AUSTRALIA BULLYING TO COVER UP ITS CRIMES

Kilman, looking at removing the Wesminster
system of government in Vanuatu
The culture of school yard bullying is very much alive in Canberra, and every now and then shows its ugly head in the diplomatic discourses between Australia and its Pacific hosts. 

Bullying is a cultural phenomenon as much as it is a sociological malaise predominant in the English public school system in the form of crude ritualistic excesses by persons who practise it as a rite of passage to perpetuate exclusion, inclusion and or even acceptability. It is a deep form of social ill that in itself may not necessarily and immediately yield the reasons for a quick fix or solution. It has much to do with identity as much as belonging, but more often than not it has to do with lack of identity than anything else. And on the national stage of a country such as Australia, this is a deeply rooted problem in the psyche of Australia as a nation, and Australians as a people. 

They do not belong here in our Pacific. They are nevertheless here as a result of their criminal past. They are here as outcasts of right thinking and law abiding England, and indeed of Europe. They only arrived yesterday.

As people who are in our waters and our backyard, quite as a matter of our generosity, and the generosity of the Aborigine and Indigenous people of Australia, whose resources and lands they have stolen to perpetuate their lives, they are struggling deep within to come to terms with this fact that they are still descendants of thieves. They essentially they can never change the hand of history, which once writ cannot be un-writ.

And so it came to pass that on the 27th of April 2012, the latest act of bullying unfolded before the very eyes of the Prime Minister of Vanuatu, Hon Sato Kilman MP at Brisbane Airport.
The Prime Minister and his team were transit through Brisbane to Asia when The PM's Aide Mr Clarence Marae was unceremoniously arrested, extracted, charged and locked up in the police cells for alleged money laundering.

The following week on the 10th of May 2012, Vanuatu expelled the Australian Federal Police contingent of 12 Policemen in Vanuatu, after no apology or reasonable explanation was offered.
The details of what actually happened emerged later. The Prime Minister and his team were transiting thru Brisbane Airport. Under the terms of the Chicago Convention 1958 dealing with transit passengers, they are deemed to be continuously travelling in international airspace. Hence the PM and his team were not subject to Australian law or its jurisdiction.

Presented with this difficulty, the Australian Federal Police colluded with the Australian Customs Service to have the PM and his team denied transit rights. They were deliberately told that they would not transit ( although they were issued with transit visas only). They were told to "enter" Australia, which they didn’t have visas for.

The PM and his team were forced against their will to "enter' Australia, which created the scenario of Mr Clarence Marae forced to submit to the Jurisdiction of Australia, and thereupon being arrested, to the shock, disbelief and dismay of Hon Sato Kilman. He knew the Australian government  tricked him and the government of Vanuatu.

Australia deemed this as a normal law enforcement exercise, and was unfortunate. Vanuatu saw it differently.

The Charges that Mr Marae was charged with had its genesis in operation wickenby, an Australian Federal Police and Australian Intelligence Operation aimed at tax dodgers in Australia. This operation has had mixed results and on the whole has been seen by the public as a waste of public resources. At the centre of this is the Australian Federal Police, who want to see themselves as a Police Force of the Pacific, pushing the expansionist agenda of that errant and misguided Irish Police Commissioner Mick Kelty, and his blue blood Protestant ( then) bosses Howard and Downer. 

Surely Clarence Marae's charges are quite extraordinary. They are extra-ordinary in the sense that any one in the Pacific who travels to Australia can be charged with that very crime of money laundering and tax evasion. Mr Marae didn’t have to move more than $10,000 to be caught. Any Papua New Guinean remitting funds to pay for school fees for their children, making payments for importing goods and services from Australia , paying mortgages or maintaining families in Australia can be charged by Australian Federal Police of the same charges.

As a matter of fact any Pacific Islander who Australia want to keep watch over for other reasons are normally classified under money laundering or tax evasion. Under this genre almost all politicians and businessmen from PNG and the Pacific have a file with the Australian Federal Police. In this sense,  the Charges preferred against Mr Clement Marae, are extra-ordinary.

There is another reason why those charges are ridiculous and extra-ordinary. Mr Marae has been travelling in and out of Australia many times over the last ten years. The incidents used and referred to occurred some 7 years ago, why did they Australian government wait so long to charge this guy? Why wasn’t he arrested and charged on one of his previous private visits?

