Australia's Olympics minister quits politics

Michael Perry

Australia's Olympics minister Michael Knight resigned from politics on Wednesday in the face of widespread personal criticism only three days after what were billed as the most successful Games ever.

Knight, who has become embroiled in a bitter row over his veto of a top IOC award for the chief of the Sydney Olympics organising body, said he and his family decided last Christmas that he would quit politics after the Games.

"We decided that on the first day after the athletes' parade I would communicate with you the decision we made then -- that I would leave parliament at the end of this year," Knight said.

"I didn't want to do it the day after the closing ceremony, I wanted the athletes to have their day, I wanted the athletes to have their parade," he said.

It has taken only few days for politics to sour Sydney's post-Olympics party, which has drawn ticker tape parades for athletes around the country.

International Olympic Committee senior vice-president Dick Pound on Wednesday labelled Knight "mean-spirited" for blocking a gold IOC award to the chief of the Sydney Games organising body.

Australian media rallied against Knight, calling him a vindictive politician intent on "payback" who had shattered the afterglow of the Sydney Olympics.

"The euphoria felt throughout Sydney during the 2000 Olympics could not last forever," The Sydney Morning Herald said in its editorial on Wednesday.

"But to see it shattered within a day of the closing ceremony by a demonstration of the penchant of the Olympics Minister, Michael Knight, for payback is almost beyond comprehension."

The newspaper also ran a cartoon of Knight with a gold medal for "vindictiveness beyond the call of duty".

Pound said Knight had threatened to publicly reject his IOC gold order only hours before it was bestowed on him by IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch at the closing ceremony last Sunday, if his colleague Sandy Hollway was also granted the same honour.

Pound said the IOC board was unanimous in its wish to award Hollway its gold Olympic Order because he had "made an exceptional contribution to the Games".

"This was not a view apparently shared by Michael Knight and it went so far that he said he would not accept his if Sandy got one," Pound told Australian radio from his home in Canada.

"It was a particularly disappointing attitude, at a time when everyone should have been rejoicing, and not being mean of spirit," Pound said. "It think that's a shame."

Hollway was chief executive of the Sydney Organising Committee of the Games, but in the final weeks before the Sydney Olympics Knight brought in a bureaucrat to supersede him.

Hollway was awarded an IOC silver honour for Olympic work.

Knight has always been portrayed by Australian media as an arrogant, ego-driven politician, but all had been forgiven in the wake of the successful Sydney Olympics - until now.

Australian media, which broke the story on Tuesday, had questioned whether Knight had ruined his post-Olympic political career -- a career which is now over.

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