercial media is boof-headed. Yet populist discussion actually cultivates the ground for intelligent discussion about sport."

Another panellist at the SBS forum was Laknath Jayasinghe, a PhD student with a strong interest in cultural studies. He came to public attention when he wrote an opinion piece published in The Age on January 17 this year. In "An ugly echo of Cronulla at Telstra Dome", Melbourne-born Jayasinghe recounts the story of a day in the outer at the cricket. He was sitting with a group of people of Sri Lankan heritage. In a one-sided match between Australia and Sri Lanka, he and his friends began singing Sinhalese songs. Some Australians expressed their disapproval and eventually the police came and asked Mr Jayasinghe and his friends to stop.

"I know what stirred such ugly invective," Jayasinghe wrote. "It is mainly a suspicion premised on what my dark-coloured skin may signify in these fearful times: an ignorant and unfounded terror whose roots have been watered, fertilised and tended, to varying levels, by the hardened nationalist rhetoric following Howard, Hanson, 9/11, Bali, London, Corby and Cronulla. "You don't have to sit in certain sections of a cricket crowd for too long to hear racial abuse. Perhaps this has changed since I followed the 1998-99 Ashes tour around, when such racist taunts were isolated. The overwhelming feeling in the outer was irreverence and ratbaggery and good fun. But I am a fourth-generation Australian, and the crowd was giving it to the Poms and the Barmy Army quite playfully. I suspect the abuse of Muttiah Muralitharan contains different meanings.'' Having worked in marketing, Jayasinghe has a keen eye for advertisements. He notes with interest the VB beer promotion involving David Boon, an Australian selector. Boon, who once drank more than 50 cans of beer on a flight between Australia and England, is placed in a showcase next to Phar Lap in the Melbourne Museum, as a national icon. "The ad brings together beer, masculinity and nation," Jayasinghe observes. "I just don't relate to that." It is not the only thing in mainstream representations of Australia that makes him feel like an outsider.

When I was on my Ashes odyssey, I found people very friendly. I was certainly able to connect with fellow Australians and enjoy the company of others I had just met. One bloke wore a Jacky Howe singlet on which he'd carefully penned:

WE SUPPORT

TAYLOR'S BOYS

THE WALLABIES

AND THE PAXTONS The Paxtons were the youths who refused to take the job offered them on a resort island by Ray Martin. Jayasinghe recently saw a T-shirt that read:

LIFE

LIBERTY

AND THE PURSUIT OF TERRORISTS Politics and militarism at the cricket - and beer.

Since Federation, the Australian people have been enthusiastic participants in war. Militarism has had a profound impact on the thinking, and the lives, of Australians. As David Williamson, Bill Gammage and Peter Weir showed in their 1981 film Gallipoli, there is a strong and confused relationship between nation (and empire), sport and war. Sport continues to serve the militarist cause. There is a quiet presence of Australian service-people at sports events: a line of soldiers on the MCG, a navy band, a flyover. The Hawthorn Football Club walks the Kokoda Trail. The Australian cricket team stops on the battlefields of France on the way to England. It is these seemingly small things that keep images in the mind, and quietly contribute to a mood. ZHoward sent down a few deliveries and played a few pull shots when he visited the Australian troops in Pakistan recently. He didn't have to land his off-break to generate an effect. He knows Australians.

Nationalism is not a bad thing, although you'd have to say it doesn't have a great track record. There is a legitimate sense of nation. We all have a sense of homeland, often heartfelt. It involves a sense of place, a relationship with the land, an immersion in, and affection for, the culture that has formed us. But nationalism can only be healthy if it has a strong and obvious critical dimension and includes rather than excludes. A sporting festival is not a bad thing, either. I love sporting festivals, whether they be at Flemington or Kardinia Park or even in and around Melbourne in mid-March. The Commonwealth Games can be a celebration of many things - youth, beauty, participation, performance, play, effort, competition, teamwork, friendship and so on.

And yes, I'm sure lots of kids will be inspired to become involved in the many sports at the Games. It would be good if the world were so simple. The question remains: how will the Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi coverage of the Commonwealth Games affect their sense of nation? Their sense of themselves? John Harms is a Melbourne writer and broadcaster.