Reporting the full story of asylum-seekers on Nauru

There are two starkly different Naurus — the supposed hellhole of sermons preached by the implacable opponents of offshore processing and the laid-back island republic that contented locals more or less happily share with refugees and asylum-seekers. The reality of life on Nauru is one of light and shade, as our Perth-based journalist Paige Taylor reports today. And that is what any open-minded person should expect.

Of course Nauru is not where refugees and asylum-seekers want to be, a fact that has to be weighed when hearing their accounts directly or mediated by activists. Offshore centres must offer decent and humane conditions, but denying unlawful boat arrivals entry to our mainland is crucial to breaking the business model of people-smugglers and discouraging their clients. Otherwise, wealth and a willingness to deal with criminal syndicates determine the makeup of our humanitarian program, rather than the orderly resettlement of people waiting in refugee camps where they have been vetted by the UN refugee agency UNHCR.

With the limited options available, it’s not surprising that some people taken against their will to Nauru come to a less jaundiced view of it across time. It’s true some still suffer from a crippling uncertainty (although that is a state of affairs they helped bring about). Others discover there are less agreeable places to be. Witness the group of refugees who have given the Nauruan government notice of their interest in returning from the hardscrabble lives in the US, where they were sent under the Obama-Turnbull deal. Still others have not allowed their predicament to deny themselves pleasure or diversion. One young man flew to Fiji to celebrate his 21st birthday. (It is interesting that no other countries in the region, including the supposed refugee haven of New Zealand, have agreed to Nauru’s request that they offer tourist visas to refugees and asylum-seekers on the island.) If they are to be confined to Nauru, at least they are safe from the fear of persecution complained of in their home countries (although they were no less safe once their commercial jet flights landed in Jakarta, where the only danger was that of dealing with people-smugglers).

Those drowned at sea never had a chance to form an opinion about life on Nauru, where police commissioner Corey Caleb says his officers are kept busy with the often spurious claims of people who have “got the wrong advice” from asylum-seeker advocates. What he won’t say is that those who pay people-smugglers and often destroy their identity papers may not need much assistance to concoct claims. Nauru’s President, Baron Waqa, also targets the asylum advocacy lobby, which he says gives people false hope of permanent resettlement in Australia.

It has been difficult to get informed and balanced coverage of the state of things on remote Nauru. Some media outlets and their activist sources complain of the secrecy that prevents them documenting the full horror of what they call a hellhole. It doesn’t occur to them that their attitude is comparable to Donald Trump’s dismissal of “shithole” countries in Africa. Unsurprisingly, Nauruans resent hysterical misrepresentation of their island home. Taylor’s coverage today matters because she comes to it with no agenda. Having covered the asylum-seeker issue for years, and witnessed its tragedies, she respects its messy and difficult nature.