SORRY, GOTTA RUSH - BIGGER PLACES AWAIT

 

   Just passing by – got a mo?

 

Last week’s visit to Jakarta by Foreign Minister Marise Payne and Defence Minister Peter Dutton (above, image Facebook) was flagged as an ‘exclusive’ in an AFR curtain-raiser implying a renaissance in relations between Australia and Indonesia. That expectation came to naught.

Ahead of the ministers’ arrival two Centre for Policy Development authors on this website and The Jakarta Post offered the passengers some well-meaning though politically unrealistic ideas: ‘The time is right to invest more into the relationship.’ Correct, but as in any successful marriage, the process has to be continuous.

 ‘The stakes are high’. Correct if referring to decaying understandings on either side of the Arafura Sea. But apart from the universal plague and ceaseless South China Sea disputes, P and D saw no pressing issues other than the usual STDs – security, trade and defence.  Proof came with their reports.

A few legally unenforceable MOUs were updated during the one full-day visit, but nothing substantial apart from Dutton flying a test balloon about RI troops training in Australia.  The idea could well pop when human rights supporters take aim. Many are alarmed at the military’s heavy suppression of separatists in West Papua, a province closed to Western journalists.

Whoever dropped the story to the AFR forgot to provide an agenda or add this was a rest-and-refuel while heading to New Delhi, Seoul, Washington and New York for the important stuff.  Instead, it gushed claims of a ‘warm personal relationship’ between Payne and her counterpart Retno Marsudi.

If the alleged link between the ladies is commonplace there’d be no need for any rah-rah about their meeting, or for Dutton to claim the bond is ‘first-rate’.   It’s not, as successive Lowy surveys disclose.

Almost 21 months have passed since the last Australian ministers were in Indonesia.  Then it was Payne with Dutton’s predecessor Linda Reynolds, and the location was Bali, not Smog City. Indonesians haven’t taken to Zoom – they need to eyeball and judge close-up.

The promotion masked the embarrassing reality behind the hi-and-goodbye: The Australian Government takes the people next door, the country with more Muslims than anywhere else and the world’s third-largest democracy for granted.

That’s not only insulting – particularly to the protocol-obsessed Javanese - it’s also foolish.  Whatever goodwill may be in the joint account, history shows it could all be withdrawn with one misjudged action or crass comment. 

Melbourne academics Tim Lindsey and Dave McRae have written: ‘There are no two neighbouring countries anywhere in the world that are more different than Indonesia and Australia. They differ hugely in religion, language, culture, history, geography, race, economics, worldview and population (Indonesia, 270 million, Australia less than 10 per cent of that).

‘In fact, Indonesia and Australia have almost nothing in common other than the accident of geographic proximity. This makes their relationship turbulent, volatile and often unpredictable.’

If anyone in Canberra had noted this gritty assessment there’d be so many regular get-togethers we’d know Indonesians almost as well as Americans.

For all the misgivings it would be wrong not to recognise the importance of the P and D visit.  The AFR ran comments from experts welcoming the ministers’ ‘overdue’ trip and noting a lack of confabs means ‘Australia risks declining strategic access, influence and relevance.’

The pandemic has been a useful excuse to keep ministers away from the Big Durian, but that hasn’t stopped VIPs visiting the US, Japan, the UK and other countries where Covid threatens as much as it does in the archipelago.

The CPD suggestion that Afghan refugees in RI should be accepted by Australia is morally right – though doomed for base domestic reasons. Australia has banned asylum seekers registered in Indonesia after July 2014 from ever resettling Down Under.

Reversing this ignoble policy would be politically risky; there’ll be an election next year and the 20^th anniversary of the Bali Bomb to remind voters of extremism in Indonesia.

 Indonesia isn’t party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees so leaves its 14,000 unwelcome guests to the UNHCR.  Integration of the Afghans would take a leader of courage, but President Joko Widodo is no Angela Merkel.  Nor is Scott Morrison.

In 2015 the German president defied doomsayers and pushed her country to keep its borders open.  The Republic now leads the European Union in taking applications for asylum seekers.

The idea of Canberra and Jakarta working to tackle the Myanmar coup is also meritorious but looking to next year’s Bali Process meeting for solutions is a mite optimistic. The informal, non-binding forum has a poor record, as the CPD’s CEO Travers McLeod knows well. After hundreds of asylum seekers drowned in 2015, he co-authored a paper on the tragedy focusing on the agency’s ineffectiveness.

 What might make the improvements the CPD seeks is to dilute the domestic anxieties which drive foreign policies.  Surveys in both countries reveal public ignorance, indifference and distrust as neither bothers to seriously tackle the negative perceptions and superficial media.

ABC Australia TV, which is supposed to be our showcase in Indonesia and elsewhere is an under-funded, uncoordinated and embarrassing mishmash of parochialism.  Al Jazeera is not threatened.

As widely reported our unis have just about abandoned teaching Indonesian language and studies.  This could be reversed if FM Payne pushed hard enough.

Sadly these serious concerns were not among her talking points.  If her 40-minute online speech reflected the closed-door meetings, it wasn’t worth the hype. The opportunities and urgency seen by others were invisible to the minister.

