By Germaine Greer (Filed: 16/10/2002)

Poor fella my country. Australia, where relaxation is the aim of life and nothing is to be taken too seriously, has been slammed in the guts. Australia's mantra, which you may hear uttered hundreds of times in a day, is, "No worries, mate." "She'll be right," Australians say, or used to say, and believed what they said.

In one terrible instant that complacent optimism has been destroyed. In a small population of 19 million, the massacre of perhaps 180 citizens on the holiday island of Bali will have touched every family. Everyone knows someone who didn't come home from their holidays or whose child didn't come home.

Like the Americans after September 11 they are asking, "Why us?" They feel malice towards no one. Why should they be the target of the malice of others?

When I was growing up in Australia, I was taught that Australia's standard of living made it the envy of the world, but the Bali bombing was not in any obvious way an attack by have-nots on the haves. I know now that the Australian economy is small, and that as a producer of raw materials Australia is in competition with the poorest countries in the world.

The paradox of a poor country which remains undeveloped while its citizens squander their substance on what they are proud to call a "sophisticated recreational lifestyle" has always struck me as painful.

The vast country lies as defenceless as a turtle on its back, because there is not sufficient wealth in the economy to underwrite the cost of developing any kind of infrastructure along the endless coastline. Though the ragged millions to the north might envy whole mountain ranges made of pure iron ore, they have never tried to annex them.

The rest of the world lets Australian uranium mines operate with impunity. The international community did not support the desperate attempts of the aborigines to prevent the release of radioactive poison from the earth. It did not occur to Australians to think that they might be getting away with murder.

Australians thought that they could get along with everyone. The Australian passport was welcome everywhere, as American and British passports were not. The only way to get along with everyone is to take sides with no one, but successive Australian governments have chosen to ignore this obvious fact.

In 1939, prime minister Robert Menzies declared war on Germany before Britain did, probably because he needed to silence considerable opposition to the war on the part of Irish-Australians by bringing in war-time restrictions on freedom of speech and association. The assumption was that Britain would defend Australia against any threat of Japanese invasion. In the event, Singapore was sacrificed, and Australia left defenceless.

Meanwhile, Australian pilots were training in Canada and would eventually be involved with other colonials in the Battle of Britain. Their involvement in the Second World War cost the Dominions dear, New Zealand suffering the highest per capita mortality of any Allied country. When wave after wave of Japanese planes attacked Darwin in February 1942, they met no resistance.

In the event inertia may have been the best defence. Any foreign power that invaded Australia from the north would pretty soon wish it hadn't. The limitless expanse offers no support of any kind; there were no forts or railheads for the Japanese to capture, and either too much water or none at all.

The abandonment of the Japanese offensive may have left the Australian population feeling that its cocoon of arid distance protected it more effectively than any army could have done, but Australians should also have been warned that they could not rely on any outside power when push came to shove.

This being so, Australia would seem best-advised not to rush to be involved in other people's quarrels, but what we see is that Australia is still determined to be in at every fight.

Australia sent troops to Korea, to Vietnam and to the Gulf. Readiness to be involved in Asia might conceivably be explained as a rational response to the fiction that the wars there were being fought to defend Australia from communist imperialism. Why Australia was so keen to be involved in the Gulf war must remain a mystery.

Australian involvement in that conflict meant very little to its allies, the actual contribution being minuscule, because during the 1980s the Australian defence establishment had gradually and deliberately been reduced to next to nothing.

Perhaps the thinking was that if Australia lined up with the United States in 1991 it could count on American support if ever it was needed, as it certainly would be in the event of aggression from without. Eagerness to be involved in the Gulf actually marked Australia as a conspicuous member of what was perceived as the pro-Israel axis.

In East Timor, Australians came up against another unpleasant fact. America refused to help them with men or materiel in their peacekeeping commitments, and billions of dollars were drained from the public purse. The ultimate effect was probably what America would have desired.

Australia increased spending on defence, enough to have an impact on the Australian economy but not enough to make them important players in the international war-game. Australia then volunteered men and materiel for the American-led operation in Afghanistan, where it is still involved.

Perhaps the bombing of the Sari Club in Bali should not have come as such a surprise. Terrorism is not a substitute for war, but a preparative. The purpose of instilling terror is to force a polarisation of conflict by making neutrality an impossibility, so that armed confrontation becomes inevitable.

By mounting an attack that would be universally seen as vicious, cowardly and unprovoked, the perpetrators have forced a largely nonchalant Australia into the enemy camp. Australian defence spending will certainly increase, with little effect on Australia's stature as an ally and policy maker but with crushing impact on the Australian people. Already, funding for essential social services has been cut and long-term welfare initiatives are being abandoned.

Meanwhile, tension between Muslims and non-Muslims in Australia is mounting, fuelled by media massaging of deplorable cases of gang-rapes of girls who happened to be Christian by boys who happened to be Muslim.

In allowing the Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, to be the first to identify the Bali bombers as al-Qa'eda, American intelligence has sent an ill-prepared Australia into the front line.

[I never did like Germaine Greer. "See what we made them do?" Knickers, bitch!]

-- Anonymous, October 15, 2002