When did Australia disappear?

By Terry Lacey

(October 22, Jakarta, Sri Lanka Guardian) The story of the 255 Sri Lankan boat people in the Indonesian port of Merak is a saga worthy of a novel by J.K.Rowling, with greed, betrayal and magic, all in a long voyage to find nirvana. The magic comes when we find that Australia disappeared, in a wizard maneuver that might have mystified master criminals and people smugglers.

These boat people did not sail from Sri Lanka but reportedly from Malaysia, having flown into Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok, after paying up to US$15,000 per head for illegal passage to Australia.

Such a big operation must have created wow and flutter, or background noise on the radio. So the powers that be knew about it at least a week before the rest of us.
This little boat, was never going to get through the 24 kilometers-wide Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra, but the attempt confirmed Australia and Christmas Island might be the destination.

Christmas Island is an Australian territory 2,600 kilometers northwest of Perth, but only 500 kilometers south of Jakarta.

But since the 1980s Christmas Island has been the target of would-be refugees, trying to get to the land of Koala bears and kangaroos.

There was the infamous episode when the Australian government prevented a Norwegian ship, MV Tampa, from disembarking 438 rescued asylum seekers at Christmas Island.
Later asylum seekers were taken from Christmas Island to Papua New Guinea for the processing of refugee status claims, (and many went on to New Zealand).

Then came a wizard move to make Australia disappear. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard had mastered magic tricks and decided to confront the seekers of nirvana with a riddle.

The riddle was, when was Australia not Australia ? And the answer was - - not after Christmas Island was excluded from Australia's migration zone by a new Australian law, so that boat people arriving there could no longer automatically apply for refugee status.

This allowed the Royal Australian Navy to sail them away on an extended Pacific cruise to Papua New Guinea or Nauru, as part of what was called the Pacific Solution.
Some of the reports by Amnesty International and NGOs on incidents related to the Pacific Solution and Australian detention center policies were damning, questioning the legality and inhumanity of this policy. Perhaps that´s when the Koala bear Australia disappeared.

Now Prime Minister Kevin Rudd seeks to lead a more cuddly kind of Australia, still firm in the face of immigration queue jumpers and organized crime, but more a furry friend then before.

But the problem of boat people will not go away, as long as there are richer countries and poorer ones and little boats to sail between them.

And Indonesia and ASEAN cannot simply serve as a Berlin Wall to protect Australians from the realities of a world divided between rich and poor.

Could Australia therefore not do a little more, as it plays a welcome wider role in the world?

- first, to stick in there and address root causes to help calm world conflicts through support for development as well as defense and security

- second, to help Indonesia and ASEAN share the burden of processing boat people fairly and reasonably, with UN help to distinguish refugees and asylum seekers from illegal economic migrants, without oppressive detention centers

- third, to show generosity to help ASEAN countries to help settle refugees who will agree to stay and work in work in ASEAN countries, and to take some of them in, and even help find solutions for non-refugees on humanitarian grounds where circumstances can justify it.

Finally since Australia looks big on the map and seems to have relatively few people, to open the doors a little wider and show some Christmas spirit now that Christmas Island is hopefully once again part of the Australia that we would like to see, instead of not part of the Australia that did not like to see some of us.

Terry Lacey is a development economist who writes from Jakarta on modernization in the Muslim world, investment and trade relations with the EU and Islamic banking.

-Sri Lanka Guardian