Welcome to Nauru. Land area: 21 square kilometres, the world's smallest republic. Permanent population: around 10,000. Temporary population: name any figure — or, better still, don't name one. Chief natural resource: bird droppings (until it was exhausted in fertilising Australia). Chief economic activity: human dumping ground.
Nauru has joined Papua New Guinea in the Cohort of the Willing — willing, that is, to take dollops of Australian money to hide away an Australian problem. Substitute 'asylum seekers' for 'convicts', and it recalls the way Australia was used by Great Britain in the 18th century to dispose of a British problem. The distinction between convict and asylum seeker is largely semantic since some of the money changing hands will be used to build a new prison on the island.
Nauru supported a native population for three thousand years. The British sea captain who first sighted it in 1798 named it Pleasant Island. Then came the phosphate miners who, within a century, had carted away all the usable guano and left 80 per cent of Pleasant Island scarred and barren. In recent years, the country has resorted to other means to generate income, including selling passports, offering a tax haven and facilitating money laundering. (Nauru, along with Kiribati and Tuvalu, uses the Australian dollar as its official currency.)
After serving variously as a watering hole for British whalers, a Germany colony, a UN-mandated territory under Australian administration and a Japanese air base during the war, Nauru's mainly Micronesian population gained their independence in 1968. A trust fund was set up to receive a share of earnings from phosphate mining, as an insurance policy for the future, only to have most of the money lost through bad investment decisions. Over the past decade, fund assets have been sold off to meet current expenditures.
Today, more than ever, Nauru depends for its existence on Australia, and specifically the detention business. Any form of bilateral negotiation must be compromised by this dependency. The $30 million dollars it is due to receive under the latest refugee diversion scheme is equivalent to nearly 50 per cent of GDP (already inflated by previous 'Pacific Solution' money). Australia also supplies Nauru's defence needs, its court of last appeal for criminal cases (the High Court of Australia) and its most popular sporting pastime (Australian Rules football).
But according to data published by the UN, social indictors for Nauru are in stark contrast to Australia's (figures in brackets). Population below the age of 15: 35 per cent (19 per cent); male life expectancy: 55 years (80); infant mortality: 46 per 1000 live births (five); gross school enrolment per 100 persons: 74 for males and 83 for females (115/118). Nauru's rates of obesity and type-2 diabetes are the highest in the world. Nauru has had 22 changes of administration in the past 24 years, with the current president elected to office just three months ago.
The vulnerable nation has many legitimate needs; turning it into a place of exile for hundreds, potentially thousands, is a shameful quid pro quo for development aid. In the words of Amnesty International, Australia has created 'a toxic mix of uncertainty, unlawful detention and inhumane conditions'. The notion that the tiny island offers a suitable home for the permanent resettlement for any significant number of refugees — one provision of the new deal — is risible. Such a flawed arrangement must inevitably produce compounding problems.
The 129 asylum seekers charged following the riot and arson last month have swamped the Nauruan judicial system. The two Australian lawyers available to offer the accused pro bono assistance cannot cope with the workload. Bail hearings are being conducted in batches of ten. Having supposedly handed over the problem to this sovereign nation to deal with under its own laws, calls are now going out for more Australian aid to ensure the accused can receive a fair trial.
The false dichotomy used to justify this policy — indefinite detention is preferable to drowning at sea, the 'lesser of two evils' logic — needs to be exposed for what it is. The belated concern being expressed over loss of life does not ring true. After all, the SIEV-X tragedy, the worst known sinking, in which 353 drowned, happened as long ago as October 2001. Setting the bar for a 'solution' just above the threshold of death has a chilling precedent in the ghettos, gulags and concentration camps of other days, other places.
Australia is surrounded by a host of under-developed states reliant upon foreign aid; their vulnerability is due, in part, to a defunct colonial structure from which Australia once profited. To make our response to the humanitarian needs of Papua New Guinea and Nauru conditional on their playing a quasi-colonial role as a refugee staging ground or place of final resettlement is to convey an image of Australians as a patronising people who do not hesitate to wash their dirty linen in their neighbour's stream.
Walter Hamilton is a former ABC foreign correspondent and author of Children of the Occupation: Japan's Untold Story.