June 11, 2005

The Whingers of Oz

Eric Ellis on the weeping, xenophobic hysteria in Australia over the conviction of Schapelle Corby for smuggling drugs into Indonesia

SCHAPELLE Corby, the 27-year-old daughter of a fish-and-chip shop proprietress from Queensland, is not your usual Australian heroine. She is a drug smuggler, and was last month sentenced by a court in Indonesia to 20 years in prison. Back home, however, they won’t hear a word against her. According to the polls, something like 70 per cent of Australians are either members of her fan club or keenly sympathetic to her. One can understand the sympathy — 20 years does seem a bit rough — but the hysterical and uncritical adulation is bewildering, and very Old Australian.

‘Our Schapelle’ was convicted of trying to sneak 4.1 kg of ‘skunk’, a resin-rich high-quality marijuana, into Bali, the Antipodean Benidorm. She insists she didn’t do it. She says the pillowcase-sized plastic bag of dope which fitted snugly into her surfboard case and was discovered by customs agents must have been placed there by dodgy Australian airport baggage-handlers. The folks back home have bought the story.

For nine months now, Corby’s plight has been beamed live into sitting rooms from Perth to Sydney. It’s the ultimate reality TV show. Corby, who seems to be the only bule (foreigner) in Bali who doesn’t sweat, has adapted well to her starring role. Jail gruel has slimmed her down from a plumpish and brassy suburban shrill to a demure girl-next-door. She's also added an elegant and much-fingered necklace crucifix to her outfit. The news execs love it, but their concern for Corby contrasts with their apparent indifference to the plight of the dozen or so other Australians — Asian Australians — held elsewhere in the region and either charged with or convicted of drug-smuggling.

Surrounding Our Schapelle is a cast of characters made for the tabloids: a screeching big sister (Mercedes), a dope-smoking Dad (Mike) and a hysterical Mum (Ros). But why ‘Schapelle’? The Chappell brothers, Ian and Greg, dominated Australian cricket when the Corbys’ younger daughter was born. Australians everywhere were naming their boys after these heroes. That was tough for Aussies with daughters. But Ros — or so the probably apocryphal story goes — spotted the feminine possibilities in ‘Chappell’, and named her new daughter with what she imagined was a certain je ne sais quoi of Euro-sophistication to give her new daughter a leg out of the grim Aussie suburbs.

Portly Ros and the beer-gutted Mike have long been estranged but they’ve briefly got back together for the sake of their daughter. Mike, who has cancer and a magnificent salt-and-pepper beard, has taken to visiting his daughter in prison in the Ocker-Abroad uniform of shorts, singlet and flip-flops. When someone suggested to him that he might wish to smarten up a bit out of respect for the local culture, he showed up at the jail the next day in a singlet bearing the logo of Indonesia’s national beer brand, Bintang. Mike likes to shriek ‘Schapelle’s cummin’ home, she’s cummin’ home,’ thrusting a triumphant fist in the air as the hacks scribble away. ‘How’s that gunna happen, mate?’ the hackpack inquire. ‘In a plane, mate, in a plane,’ yells back Corby, before he’s whisked off. Now the hacks are perplexed. ‘Was he takin’ the piss?’ they ask themselves.

Aussie tourists generously break away from their Bali beach-bar holidays to lend Corby moral support. Well-meaning, all of them. One Schapellite, Georgie from Sydney, complained to me on the courtroom steps in Bali that he couldn’t ‘hear anything because of the “Mewslims” at the bloody mosque going off’. I explained that although Indonesia is a mostly Muslim country, Bali itself is a Hindu island, and the noise that annoys him wasn’t the muezzin’s call to prayer but a kidung, a midday Hindu mantra chanted briefly around the island and ... but I soon lost him.

Back home, as well as being a TV ratings bonanza — Australians call it a ‘barbecue stopper’ — l’affaire Corby has been big on radio: Australia has a lively talkback culture. The Sydney radio announcer Malcolm T. Elliott gave a flavour of white Australian prejudices when he asserted on air that Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono — or ‘Wham Bam Thank You Mam Yiddi-yonio’ as he called him — and the Corby judges were monkeys. And here is Elliott in an exchange with a caller:

Elliott: The judges don’t even speak English, mate, they’re straight out of the trees, if you’ll excuse my expression.

Caller: Don’t you think that disrespects the whole of our neighbouring nation?

Elliott: I have total disrespect for our neighbouring nation, my friend. Total disrespect.... Whoa, give them a banana and away they go.

Remarks like this, if uttered in Indonesia or, indeed, most Western countries, would have resulted in Elliott’s appearing before some sort of race relations tribunal, copping a heavy fine and possibly a jail sentence, certainly the sack. But in Schapalia, it barely raised an eyebrow; Elliott still spouts his objectionable bile over the airwaves.

Since Corby’s conviction supporters have even sent bullets with threatening notes and what appeared to be anthrax-like substances to Jakarta’s diplomats in Australia. (The substances were later found to be harmless, but not before full-scale terror alerts had been mounted, all talc and all action.) Sceptics have been forced to whisper to each other lest some eavesdropping banshee hurls abuse at them for daring to doubt Our Schapelle.

