Asylum-seeker's namesake remains on Nauru to tell tale

LIKE most Nauruans, Nerida-Ann Hubert can see the benefits of having the asylum-seekers back.

Nerida-Ann Hubert

LIKE most Nauruans, Nerida-Ann Hubert can see the benefits of having the asylum-seekers back: good for the local economy, a tick with the international community, and what's wrong with helping the neighbours when they're paying?

But she need only say her oldest boy's name, Guard-Ahmedullah, to be reminded of another side to the Pacific Solution's second coming. Ms Hubert's 10-year-old is named after an Afghan boy who was befriended by her husband when he worked as a lifeguard for the boatpeople dispatched to Nauru under the Howard government's iteration of Australian offshore processing.

It's partly why Ms Hubert, 32, feels such a personal attachment to the decision by Nauru to jump at the opportunity to reopen at least one of the detention centres it operated on Australia's behalf from 2001-08.

While she is all for the jobs it should create on her tiny, impoverished island home near the Equator, where unemployment is well north of 25 per cent, she wonders about the damage it will cause to Nauru's reputation.

"The last time they (asylum-seekers) were here, we had a lot of very bad coverage," Ms Hubert says. "Personally, I thought it gave Nauru a bad name: they were calling my home a hellhole and things like that. It's not. A lot of us resented how Nauru was portrayed."

Hers is one of the few questioning voices to be heard on Nauru. For once, the island's fractious politicians are in accord, with an opposition MP joining the government taskforce that is negotiating terms with Canberra. Local businesses are eyeing off contracts to refurbish and supply the Howard-era camp at Topside. People are talking about getting in their job applications.

But there are nuanced differences from last time. The term "detention facility" has been binned by the island's governors: Nauru will host one or more OPCs -- offshore processing centres -- and the emphasis is on how unjail-like they will be.

Asylum-seekers will be able to come and go during the day, albeit under escort for "their own protection", according to former foreign minister Mathew Batsiua.

Yesterday at the local marina, where fishermen put to sea in home-made canoes in the cool of the evening to catch tuna that sells for up to $30/kg to the Taiwanese, security officer Rainiedem Ika said he had friends who had worked at Topside and the other camp, State House, with Australian pay and conditions. They wanted back in.

His job to keep watch over the island's vast phosphate loading terminal is fairly typical. It pays $214.50 a fortnight, before overtime, and from that Mr Ika, 31, feeds a wife and seven children. "I think it's very hard," he said .

Ms Hubert, the chairwoman of Nauru's National Youth Council, said the boy for whom her son was named eventually went to Australia. She doesn't know what happened to him, but he retained a special place in her heart. "When my son asks where his name came from, I tell him the story," she said.