G’Way, Mate

How embarrassing it must be for Australian Prime Minister John Hunt to be seen worldwide refusing even temporary entrance to Asia’s latest bedraggled boat people. Especially since Australia’s original newcomers were themselves exiles when deposited on that immense island. Good thing Australia’s aborigines didn’t control the docks when that first ship arrived.

Asia seems to have the world’s leakiest ferries; the latest rickety bucket to sink carried more than 430 refugees, mainly Afghans fleeing the rampaging intolerance of their Taliban-ruled homeland--as nearly 4 million have in recent years. A Norwegian freighter rescued them and, according to the United Nations convention on human rights, made for the nearest port. That was Christmas Island, in the Indian Ocean some 900 miles off Australia--apparently too close for Hunt’s comfort. He called the refugees immigration “queue jumpers,” not exactly a Mother Teresa embrace of folks clinging to life preservers. Hunt forbade the freighter to dock, dispatching food and elite troops to board the ship, arrest alleged smugglers and stop refugees from jumping overboard, as these desperate people had threatened to do.

After days on deck in tropical sun, the refugees learned Hunt’s (face-saving) solution: An Australian troopship takes them on a 10-day cruise to New Guinea, where 150 fly to New Zealand, which welcomed them without a political charade. The rest go to Nauru, a once phosphate-rich island now fallen on hard times and dependent on, you guessed it, Australia. All this to uphold Hunt’s vow that the refugees would never set foot in Australia.

Anyone smell Aussie elections? And what an Olympic-sized welcome a year after the Games! Estimated costs: $10 million. For millions less, Australia could actually have housed the refugees in Christmas Island hotels for months, even with the $3.12 daily air conditioning fee.

In a world replete with widening economic disparities, uninvited refugees, haunted by the same intolerance that both chases and meets them at every turn, are likely to grow in number before the situation improves. People dying in the desert or gasping at sea are a shame on humanity’s soul, no matter how invisibly it happens. Yes, refugees are an emotional, messy business, expensive and sad, and, not incidentally, terrible for national PR. Some hearts are harder than others on certain days. No nation has a perfect refugee record. Australia just proved that again.