Michael Vatikiotis: Australia's shaky Asian credentials
International Herald Tribune
June 14, 2005
Michael Vatikiotis 

SINGAPORE Schapelle Corby makes a poor poster girl for Australia's bid to be part of Asia. As is well known by now, the case of the attractive brunette, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison after being found guilty in an Indonesian court of smuggling four kilograms of marijuana into Bali, has whipped up a maelstrom of sympathy and resentment in Australia.
 
The Australian media have portrayed her as a victim of a corrupt legal system, and the majority of Australians polled think she is innocent. Some have unfairly compared her sentence with the 30 months' dished out to the Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Basyir, the alleged mastermind of the Bali resort bombing in 2002 that killed 200 people, most of them Australian. Others have suggested boycotting Bali, where she was tried, and even returning money given to help victims of last year's tsunami.
 
The timing of all this could not be worse. Australia wants to join a summit of East Asian nations at the end of the year that will lay the foundations of an East Asian community extending from India through Southeast Asia and including China, Japan and South Korea. Malaysia will play host to the summit and is against Australia's admission; Indonesia and other members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are in favor. Australia's prime minister, John Howard, has not made the decision any easier by at first suggesting that Australia should not sign a bedrock but fairly anodyne treaty of amity and cooperation that all Asean nations have already agreed to.
 
If Indonesian jails aren't good enough, Indonesian justice not up to scratch and Asian treaties not worth signing, the question is whether Australians really are ready to be part of an Asian community. When asked some years ago when Australia could join Asean, the former Malaysian prime minister, Mahathir Mohammad replied: "When the majority of Australians are Asian."
 
Seen from the edge of Sydney's spectacular harbor or Melbourne's cosmopolitan campuses, where Asians are a significant proportion of the population, this is not improbable (close to 8 percent of the population of almost 20 million is of Asian origin). The white-Australia policy that barred Asian immigration was dropped in the mid-1970s, and Asians who once emigrated to America are finding easier entry.
 
But the Australian heartland is still solidly European, many of its residents immigrants imbued with the prejudices that immigrants acquire when they are battling to survive in new surroundings. During the Labour government of Paul Keating in the early 1990s, Asia was treated to the spectacle of an Australian love affair with the region. Keating spearheaded the formation of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation process and developed closer defence and political ties with Asian nations.
 
But under the Liberal government of Howard, now in his third term of office, the natural inclination of Australians to closely identify with Western culture and civilization has been strongly reasserted. One senior U.S. ambassador in Canberra described Australia as "the United Kingdom of the Pacific." Hence the ease with which Howard slipped into the role of America's "deputy sheriff" in the global war on terror.
 
The victim here is what Australia brings to Asia. Australia's booming economy and accessible technology are significant resources to the region. Australian raw materials are fueling China's huge appetite for minerals; Australian universities are filled with Asian students, and wealthy Asians love to vacation in Australia, own property there, gamble there.
 
All this could be done more efficiently if Australians integrated more with the region. But alas this won't be easy. A fringe Australian nationalist Web site declares that Australian politicians are "using mass Asian immigration to implement the Asianization of Australia for their own ideological reasons, as part of their determination to impose upon Australia their world-view of cosmopolitan-internationalism."
 
Meanwhile, the emotional support for Schapelle Corby should not disguise the fact that the Australian authorities regularly round up illegal immigrants from Asia and detain them in camps. Earlier this year it was revealed that a mentally ill Australian citizen, Cornelia Rau, had been held in detention as an unauthorized immigrant for 10 months.

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