Why will no-one follow MacGill's lead?

These are jumbled, surreal days. Australia's prime minister, John Howard, says he likes Stuart MacGill because of his "strength of character". Howard's government makes clear that it doesn't approve of Zimbabwean cricketers being picked for their colour instead of their ability. His government, gently and between the lines, drops hints that it would be altogether happier if Australia had nothing to do with the whole shemozzle.

This, remember, is a prime minister best known internationally not for his "strength of character", but for turning away boatloads of asylum seekers and not saying sorry to generations of Aboriginal children wrenched from loving black families by dimwitted white authorities. His is a government viewed by various left-wing historians and right-minded Australians as the most morally reckless in memory. But not so morally reckless, those same observers must now be concluding, as the Australian cricket team.

That's a harsh judgment - an easy jibe in the face of a difficult predicament. And yet five days on from MacGill's announcement that he will not be going to Zimbabwe, the main question being asked is no longer whether MacGill is right or wrong. The question now is why no other Australian player has followed suit.

To appreciate how difficult the predicament, you only had to watch Henry Olonga interviewed on breakfast television over the weekend. Olonga, charming and eloquent, has lived his life in exile ever since strapping on a black armband during the 2003 World Cup to protest the death of democracy in his homeland. Olonga was asked whether the Australians should stay or go. He fidgeted with his dreadlocks. His eyes danced away from the camera. Eventually he replied. To go to Zimbabwe, he said, would mean "giving succour" to Robert Mugabe's thuggish regime. But even he had to think about it.

Most of the 18 Australian Test and one-day players willing to tour Zimbabwe are presumably thinking of little else right now. Their difficult predicament, though, is not quite so difficult as it seemed a fortnight ago. Back then, there was no evidence that cricket in Zimbabwe was as racist and corrupt as the rest of Zimbabwean society. Now the control freaks have gatecrashed the selection panel and whites aren't welcome. Back then, so far as we can tell, MacGill did not feel there was sufficient justification to pull out of the tour. Now he doesn't want to set foot in the place. The timing of MacGill's announcement is everything.

It's as if those other 18 players are still basing their ruminations on fortnight-old press clippings. "If we don't go," says Darren Lehmann, "it could hasten the end of Zimbabwean cricket." Glenn McGrath wants to "give a little bit" to a people who have suffered horribly. Adam Gilchrist, perhaps the man most likely after MacGill to pull out, says: "I believe I can do more good by completing the tour."

All are clearly torn. All, equally clearly, are out of date. With Zimbabwe now selecting all-black, race-based XIs, fierce-willed and intelligent men like Gilchrist and Ricky Ponting need ask themselves only two questions. Are they really prepared to take the field against a team they would not be eligible to play for because of the colour of their skin? And if they are, doesn't that make Australia every bit as bad as Zimbabwe?

Twenty-seven years ago Australia's leading cricketers, at Kerry Packer's invitation, went to war with their bosses in pursuit of better pay. At the time they were seen as greedy; now they're lauded as trailblazers. Today Australia's cricketing elite are confronted with a comparable dilemma. Except that this time it has nothing to do with pay or conditions and everything to do with ethics and principles.

Do nothing and they will surely be condemned in history's eyes, and perhaps in their own too, and in those of their children, as mugs. To be the last country to stop "giving succour" to Zimbabwe, just as Australia was the last nation to cease playing cricket against South Africa in the apartheid days, is a legacy of which a new captain could only feel ashamed. Which makes you wonder: what would Steve Waugh do?

If the players have their heads in the sand, then it is the board who dug the hole for them. It is to Cricket Australia's everlasting embarrassment that MacGill ducked out of the tour before they did. As a free land and the world's most powerful cricket team, Australia is strategically placed to draw a line, to set an example. Instead administrators have waffled on about the risks of being fined $2m or copping a one-year ban for reneging on tours. It's all a furphy. If the ICC suspends Australia for taking a moral stand, then the ICC is not worth playing under.

"The reality," says Cricket Australia's chief executive James Sutherland, "is that we are an organisation set up to run and promote cricket. In many ways it would compromise our core purpose not to tour."

"Core" purpose? Sutherland's words are spookily reminiscent of a younger John Howard who, upon failing to fulfil certain pledges in the early days of his prime-ministership, sought to differentiate between "core" and "non-core" promises.

Besides, Sutherland misses the point. It's not about promoting cricket anymore. It's not about avoiding penalties or keeping faith with some pre-arranged global timetable. It's not even about sending a message to Zimbabwe's brutal oppressors. It's about being able to live with ourselves.