It must be hilarious to be a rich white male in a rich white country, and have the freedom to make jokes about other people’s homes disappearing beneath the waves caused by your rich white coal mining mates.
At least, it would be if it wasn’t so pitiful.
Yet this is just what federal Immigration Minister Peter Dutton did last week in a conversation with ex-PM Abbott and Social Services Minister Morrison. Well obviously, it’s funny to make racist and demeaning comments about Australia’s northern neighbours, including the monstrous “Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re, you know, about to have water lapping at your door”.
The Carteret Islands near Bougainville are one of the first places in the world to be devastated by rising sea waters. Just looking at vision of sea water inundating the land is sobering. The coconut trees are dead and the cassava and banana growing fields are swamped with salt water. Previously glorious tropical forests are dead and dying. The people can’t move inland because there is no inland – the islands are tiny and the sea moves in from all sides. There are still fish and turtles (although in declining numbers due to overfishing elsewhere) but no vegetables, fruit or grains. Some comes in by boat, but even this won’t be viable soon. Every storm washes away more land and brings the water closer and closer to homes.
How do I know what it’s like in the Carterets? Because my brother, Pip Starr, made an amazing film about them not long before his death. Released posthumously in 2009, “The First Wave” examines the disappearance of the islands and the despair of their inhabitants. It’s an important but heartbreaking work. And if it’s hard for us to watch it from the sidelines, how much harder must it be to be in the middle of it, as these stoic but highly oppressed people are?
The Islanders’ only choice is to relocate to Bougainville, but this is also fraught with difficulty. The mainlanders can’t cope with newcomers, as Bougainville is already seriously deprived after decades of neglect by the New Guinea government. There are no homes, jobs or schools for these climate refugees, and nowhere else for them to go. Thanks to funds from churches and charities some issues are being addressed, but the process is slow and tensions remain high. Several hundred islander families have already re-located, and more will follow as the Carterets become permanently uninhabitable in a very few years.
Yet all this happens far from rich white sensibilities. Most of us have never heard of the Islanders’ trials. I only know so much because my brother educated me, and because after his death I went to Bougainville with my mother to undertake some volunteer teaching and try to help, just a little.
An amazing Carterets woman my brother befriended, Ursula Rakova, runs a charity called Tulele Peisa to help her people, and she’d just built a new school to accommodate Carteret refugees. My mother and I – she a highly experienced teacher and retired school principal – were invited to assist with teacher training and resourcing.
I’ve seen the already over-stressed villages the Islanders are meant to integrate into, and the crowded school. The roads wash out every wet season making transport impossible, and there are few or no community services – no health clinics, no ambulances, no safety nets. While we were, a young woman miscarried twins in the next house, with no medical care either before or afterwards.
So Dutton and Abbott’s insensitivity couldn’t be worse – the mind-numbing problems these islanders face are a direct result of the actions of privileged people in privileged countries. Even worse, the three Ministers having their little joke were men, while those most affected by climate change are women. Women aren’t as mobile or flexible as men because they may be pregnant or caring for small children, and they’re poorer to start with so additional problems hit harder. They also lose out in the fight for scarce resources because of vulnerability, cultural conditioning, and lack of education.
To say Dutton’s little quip with the boys heaps insult on top of injury for these women seems inadequate. Yet there it is.
The jokes were also abhorrent to those who keep putting themselves in personal danger to save the planet. The Islanders had enormous respect for my brother as he tried so hard to help them. He lived with them and integrated into their lives for months. He also contracted a virulent strain of malaria which made his subsequent life very difficult and almost certainly contributed to his death only a year later. There are many heroes like my brother Pip, and all of them are demeaned by people who think these issues are funny.
What I’d like to do is put Dutton and his sidekick funster Tony in a room with some large, angry Carteret Islanders and a copy of “The First Wave”. And leave them there until they’ve watched the film, talked to the Islanders and can sincerely apologise for their insufferable superiority. Not the embarrassing non-apology Dutton managed when the issue blew up in the government’s face, but a real apology backed with dollars (lots of dollars) to help out.
On second thought, let’s include our new PM Malcolm Turnbull in the conversation too. Maybe he’ll be able to drum up more empathy for the Carterets.
I’m not holding my breath though, after discovering just a few hours ago that Turnbull is already downgrading climate action in a deal with the National Party.
Perhaps the only way is to invite all of them to go to the Carterets to see for themselves exactly what’s going on. Then leave them there, permanently. Because it’s time to ask some people serious about the future of our planet to sit at the grown up’s table.