Anna Samson
"Well we killed them in cricket, turned back their refugees/But now the time is right to offer help/Linking arms together, sing aloud in harmony/So we can feel good about ourselves."
So goes part of the lyrics of the satirical ditty written by Triple J's new breakfast team of Jay and The Doctor (aka Jason Whalley and Lindsay McDougall) from the band Frenzel Rhomb.
The song aired on Triple J over the past week and has been labelled "cynical" and "insensitive" by World Vision's Reverend Tim Costello, as well as derided in some mainstream media reports.
"Tsuna-me" is one of many parodies of songs such as "We are the World", released by celebrities to raise money for causes that are at the forefront of public consciousness at particular moments in history. "We're Sending Our Love Down the Well" — a song performed by luminaries such as Krusty the Klown and McBain to generate funds for Timmy whom Bart pretends has fallen into a well — was US TV show The Simpsons' hilarious contribution.
But more importantly, and perhaps what has raised the ire of its detractors, is this song's call for a more critical appraisal of the context in which Australia has embarked on this most recent bout of aid delivery. "Tsuna-me" juxtaposes the crowing about "Australian generosity" with our treatment of refugees, our refusal to forgive onerous debts, our paltry, self-interested foreign aid budget, and the myriad of other worthy causes that perennially slip under the radar. In doing so it highlights just how political aid distribution is, despite attempts by our politicians to dress it up as altruism, and to temper our self-congratulatory collective backslapping with an appeal to observe the historical, economic and political context.
After all, while the Coalition government sheds tears over the hundreds of thousands of people who have perished in this natural disaster, Australian troops are involved in causing more than 100,000 deaths in Iraq, (a figure estimated by the British medical journal the Lancet). Australian Major General Jim Molan AO was second-in-charge during the assault on Fallujah last year that killed around 2000 Iraqi people and displaced more than 250,000 others.
Australia has so far spent as much money propagating the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq as it is providing to Indonesia in its $1 billion aid package. The United States is squandering US$1.585 billion every week in Iraq while it is giving only US$350 million to the tsunami relief effort. To date it has spent US$149 billion on military operations in Iraq and Congress is likely to approve US$100 billion in additional spending this year. Bankrolling two weeks of occupation in Iraq equates to more than the US spent on international relief efforts throughout the whole of 2004.
Yet this has not stopped US President George Bush from trumpeting his nation's aid contribution to tsunami victims as indicative of the US's "kind-hearted" approach to those in need. Those criticisms aside, at least Washington has been relatively more transparent about the political objectives of its aid program: Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice referred to the tsunami as a "wonderful opportunity" to spread US values through the Asia-Pacific region and her predecessor Colin Powell noted that the US's contribution would be an important one in fighting the "war on terror", as most of the nations receiving support have large Muslim populations.
The Australian government has offered the vast majority of its aid directly to the Indonesian government, expressly bypassing intergovernmental coordination organisations such as the United Nations. At the same time, it has downplayed the risk that the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) will use the aid to continue to commit well-documented human rights atrocities against supporters of the independence struggle in Aceh. Already there are reports emerging of the military selling aid to those it suspects are part of the separatist movement and trafficking in children who have been orphaned by the disaster.
It is also unclear how Australia's contributions to Aceh will be able to be distributed, given new policies adopted by AusAID preventing aid money from funding projects that involve individuals whose activities include agitating against Indonesian government policy (or any other existing national government for that matter). Much of Australia's "aid" to Indonesia in the past has been in the form of military assistance, persisting and in some cases increasing, as the TNI was deployed to annihilate government opposition in places such as East Timor. The US has also indicated that in the wake of the tsunami disaster it is willing to resurrect its military assistance to the Indonesian government.
Further, much of the aid being pledged, should it materialise, is far from unconditional. The US, for instance, has extremely restrictive aid policies, with laws prescribing that taxpayer funds be spent on US goods. Half of Australia's aid to Indonesia is in the form of a loan, although the repayment date and interest rate are still unclear. Indonesia already owes Australia A$1 billion, but Australia is also the only country to go on the record as opposing a moratorium on debt repayments as a means of facilitating these poorer countries redirecting much-needed funds into reconstruction.
To date, the vast majority of the recipients of Australia's foreign aid budget have been Australian businesses, based in Australia. Kerry Packer's company GRM received $200 million of AusAID contracts in 2002-03 alone. While AusAID indicated in late 2004 that foreign companies will now be able to tender for aid contracts, no details have been made public so it is unclear if this will translate into real benefits for local NGOs, as opposed to opening the door for large European and US corporations to extract Australian tax dollars.
And while TV personality Ray Martin dons his Akubra hat to interview children orphaned and families internally displaced by the destruction wreaked by the tsunami, PM John Howard's government has continued with its abhorrent treatment of refugees who have sought asylum in Australia, many of whom hail from the very same countries ravaged by the tsunami. There are 500 Sri Lankans, including children, who have been living — in some cases for a number of years — on bridging visas. Soon after the disaster hundreds of them received a letter from the Department of Immigration and Multiculturalism and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) informing them that they will be sent back to Sri Lanka in 28 days, dismissing the strong links these people have developed with their adopted local communities. A further 14 Sri Lankans are languishing in South Australia's Baxter detention centre. Ten of them have lost their entire families and villages to the tsunami, yet DIMIA has refused to fast-track their visa applications.
There is no doubt that many individual Australians have felt compelled to donate money to the "good cause" of helping the tsunami victims and such contributions are to be welcomed and encouraged. The level of support being offered is no small part due to the significant media coverage dedicated to bringing the "human cost" of the disaster home to our living rooms. But the self-congratulatory, smug contentment that has accompanied the mainstream characterisations of these donations, especially the aid given on our behalf by the Australian government, is embarrassing.
The reality that the countries most seriously affected by the tsunami are also among the poorest and most exploited by the wealthy countries, and that this state of disadvantage compounded the suffering experienced by locals and compromised their ability to respond to the disaster, has conveniently been forgotten. Occupation of Iraq, maltreatment of refugees and torture in the US prison camp at Guantanamo Bay are just some of the human tragedies that continue to plague our planet and have been promoted by Howard, who waxes lyrical about the "the good heart and the decency and the humanity, that resides within Australia".
To say that these causes are "political" and therefore should not attract the same level of community support, column inches, benefit concerts and celebrity commentary as a natural disaster is a cop-out. If anything, the fact that these appalling situations have been created by governments, and were in large part preventable, should create a greater impetus on all of us to do something about it. More importantly, we need to stop our politicians from reaping undeserved political capital from aid money that should be seen in the context of Australia's domestic and foreign policies.
[Abridged from <http://www.vibewire.net/articles>. Anna Samson is an activist with Sydney's Stop the War Coalition and the Refugee Action Coalition.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 2, 2005.
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