Why was the Prime Minister of Vanuatu and his team not accorded protocol of a Head of State? Why was he refused entry into the transit lounge and made to enter Australia against his will?
The incident of the treatment of Prime Minister, Hon Sato Kilman MP, is not an isolated incident. Several years ago when our then outspoken Prime Minister Grand Chief Somare  transited through to New Zealand, he too was not accorded protocol of a Head of State. Instead he was unceremoniously processed by Australian Customs and quarantine, not just once, but several times he was made to undress and take his sandals off. This sparked a diplomatic row and a demand for apology by PNG, but Australia insisted no one is above the law, and every Head of the State ( according to Mr Downer) is accorded the same processes. [ Of course, this was a straight out lie because the Indonesian President, the Chinese Head of State, the US President, the US Secretary for State, the British PM, and others have their aides processed with the highest protocol and they don’t go through these pedestrian and tedious examinations. Their security teams carry weapons, and they are cleared through automatically. These heads of State do not have their bags examined etc.

On the contrary, when Sir Ratu Mara was Prime Minister of Fiji, and was Chair of South Pacific Forum, he constantly had his bags turned upside down and examined by the Australian Customs and Police Services.

Sir Ratu Mara was a Leader of another age in the Pacific. He and Somare are leaders of a vintage that embrace both form and spirit. They communicate and understand what is said as much as what is left unsaid. They perceive silences, and give meaning to space, whether it is a pause or a silently held restraint. Our people have lived in these parts for over 70,000 years and have learnt to make both war and peace, and have held their own, with respect and honour playing the essential role of perpetuating life. Our leaders are leaders of their people, whether in Parliament or out of Parliament. It is not a temporary vocation for those among us who are called to leadership, for theirs is a lifetime commitment and calling.

In the Pacific there has been several very vocal leaders who have called Australia to account for its actions. Sir Michael Somare coined Australian Aid as "Boomerang Aid", and quite rightly so. Hon. Manesseh Songavare MP then Prime Minister of Solomon Islands, correctly sought to hold Australia accountable over the Honiara Riots ( which the Australian Federal Police started by firing tear gas on an otherwise placid crowd). Hon Luther Wenge challenged Australia over the constitutionality of the ECP Program and immunity to Australian Federal Police. In Vanuatu, since the days of Serge Vohor, no one has risen to take the mantle of protection over Vanuatu’s national interests until Hon Sato Kilman has stepped forth after this incident. 

Ironically, it was the previous Prime Minister of Vanuatu, bribed by an Aid package of $AUD 56 Million, that allowed  the Australian Federal Police in, and allowed the Australian Government open access to all financial and other data of Vanuatu as a Tax Haven.  By a stroke of a pen Australia demolished Vanuatu's commercial credibility as a tax haven, and thereby destroyed any chance of it making its own way economically.

Today, Australia is about beating any dissident voices in the Pacific into submission. It has done so with Songavare, and with Somare, and anyone else. Only Hon. Sato Kilman knows why he has been selected for the special bullying this time. The only leader who seems to escape all the traps set by Australia is Luther Wenge, Governor of Morobe Province. Perhaps he may not be so lucky this coming elections. 

The Pacific Leaders must learn that they don’t have to fly through Australia to get anywhere in the world. Their nations need not go or look to Australia to rise or fall as a people. Our destiny is very much our own choices, and if we choose to travel through Australia, we will invariably meet with such unwelcome incidences of those who use the law to subjugate others, those who themselves are constantly subjugated by the law, as opposed to the operation of social structure, mores and culture that underpins and regulates society and gives meaning and value to people. Australia's constants acts of bullying and subjugation of its hosts  is the outworking of its own deep dark struggle of its own  national psyche. It has not accepted that really they are descendants of criminals living among the free people of the Pacific. It is having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that Australia is really living off the proceeds of a monumental crime. It is struggling to come to terms with what to do with and about the Indigenous people, the real landowners. It cannot understand that we in the Pacific could live separate yet rich lives within our own social settings. So as to disrupt us and our being as a people, it interferes with its Aid moneys ( proceeds of crime) , and hoping that by pressing us down it will magically rise as a great nation.

Australia can never be a great nation. It can never be a great nation in the way it treats its neighbours. It can never be a great nation in the  way it treats its indigenous people. It can never be a great nation if it keeps proffering the blood moneys of  the Indigenous owners of Australia as Aid in the region. It can never be a great nation because it can never shed the verdict of history. Above all else, it can never be a great nation because it is a bully, and sooner or later bullies in the school yard learn that they can run out of friends, and also that there is always someone bigger and better than them around.


OneCountry writes on issues of National interest for PNGBlogs he prefers to remain anonymous

Comments

  1. It seems the word 'Melanesian' is threatening to White Australians. On BBC over the weekend Australia was considered barren faraway place for convicted criminals from Britain. Later gold diggers came to Victoria and started competitive spirit that is more clear in sports and aid diplomacy especially in the Melanesian sphere of the South Pacific. Perhaps ANU scholars might wish to rebut this!!!

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