Australian image takes battering

AAP General News (Australia)
08-29-2001
Australian image takes battering

By Don Woolford

As the human and diplomatic drama off Christmas Island unfolds, Australia's international
reputation as a big-hearted nation is taking a battering.

No Australian event since the Sydney Olympics, that great festival of global amity,
has so widely grabbed the world's attention.

Newspapers in Europe, North America and Asia have all prominently run the story of
the Norwegian tanker and its 438 would-be refugees, often with the same photos Australians
have seen in their papers.

This sudden spotlight follows Australian difficulties with United Nations agencies
over other issues of humanity, like the forced return of Albanian Kosovars and mandatory
sentencing.

But these issues did not engage the world like the image of a ship overloaded with
human flotsam, anchored in limbo as diplomats argued.

There may be good reasons for Australia's remarkably hardline stance.

But the arguments of Prime Minister John Howard and Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock
have received perfunctory treatment overseas - certainly not enough to offset the image
of a rich and empty country slamming the door in the face of this miserable cargo.

Few papers have run explicit comment, although in Britain - which has its own numerically
much greater problem with asylum seekers - there has been some cautious sympathy for Australia's
dilemma.

But even the comparatively straight reports, largely from the international wires,
have done Australia no good.

Take, for example, the Straits Times of Singapore.

The first person its account quoted was Greens Senator Bob Brown, saying Australia's
action was possibly illegal, definitely inhumane and continuing: ``This is Pauline Hanson
territory.''

In Singapore, no name is more poisonous than Pauline Hanson's.

A Reuter report, which many papers including the Washington Post published, did not
quote Messrs Howard or Ruddock.

But along with ship's captain Arne Rinnan and one of the boat people, it quoted academic
and Fairfax columnist Robert Manne saying Australia was rapidly reverting to ``a white
fortress and a pretty selfish one''.

There were some curiosities.

The English-language Norway Post quoted Foreign Minister Thorbjoern Jagland, after
talking with his Australian counterpart Alexander Downer, saying that Australia's attitude
was unacceptable, inhuman and contravening international law.

That's a lot tougher than what Norway has been saying publicly for Australian ears.

The Afghan News Network asked readers for feedback on two current events - What should
the Australian government do to the asylum seekers, and what should the Taliban do to
the foreign aid workers?

The aid workers, of course, include two Australians.

AAP dw/jc

KEYWORD: BOAT VIEW

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