Tsunami Tests World's Resolve

Editorial - Canberra Times

The crest of the Bay of Bengal tsunami looms high at the dawn of 2005. It is, for Australians, but also all citizens of the world, an enormous test.

It is one which we will inevitably seem to be failing for some time yet, because the news of what the disaster has already wrought will continue to get worse for some time, the battle to prevent further loss of life a losing one for a while, and the challenge of restoring as best as is possible the shattered lives of more than 5million people rendered homeless and bereft by the disaster one which will tax the humanitarian resources and the organisation capacity of many countries.

From the disaster, however, comes great opportunity to lend a helping hand, to extend to people who are often ignorant or suspicious of us some of the benefits of our economies, our civilisation and our culture, and to show everyone that we act not only according to selfish and narrow geopolitical and military interests but to promote peace by promoting the health, welfare and freedom of all.

Australia is taking a lead role, along with the United States, India and Japan, in organising disaster relief. Our material contribution, in money, resources and people terms, is already one of the greatest, either in absolute and per capita terms, and will steadily increase, probably to towards the half-billion-dollar mark by the end of the year.

Our particular project is Indonesia, our close neighbour and friend, and the nation which has suffered most from the earthquakes and the tsunami these spawned. That involves no lack of concern for other victim nations, most of which will in any event get some immediate direct Australian aid, because the organisation of the international relief effort has divided the task around.

We help, of course, first because Indonesians are our friends and because it is natural - indeed it would, for us at least, be natural even if they were our enemies - to help those devastated by natural disaster. All the more so when the overwhelming proportion of the victims are village people, fishermen, farmers and graziers far removed from any international, or even national, politics, caught without warning in a colossal catastrophe. Their very remoteness from their own national life, the poor quality of their physical communications even to major towns on their own island let alone to other parts of the world, and, of course, their relative poverty makes the task of providing relief a daunting one, the more so because of the urgency of providing some food, some shelter and some protection from the polluted water supplies and the risk of contagious disease.

We can expect soon to learn that the initial response to the disaster was a muddle and that even now the provision of relief is being impeded by disorganisation, panic, a lack of coordination, bureaucracy, and, probably, not a little local politics. No doubt, before it is over, both international and Australian agencies will be criticised for these sins. Yet they are, to a degree, inevitable in the immediate confusion.

The real leadership will be in taking charge, in mobilising the resources available, in planning the efficient deployment of the resources quickly, and the development within the region of communications systems more efficient than before the disaster.

But much more is involved than immediate relief, urgent as that task is now. Hundreds of thousands of people have been wiped out. They have lost family and relatives, and many, of course, will have the burden of serious injuries. Even those who survive the first fortnight (when, often, disease, starvation, lack of water and lack of shelter kill as many again after such a disaster) have lost everything, in some cases even their land. They have lost their industries, their work, their crops and the wherewithal to start again. No-one can restore to people some of the most important things they have lost, but it must be a part of the relief effort that we equip them with enough to give them a real chance to make new lives.

As we do so, working alongside Indonesians and citizens of other nations, there may well be some strange paradoxes. It is, for example, always noticeable that the attention span of much of the Western world is relatively short, and that, after a short time (and, often, extraordinary personal generosity) people get a bit bored and turn their attention to the next disaster, elsewhere, or to something distracting, such as a Royal wedding. That's a phenomenon different from, but compounded by, what some have described as compassion fatigue. Perhaps some Australian citizens can afford to get bored with the great international project on which we are now engaged. But Australia as a whole cannot afford to be. Indeed, if we give some appearance of rushing in and playing the hero at the crisis hour, but are thought to have slunk off once the work became tedious and less glamorous, it might do us more damage, in regional goodwill terms, than if we had not appeared at all.

The greater proportion of the people of Indonesia are little directly affected by the disaster, however much they are shocked and horrified and wonder how they can help. They live, like the people of western Sumatra, in villages with poor roads and communications, and most of their preoccupations are with their farms, their crops, the price of fuel and the high unemployment raging through Indonesia.

Ironically, the attention of many of them will refocus on their own immediate problems probably rather more quickly than will the eyes of some of the people of the West. Perhaps their politicians, alert to public moods, will themselves waver in their determination to cut the red tape and get things done.

It will be likewise in some of the other countries affected. However many millions have been directly affected in India, for example, many hundreds of millions more will feel some empathy but soon turn to matters directly affecting themselves. It may come to seem an irony, and a frustration, that it will be the outside world, or those charged with representing our interests, that we are ploughing on as energy seems to dissipate. But this makes the task no less worth doing, indeed no less essential to be done. And if we succeed, it will truly be a happy, or a happier, year for all of us.