Indonesians need to know that Australians won’t be played for suckers.

By Lyle Dunne

The brief record of the government’s “operation sovereign borders” is now heavily contested, with, predictably, both sides citing data that suits their positions: the government’s critics talk about the boats the Indonesians have recently refused to accept, while its defenders point out that since September, twice as many asylum seekers have been stopped as have arrived, and the overall number of arrivals was at least three-quarters less than equivalent periods immediately prior, or last year, under Labor.

Both sides can also cite comments from Indonesian authorities in support of their positions. The Indonesian attitude is ambivalent to say the least, with different messages produced for different audiences: after their Vice-President said both countries were considering a “people swap” arrangement, the Minster responsible for refugee matters denied any such plan was on the table. They clearly feel a need to “talk tough” following “revelations” of the kind of espionage that everyone knew or assumed was going on – in both directions.

One clear conclusion is that the government’s approach of dealing with this issue quietly, rather than via megaphone diplomacy, is the right one. It also seems clear that an approach that involves negotiating with the Indonesians to secure their assistance in stopping boats setting out from Java, though by no means straightforward, has much more prospect of success than one which relies on creating a post-arrival environment which will be sufficiently unattractive to discourage people from trying to come here.

Negotiations with Indonesia will need to be handled sensitively as well as discreetly – but the government will have to convey the message that Australia is no longer prepared to be played for suckers. Fortunately this seems to be the message Abbott is sending, with comments like “Obviously, under normal search and rescue rules, people who are picked up in a country’s search and rescue zone go to the nearest safe port in that country” (The Australian, 12 November). 

This should not surprise. Gary Scarrabelotti’s recent post Our Problem with “No”  notes Abbott’s resolve, and suggests the Indonesians should also take note of the man they are now dealing with.  Of course, his task is made more difficult by the fact that the previous government allowed itself to be placed in a position where this blindingly obvious point was ignored. Instead the Indonesians, playing on our concerns with human rights, were able to get away with the view that anyone we rescued was our problem, wherever it happened. 

Surreal aspects

Somehow we’ve come to regard this as acceptable. Returning from an overseas trip recently, however, I was particularly struck by the surreal nature of a couple of aspects of the sinking which (fortuitously) had immediately preceded Abbott’s visit to Jakarta. One was the reductio ad absurdum of the “finders keepers” position: people on a boat fifty metres off Java who found themselves in difficulties, ringing Australia and expecting to be rescued. This is a bit like having your car break down in the suburbs of Perth, and complaining that the (NSW) NRMA took too long to arrive — except, of course, that the NRMA wouldn´t come.

The second was the fact that not only were the people smugglers Indonesian, but their customers had been driven to the boats by the Indonesian army – who presumably stood by and watched as the boat sank. Nor was this an isolated instance: in January 2012 we noted the same thing, when the ABC reported military involvement in a people-smuggling operation in which 200 people drowned, this time 40 nautical miles off Java.

One should bear this in mind when considering the more recent comments from an Indonesian political advisor that people-smuggling really had nothing to do with Indonesia, and it was merely an accident of geography that Indonesia was on the way to Australia (Navigation 101, anyone?) They’re not just taking bribes and looking the other way.

People-smugglers are not indifferent to the risk to passengers’ lives; it is essential to their modus operandi.

The last was an aspect of the people-smuggling “business model” which had not hitherto occurred to me. I recall writing a decade or so ago in Christopher Pearson’s Adelaide Review of the moral vanity of the opponents of the then government’s attempts to “stop the boats”, who at that time spoke and wrote as though the alternative were an open-door policy. (They didn’t necessarily advocate such a policy, but it was the  implicit alternative: saying no to saying no means saying yes.) I said that a policy that encouraged more and more people to set out from Java in leaky boats, some of which would certainly sink, and some of whose passengers would certainly drown, could not be considered a compassionate policy, and people who supported a more controlled approach were not necessarily selfish racists.

The debate has moved on, and this notion of people smugglers’ callous indifference to the risks their customers faced has become a given in the debate (but not its implications: those whose policies would maximise drownings still claim the moral high ground).

Reading the accounts of the sinking immediately preceding Abbott’s September visit to Jakarta, however, it struck me that this view was no longer valid. The risk to lives of passengers is not a matter of indifference to the people-smuggling industry. Rather, this risk is an essential part of their current modus operandi. It’s clear that boats are chosen to be unseaworthy, and perhaps actively sabotaged to make them more so. The idea is evidently that you put people on such a vessel, encourage them to sail the minimum respectable distance for it to be considered “at sea”, and then to call the RAN to say the boat is sinking, please come and rescue us. Whereupon, by ancient tradition, the passengers become Australia’s Problem.

The Labor government, it seems, was prepared to accept this. Abbott clearly will not.

This is not just a matter of moral suasion and force of personality: we do hold some cards, even apart from the possibility of a “people swap”. I’m sure he’ll make it clear that the RAN will no longer operate as an unlimited oceangoing breakdown service – effectively extending our migration zone to Indonesia’s tidal waters. Clearly the international refugee system is not designed to give priority to people who board aircraft in their country of origin, fly to a distant country, bypassing several others, tear up their passports, and pay large sums of money to set out on unseaworthy vessels for yet another country — but that is the pattern we’re now reinforcing.

Abbott may have to tell Indonesia if they won’t accept people rescued in their waters, we won’t pick them up.

It has always seemed to me that it ought to be possible to persuade Indonesia that it’s not in their interest to have people arriving on this basis, and the best way to discourage them from arriving, in the long run, is to stop them leaving. This might involve supporting (with the necessary level of resources) a joint Indonesian-Australian naval effort to prevent refugee vessels, particularly unseaworthy ones, from leaving Indonesia — like the patrol-boat deal just announced with Sri Lanka.

In the short term, however, Abbott may even have to say to Indonesia that if they’re not going to agree in advance to accept people rescued in their search and rescue zone, then we won’t pick them up. This would generate huge outrage in Australia, even though it may be the only way to prevent hundreds of deaths annually.

Australian take on conservatism

It strikes me that this may be the biggest difference between the sides of politics – a slightly different take on conservatives vs radicals.

The left is committed to policies based on short-term effects and emotional identification with visible victims, ignoring longer-term and unintended consequences. We must guarantee bank deposits, even if it sends non-bank lenders broke. We must borrow-and-spend our way out of a recession, whatever it costs our children. We must grant land rights, even if it ties people to places where there is no prospect of employment. We mustn’t do hazard-reduction burning, even if it virtually guarantees eventual catastrophic megafires. We must tax carbon emitters, even if the result is outsourcing our manufacturing to bigger carbon emitters. We must get rid of the monarchy, even if the effect on the delicate balance of power within our system is unclear. We must allow our elderly to kill themselves, even if this sends the message to those who would be content to live out their allotted span that they are being selfish.

By contrast, the right are, or should be, prepared to take the longer view, and approach such questions from the viewpoint of the common good. This may not always be popular, but it ought to be possible to put to the people of Australia an argument that this approach is not morally inferior to short-term moral vanity.

Abbott is well placed to demonstrate at the outset of his government that he is prepared to do the right thing and bring the Australian people with him – indeed, to show moral as well as political leadership – rather than simply reacting to opinion polls and the left wing of the Australian media.

Fortunately, as the Gary Scarrabelotti piece shows, he’s the man to do it.