Australians fancy they see something of the Gallipoli spirit in Corby. She has been cast as a humble ‘Aussie battler’ abandoned by her government and struggling in vain to overcome an insurmountable foreign adversary. The enemy is not ‘Johnny Turk’ this time but the ‘brutal’ Indonesian legal system which has the nerve to conduct its affairs in Bahasa Indonesia, not Australian English. As Corby fans see it, the bases were clearly all loaded against their girl, the sinister outcome predetermined in Indonesia’s murky shadows.

In fact, Corby’s defence came up with little that even vaguely suggested her innocence. The closest thing to an argument in her favour came from an Australian criminologist who testified that Corby wasn’t the drug-smuggling type. By Southeast Asian standards, the 20-year sentence was relatively lenient. The prosecutor backed off from the death penalty and demanded life instead, and Indonesians took this as a sign that their country is at last becoming more liberal. If she’d been convicted in Singapore or Malaysia, she’d have been sentenced to death.

Myriad petitions have been raised in Australia and a thousand ‘Free Schapelle’ websites created. Worse, from Canberra’s point of view, there have been calls to boycott Bali and Indonesia, to withdraw aid, and to stop trade. Australia was the world’s most generous donor to the tsunami relief in Aceh, but now outraged Australians are reneging on their commitment, wanting their donations back. The Salvation Army was forced to put out a statement that a recent drive for funds was for needy Australians and not Indonesia-bound.

Indonesians are bewildered. Sabam Siagian, Jakarta’s ambassador in Canberra from 1991 to 1995, says: ‘This needless reaction over her, it’s incomprehensible to me. Australia has always boasted to us that it is an advanced society but this inexplicable display of emotion has Indonesians wondering if this is still the case. Australians must understand that this particular court operated very well, very fairly, that it took its task very seriously and correctly.’ Then, in a backhanded swipe at the army of Australian academics who build careers analysing ‘mysterious’ Indonesia, he adds, ‘I think we Indonesians have to make more of an effort to understand the Australian psychology.’

The reaction is deeply unhinged, and baffling to an Asia that has come to see Australia as a no-nonsense, logical country, one trying to shake off the remains of its ‘White Australia’ policy and engage with their region on its own terms. But that’s not how it is.

In many Australian households, Asia is seen as the place where Bad Things Happen. Despite their closeness to the region, many Australians have trouble distinguishing between Asia’s disparate cultures. Where Europeans and North Americans might see an exotic region of boundless economic opportunity, many Australians still regard their backyard with deep suspicion — a threatening, teeming hellhole of unscrupulous religious zealots who have dubious toilet habits, rip you off, speak strange languages and eat cats, dogs and rats (all overspiced, of course) and are desperate to come to Australia and steal Australian jobs.

Anyone who dares offer a rational, informed view is likely to be vilified. When I reported the case in April, I got mail declaring the Indonesians were ‘worse than Hitler’. Post a contrarian view to a Corby website and you’ll promptly be banned and abused by its ‘moderator’.

The demographer Bernard Salt says the Corby matter explodes what has always been the myth of Australian egalitarianism. Salt has previously noted, controversially, that Australia, like most countries, has an educated minority, a cultural and cosmopolitan elite that directs its politics, its economy, its popular culture, with the majority functioning as essentially its market. He says that Australia’s cosmopolitans account for at most one million of the nation’s 20 million people.

But the elite aren’t calling the shots on this one. There has been talk of a ‘redneck coup’. And the circus shows no signs of packing up. A new lawyer has just been appointed to handle Our Schapelle’s appeal. I met him last week, and he did not disappoint me. His name is Hotman Paris Hutapea, and he carries two sidearms (a Beretta and a Walther), sports shiny blue suits and an impressive mullet, and drives to work in a Humvee. His fingers drip with opal and diamond rings. He and big sister Mercedes should hit it off.

Eric Ellis, an Australian, is the Southeast Asian correspondent for Fortune magazine and Australia's The Bulletin.

LETTERS TO THE SPECTATOR

From David Hockney

Sir: Eric Ellis is way way off in his piece ('The whingers of Oz', 11 June). Why are the Australians angry? I would think it's because the 20-year sentence passed on Schapelle Corby for smuggling marijuana is savage. No doubt Eric Ellis has never smoked any marijuana, but it is a harmless and pleasant plant that, like a couple of cocktails, makes you feel relaxed and, unlike them, quiet. Why is the stuff still illegal? I assume it's the power of the alcohol lobby (commerce being behind most things).

Alcohol has damaged and killed friends of mine, but I've never known anyone harmed by the weed, whose relaxing pleasure I have enjoyed for 40 years, and tobacco (now another demonised natural thing) for 50 years. The demonisation of tobacco, by the way, is supported by the press (especially the Guardian) without debating the consequences. That everyone will be better off without tobacco cannot be proved. What takes its place? Antidepressants and other pharmaceuticals that have all sorts of side-effects and unknown long-term consequences. Of course the pharmaceutical companies are supporting the anti-smoking campaign.

The BMA is irresponsible for not seeing the consequences of its call for an outright smoking ban, which is to criminalise another industry. The increase in tobacco-smuggling has profound effects on attitudes to law and society.

The alcohol lobby, meanwhile, must have noticed lots of people at weekends just drink water, even in clubs; they don't need alcohol because they have got something better.

Alcohol causes more crime and deaths than any drug. Not that it should be banned. Like drugs, it's pleasant, and when it was made illegal in America they just made their own.

The Australians should stand up for their freedoms and continue to support Schapelle Corby. They daren't say marijuana is harmless, so I will, speaking from experience.

David Hockney London W8