In the course of her visit to Australia, the President, Mrs McAleese, is due to meet both Prime Minister John Howard and the leader of the main opposition, Kim Beazley of the Labour Party. Under normal circumstances such formal engagements attract little attention. But by the time Mrs McAleese arrives here on Monday, the country is expected to be involved in a general election campaign which threatens to be a very dirty one indeed.
The big issue, according to most local pundits, will be tax reform, and in the past few days both the governing Liberal-National Party coalition and the Labor opposition have issued their tax proposals. Mr Howard's government wants to introduce a Goods and Services Tax and a tax-reform package which would favour higher-income earners. Mr Beazley's proposals would benefit those Australians, known as the Aussie Battlers, who are having a tough time economically but who are prepared to fight their way through the hard times.
Initial polls show that if the election is fought mainly on the issue of the goods tax, Mr Howard's government is likely to suffer a humiliating defeat. Gary Morgan, one of Australia's leading pollsters said in an interview with the country's Channel 9 network that those against GST are four percentage points ahead of those in favour. And the gap was, he said, growing.
It is thus up to Mr Howard to shift the campaign's emphasis away from GST and on to general tax reform. If he succeeds in doing this, Mr Morgan believes that the gap will be narrowed but only to the extent that fringe parties, such as the racist One Nation Party headed by Pauline Hanson, might hold the balance of power.
There are indications, however, that with the economy as the main issue Mrs Hanson and her party - known sardonically in the ranks of the mainstream politicians as One Notion - may lose support nationally and in the party heartland in the state of Queensland.
Mrs McAleese will, therefore, be meeting two men involved in a power struggle which will have grabbed the attention of the public. She will also be meeting an opposition leader who is in favour of his country dropping its connection with the British monarchy, and having an Australian president rather than an British monarch as its head of state; and a prime minister who is a committed monarchist even though a large majority of Australians have now opted for the republican alternative.
One of the most prominent republicans is Thomas Keneally, the writer of Irish origin who wrote Schindler's Ark. He believes the coming federal election has put the republican issue on the back burner but it will come to the fore again after the poll.
Presidents Robinson and McAleese have, Keneally told The Irish Times, provided the "grand argument" for the republican model. An intelligent local, he argues, would be far better as Australian head of state than a monarch who lives half a world away.
Australian republicanism was born out of the self-confidence engendered by the country's bicentenary celebrations in 1998. Some elements of that self-confidence are still to the fore. The fact that Sydney has won the Olympic Games for the year 2000 is a source of national pride and this week the country is celebrating, with great fanfare, the 90th birthday of its greatest sportsman, cricketer Sir Donald Bradman.
But memories of greater times can sometimes be counterproductive in that they throw a distorting light on present problems. Much of the self-confidence which spawned the move away from Britain is diminishing.
The Russo-Asian economic crisis has battered the Australian dollar into submission, making many Australians feel that their currency belongs more to the third than the first world. Very real fears exist that Russia, in an effort to avoid total economic implosion, may begin to sell some of its vast mineral and energy resources for hard currency. This would bring commodity prices down and put the Australian dollar under such intense pressure that recession would be inevitable.
And Sydney's pride in having gained the Olympics has been dimmed considerably this week by a water crisis which has led to further third-world comparisons. The city's water company is currently urging its inhabitants to boil all drinking water for at least three minutes before use in order to rid it of dangerous organisms which have been discovered in the city's supply. These cause severe stomach problems, and according to one victim, have the added unpleasantness of making the sufferer "stink to high heaven".
A weak currency, an economy whose trading partners in Asia are in recession and problems with drinking water have engendered among many Australians a feeling that the country is beginning to drift away from that group of nations which forms the core of the developed world. And signs of the old Anglo-centric attitude, thought to have been long discarded, are reappearing frequently. For example, the country's national newspaper, The Australian, has reported the European Athletic championships in a context almost exclusively devoted to the performances of British athletes, even though the country's population has ethnic representatives from every European nationality.
The old Irish jokes, once the domain of second-rate English musical hall comics, have retained their currency here long years after their sell-by date in Britain has expired. To hear a Greek-Australian waiter in a restaurant in tropical Port Douglas begin his conversation with a diner with: "Did you hear about the Irishman who . . . ?" was a reminder to this correspondent that the old reliance on Britain, even for questionable humour, is not yet extinct.
Keneally also detects a decline in self-esteem in Australia. The new economics has, he believes, led to a decline in the quality of life which cannot be seen in any economic indicators. The economics which reduces people to integers, to consumers had reduced people's belief in themselves.
This had happened in other countries too, including Ireland. "Everyone," he said, "has been bitten by the same dog."