 The Senator reminded all of Australia’s help in combating Covid – we gave one million doses to a nation of 273 million - but found no time to address the CPD’s submission, substituting an obfuscation of clichés.  Playing fields – always level - got guernseys, but refugees were sidelined.

Indonesians wanting a road map to a real relationship will have to seek other ways. Useless waiting 21 months only to get another circular tour.

First published in Pearls and Irritations 13 September 2021: https://johnmenadue.com/our-two-ministers-just-passing-by-in-indonesia-got-a-mo/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PROTESTS AND SLURS WONT FIX THE MANUS MESS

         

Wanted: The real refugee story   

There should be no asylum seekers in offshore camps funded by Australia.  They’re getting food, healthcare and accommodation - even money. But the prolonged wait is inhumane and damaging.  Impractical solutions and unbalanced reporting are compounding the problem.

The easiest answer would be to let proven refugees into the country. That won’t happen as most voters and the two major parties are convinced the metaphoric floodgates would be cranked open. It’s a compelling argument, particularly with the fear that many would perish in the Arafura Sea. But is it true?

There are more than 14,000 asylum seekers in Indonesia.  Last year 347 were resettled through the UNHCR in Australia, others went to the US and a few to Europe. Do the rest have access to escape routes?

No, according to Australia Government figures; 32 boats have been turned back since 2013 shows the Pacific Solution is working.  Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has another view.

His prelude to the tsunami features scenes of Middle-Eastern mafioso in dingy Jakarta cafes backed by guys in bulging singlets - what Indonesians call preman.

These Trump-style deal-makers among the coffee slops and full ashtrays are monitoring newsbursts 24/7 scanning for a crack in Fortress Australia’s resolve. Yellow fingers dial mystery contacts for stand-by shuttles to fishing villages on Java’s south coast.

Do Mr Dutton’s demons really exist? The only evidence are his forcefully delivered  assertions vilifying victims and belittling their supporters rather than dealing in facts.  

Are there enough cashed-up desperates in the street outside, faces pressed against the cafe windows, ready to hand-over gold bars and uncreased late-issue Benjamins to keep the travel agents afloat?

The fearful asylum seekers huddled outside the UNHCR gate in Jakarta are a pitiful sight. Some sleep on the streets. Independent reports suggest most are on the bones of their backsides in conditions far different from Manus.  

Indonesia is not a signatory to international agreements on refugees; locals want them gone and if there is strife the foreigners will find little sympathy and no recourse to courts or compensation.

  

If Mr Dutton’s fearmongering is founded on fact why haven’t the crims been crushed? The Indonesian Police backed by ASIO’s intelligence have been smashing terrorist cells with great success, so smugglers should be a pushover.

That’s if the law enforcers really want to - and aren’t in the rackets themselves. If so Mr Dutton might like to harangue the Indonesian Government.

That around three in every four asylum seekers have been found to be genuine refugees shows they were fleeing persecution, but a couple of niggling questions seldom get addressed:

Why didn’t they register in the first safe country they encountered (Malaysia has a UNHCR office) - and why are most young blokes? What’s happening to the persecuted women and kids? Aren’t they at greater risk without their menfolk?

Photos of the Manus men once had faces blurred so vengeful authorities in their homelands wouldn’t launch dawn raids on their families.  

Now images are identifiable suggesting original fears have evaporated and they can head home. According to the Orwellian-named Operation Sovereign Borders 624 have done so in the past four years.

The Manus camp’s mining camp facilities would be a soul-numbing environment.  But ‘Hell Hole’? That term is best reserved for the Rohinga camps in the mud and squalor of Cox’s Bazar.

It would help the refugee supporters’ case to be up-front about these concerns; the gentle guys v brutal bureaucrats picture they frame is as distorted as Mr Dutton’s imaginings. Parading extremes just hardens positions.  

So to offset scenes of despairing well-sinkers Mr Dutton and Mr Murdoch’s media tell of happy lads frolicking at the beach and arranging trysts with local ladies. This is curious: The parched-dowser images add to the deterrence, while the other tales could lure. Cynics might wonder what games are being played.

If refugee advocates in their worthy work took a more measured stand their messages would be better heard by those who find the present situation psychologically cruel and shameful. These people want the misery to end with a safe place where the refugees can retrieve their lives.  

But our responsibility to care has to be tempered by a political reality that’s not going to be changed by sloganeering and stand-offs.  

There’s been a forum in place since 2002 to explore alternatives with almost 50 states and agencies as members including Australia and Indonesia. The Regional Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime is better known as the Bali Process.  It last met in Perth in August.  If it said anything of worth it’s being kept secret.

Australia will take almost 19,000 refugees through the UNHCR next year, ranking us third in the world. Even more have entered via the humanitarian visa programme.

Our pride in that decency is being shouted down by Mr Dutton’s slanders and his opponents’ hyperbole.  Until another way is found the detention-based deterrent will continue to harm the refugees, drain the budget ($5 billion so far) and demean our nation. If we yelled less and pondered more maybe we could find a fix.

First published in Pearls and Irritations 22 November 2017.  See:  http://johnmenadue.com/duncan-graham-wanted-the-real-refugee-story/