Howard's war and peace

More significant for Australia has been the conservatives’ neglect of Australia’s own region. One result has been the continued decline of Papua New Guinea; another, the inadequate deployments to East Timor which let the lid off serious internal pressures there.

Another was the shambles in the Solomons, which need never have happened if the government had not refused a request for aid from that country made in 2000. Because it did refuse, the Solomons descended into chaos and armed gangsterism and, three years and many deaths later, a far larger and more costly effort had to be made to restore a semblance of public order. Today, of course, a Minister in the Solomons Government is wanted in Australia on child-sex charges having escaped from custody in PNG, possibly with the connivance of PNG’s Prime Minister. Meanwhile, Commodore Bainimarama, the latest illegally-appointed ruler of Fiji, continues to thumb his nose at Australia.

“Border protection” is a Howard government mantra. But now it appears that, quite aside from the scandalous instances of Australian citizens being illegally detained or even deported from their own country, this policy has been appallingly cost-ineffective. The so-called “Pacific” solution - which involves bribing needy neighbourhood governments to house asylum-seekers on their territory - has cost upwards of $1 billion, whereas to process the same number of people in Australia would have cost less than a tenth of this amount:

… so far the cost of the Pacific Solution is $500,000 per person to process fewer than 1,700 asylum seekers. And yet there’s clear evidence that it’s cheaper, more effective and humane to process asylum seekers here on the mainland. It makes no economic sense whatsoever to house a detainee offshore at a cost of $1,830 per day when it can be done here on mainland Australia for as little as $238 per day, according to the latest estimate by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

Nor is this mere fiscal carping. While Howard was busily whipping up xenophobia over a few hundred asylum-seeker unfortunates, his government’s eye clearly went off the main game in border protection for Australia. Inattention to customs and quarantine has now resulted in equine influenza escaping the very facility intended to contain such diseases. We have good cause to be grateful that what escaped was not something nastier.

Howard must be credited with recognising in 1999 that it was high time to ditch the policy of supporting Indonesian rule in East Timor. He was able to do so because of the internal disorder which accompanied and followed the fall of Suharto’s regime. He also weathered the difficult political relations of the following couple of years, and eventually established a working relationship with the civilian regime in Jakarta.

The Government distinguished itself and won well-deserved kudos for Australia in its rapid and substantial response to the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster. In Indonesian Aceh particularly, Australian aid has been important from the first response until today. Nine Defence personnel died when their helicopter crashed while on this aid work.

But gratitude in international affairs is often short-lived, and relations with Indonesia remain a difficult challenge. Howard’s grovelling to Jakarta over the affair of West Papuan refugees showed that it soon fell into the grip of the notorious “Jakarta lobby” mentality, which has distorted policy for decades and was responsible for permitting the original Indonesian invasion and conquest of East Timor.

In blithe disregard of the risk that Indonesian security harbours covert Islamist operatives, it has resumed co-operation with the notorious Kopassus: a powerful security force, mainstay of the former military dictatorship and responsible for numerous human rights outrages, which still accepts but a limited degree of control by the civilian regime and which it is dangerous to provoke.

One area in which the Government has an admittedly difficult task is managing relationships with China and the United States. It has to convince the Americans that we remain staunch allies, but the Chinese are suspicious to a degree approaching paranoia that Washington is trying to strategically “contain” them by building ties with South Korea, Japan, Australia and states in South-East Asia.

Thus far, the government has walked this tightrope with some assurance. But the rope will begin to jiggle seriously if US - Chinese relations ever deteriorate, and walking it then will certainly require great competence if we are not to be sucked into a north Asian war over Taiwan. After Indochina and Iraq, two first-rank blunders, I would worry if the conservatives happen to be in government here at the time.

Under Howard, indeed under conservative regimes generally, Australia has behaved less like the US ally it ought to be, than as a fawning satellite state. Almost every one of Bush’s worst blunders, not just Iraq, has been enthusiastically endorsed by Howard. Advocacy of pre-emptive military operations based (like Iraq) solely on “intelligence”, of a “deputy sheriff” regional role for Australia, and unilateral cancellation of the important anti-ballistic missile (ABM) Treaty to facilitate Bush’s mad pursuit of “missile defence”, are among the things to which Howard has lent Australia’s name.