Tsunami lesson is be prepared

Time fades the memory of distant disasters but many Australians well into adulthood will remember first hearing of the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami. In an age when news did not arrive instantly by phones, it took time for the enormity to be apparent. But by stumps at the cricket, as we came home from the beach, in from the garden or left holiday lunches, word was reaching us that nature had wrought horrors on nations to our north. We heard that an earthquake under the ocean had created giant waves that crashed on to coasts from Africa to India. By the morning, there were reports of tens of thousands of dead, including Australians, with Thailand, India, Sri Lanka and Indonesia all hard hit. As more news arrived, the total grew, especially in the Indonesian province of Aceh, on the northwest side of Sumatra, where the size of the catastrophe became clear – of 230 000 or so people who died in the tsunami, 170 000 were there.

In the city of Banda Aceh, 60,000 perished – one-third of the population. Infrastructure was washed away, Aceh’s main hospital was full of mud, there was neither food nor clean water and half a million people were homeless.

In the days and weeks that followed, the survivors stood up – to bury the dead, to help each other cope, to restart services. Above all, the Free Aceh Movement, which had fought a near 30-year campaign for independence, stood down, as did the Indonesian military. Neither side had a moral choice – international aid was not going to flow into a combat zone. In the first crucial weeks, the Indonesian government delivered, managing immediate relief. In the long term, creating a single agency to co-ordinate activity and pool donor funds helped reconstruction. And Australia was there from the start. Prime minister John Howard was the first foreign leader to talk to Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, with Australia quick off the blocks to help. There was an immediate $70m in tsunami aid, half for Indonesia. It was followed by $1bn for Aceh and other Indonesian regions announced on January 5. This was a huge sum 20 years ago, designed to have a lasting impact. The Australian Defence Force started as it was tasked to continue: advanced personnel were in Aceh within 36 hours of the disaster, preparing for 900 aircrew and engineers, medics and sailors who followed, creating the conditions to best use Australia’s aid. This was the ADF that had stared down Indonesian army-backed militia in the clash over East Timor independence.

But don’t look for the records of the emergency decision to help Aceh in the New Year’s Day release of 2004 cabinet papers – Mr Howard says the dimensions of the disaster meant there was no time for standard processes in making a humanitarian decision. It was also in our national interest to establish the foundation of a positive relationship. Aid for Aceh established Australia as a neighbour Indonesia could work with politically, one that would reach out in a crisis. Indonesia’s decision to send home the remaining five of the Bali Nine drug-smuggling gang symbolises a relationship based on reciprocal goodwill. It was a gesture Australia should match by encouraging Indonesia’s ambition to join the OECD.

For the world’s most populous Muslim nation to be a member of a global organisation of mainly advanced market economies is in the interests of all Indonesians and Australians – prosperous democracies are natural friends. For Indonesia to have joined the BRIC bloc – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – as was possible last year would have inevitably created potential tensions on our northern approaches, which we do not need. That Indonesia held a November navy exercise with Russia, while its forces were also training with Australia’s, is of no military matter, following the Australia-Indonesia Defence Co-operation Agreement signed in August. But it does signal that new President Prabowo Subianto will not be taken for granted. As Defence Minister Richard Marles acknowledges, our “relationship with Indonesia is essential to our nation’s security and prosperity”.

It would help to promote this if the government did more to demonstrate a national engagement with Indonesia.

The lesson of the 2004 tsunami for Indian Ocean nations is that governments and communities must be prepared for the inevitable one to come – it is the most appropriate way to honour the memory of innocent victims, locals and visitors alike. For Australians, our national response set a standard for government: do what is right without pausing to calculate national advantage. For world-embracing democracies, doing the former generally helps the latter.