Shane Warne and the China factor: One reporter’s tour of South-East Asia

For many Australians I imagine the death of Shane Warne was one of those “I remember where I was when I heard” moments, such was the shock and weight of it.

It’s certainly the case for me. I was working in Thailand at the time and had just returned to my hotel in Bangkok, where I was to stay one more night, when a message on my phone alerted me to the news.

Shane Warne is farewelled with a traditional Buddhist ceremony on Koh Samui.Credit: Facebook

It was just over a year since I’d begun as South-East Asia correspondent and after processing what I’d just heard for a moment, I knew this would probably be the biggest story I’d encounter.

My hunch was confirmed after I set off on the first flight the next morning to Koh Samui, where the cricket icon had collapsed while on holiday and where only a few foreign media could reach because of pandemic restrictions.

The intense days that followed were spent trying to piece together the last hours of Warne’s life and chronicling the dramatic twists and bizarre turns of the following days, from the police investigation, the intervention of Australian officials to fast-track repatriation, to a woman entering the back of an ambulance van transporting his body.

As someone with a background mostly in sports journalism, I’d come across Warne, the commentator, in the past, and while I didn’t know him beyond the occasional “hey, mate” in the corridors and stairwells of stadiums, it was surreal covering this tragic tale.

I’m reflecting on that week in Thailand as I finish my three-year posting, which has gone by far too quickly.

When I started working from our new bureau in Singapore in early 2021, we were all living in a very different world. At the height of the global health crisis, with international travel at a virtual standstill and airports all but deserted, my wife and our two sons had the plane over from Sydney almost to ourselves.

Chris Barrett, left, joined Indonesian President Joko Widodo for a tour of Palmerah market in Jakarta last year before interviewing him at the Merdeka Palace.Credit: Jefri Tarigan

While that was a novelty, I arrived unsure of when I’d next be able to fly, a central function of a reporter with a brief to cover a vast and disparate patch of the world taking in 11 countries and some 650 million people.

Thankfully, after being grounded initially, I’ve been able to spend much of my time wearing out my passport, from northern Laos to the south coast of Timor-Leste.

When I’d applied to be the correspondent in South-East Asia, one of the great appeals to me was the sheer variety the position promised. That has definitely rung true. On one day you could be in Bali for a world leaders summit, or in Vietnam for an Australian prime ministerial visit; the next day you might be tackling the clash between Islamism and popular culture in Malaysia, knocking on the door of a people smuggler in Sri Lanka or delving into the liberalisation of weed in Thailand.

Documenting the misadventures of Australians abroad has, of course, been one feature of the role and there were a few classics of the genre, none more prominent than a young Queenslander’s rampage in Indonesia’s deeply conservative Aceh province.

There was also the incredible survival of four Australian tourists who had disappeared at sea off Sumatra. That was one of those occasions that initially, to me at least, seemed headed for an inevitable, grim outcome. But I’d also been struck by the confidence of one of their fathers when I rang him on the night their boat had gone missing and as I made my way towards the island of Nias, from where they had set off. It turned out he was right. The quartet was discovered floating on surfboards in the ocean 36 hours later, although one of their Indonesian guides has never been found.

The region was mercifully light on another reporting staple – major natural disasters – for most of my stint. Sadly, however, there was no shortage of human tragedy.

Two of the young fishermen from Sri Lanka who attempted to travel by boat to Australia and were intercepted on the day of the federal election in 2022.Credit: Pradeep Dambarage

The carnage wrought by the military in Myanmar following its 2021 takeover was a regular topic but one memory that stands out is the dinner I had with a group of Burmese students near the Thai-Myanmar border, across which they had just escaped. They should have been in high school and university but instead had joined the Generation Z resistance, fighting the military with homemade weapons until the bombing became too heavy and they saw too many of their friends die.

I was also in Sri Lanka to witness a staggering economic meltdown that led to the ousting of its president and prime minister, the Rajapaksa brothers, and brought on a resumption of desperate people boarding boats for Australia. Among them were 12 young fishermen whose interception on the day of the Australian federal election in 2022 became the subject of controversy when the Morrison government broke protocol and announced it. When we tracked down and interviewed the men at the home of one of their parents in Negombo, they said they had no idea of the fuss they would cause and weren’t even aware an election was on. They just wanted a new start at life to put food on the table for their families.

Singapore, my base for three years, is seen as a steady outlier in a sometimes chaotic neighbourhood, but there was plenty going on there, too. First was the heart-wrenching story of Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, an intellectually impaired Malaysian sentenced to death for bringing drugs into the city-state, which we brought to international attention. I won’t quickly forget sitting in court as his family failed in a final bid to spare his life and he asked to hold his mother’s hand one last time. He was hanged at dawn the next day.

Amid that despair and some of the other grim occurrences I was dispatched to report on, such as a daycare centre attack in north-east Thailand and the assassination of a provincial governor in the Philippines, for example, the people most closely affected were time and again wanting to be heard.

Fortunately, I’ve also found leaders eager to speak to an Australian audience, among them Indonesian President Joko Widodo, with whom I visited a market in Jakarta, as well as Malaysia’s Anwar Ibrahim and Timorese independence hero Xanana Gusmao, with whom I sat down shortly before their rise to power.

As I sign off, I must highlight a couple of trends that look likely to gather more pace, potentially with broader consequences.

Speaking to independence hero Xanana Gusmao in Suai, Timor-Leste ahead of an election that returned him as prime minister.Credit: Raimundos Oki

One is the continuing ascent of family politics, which has only added to a consensus that South-East Asia is suffering a democratic decline. I was in the Philippines in 2022 as the Marcos-Duterte juggernaut won an election in a canter and in Cambodia last year as Hun Sen passed the baton to his son after a poll that was a fait accompli. In Indonesia, the outgoing Widodo is also accused of forming his own dynasty, with his eldest child bidding to be vice president in a couple of weeks.

The other even more dangerous pattern worth underlining is the ratcheting up of tension in the South China Sea. Beijing’s bullying of the Philippines and its fishermen has been going on for years, but with an emboldened Manila drawing closer to the United States, the relentless water-cannoning and blocking of vessels seems nearer than ever to spilling over into something immeasurably more serious. There is also anxiety, particularly in the Philippines, about that other potential flashpoint, Taiwan, no more so than at its northernmost point, the Batanes Islands, where I ventured to write about the contingency plans being drawn up for a Chinese invasion.

If that all sounds rather dire, I should point out there has been a lighter side to the gig. I thoroughly enjoyed assignments such as exploring the intersection between the supernatural and politics in Indonesia, which I did with our wonderful Jakarta-based reporter Karuni Rompies, and charting the advent of Michelin-starred street food in Singapore. Other favourites included joining Penny Wong as she returned to her home town of Kota Kinabalu and a journey for Good Weekend into the Malaysian jungle to learn about the mission to save its endangered national animal, the tiger.

Foreign news can be skewed towards the US, Europe and latterly China, but when it comes to South-East Asia, a region whose fortunes and future are in many ways intertwined with ours, I’ve always found there to be high engagement with our coverage. It’s been a great privilege bringing it to you.

Thanks for reading.

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