The Indonesian media played it straight. Surprisingly, the arrest of that 14-year-old Australian boy on drugs charges in Bali provoked none of the shock-horror headlines that exploded onto front pages and the airwaves at home. Another day, another tourist does something dumb.
There were some eyebrows raised by Julia Gillard's phone call and the dramatic arrival of the Australian ambassador in Denpasar. The Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, was asked if this was an intervention in Indonesian affairs.
"No it isn't," he said. "It is just a normal display of concern. But Australia must respect the Indonesian justice system." No argument there, then. Kevin Rudd said the same thing.
But if I were an Indonesian I would be shouting from the treetops about Australian double standards. The figures are elastic, but there are literally dozens of Indonesian teenagers imprisoned in Australian detention centres and jails, without charge, without trial, without hope. Indonesian Solidarity, an advocacy group based in Australia, says there may be as many as 70 of them.
They are not asylum seekers but crew members from the refugee boats that fetch up at Christmas Island. Most of them are barely literate village kids, many from West Timor, one of Indonesia's poorest provinces. They understand no more of people smuggling than they do of astrophysics, but the smugglers offer them a fortune beyond their parents' wildest dreams and off they go to sea, they know not where. No one tells them they are heading straight to the waiting arms of Australia's Border Protection Command.
Because they carry no identification, they have no way of proving their age if, indeed, they actually know it. So the Australian authorities go through a grotesque rigmarole of X-raying their bones and, in some cases, genital inspections, to try to determine if they are under 18.
This can take months and frequently more than a year. Many have been held in adult prisons, including Sydney's Silverwater Jail, where they are thrown together with God alone knows what sort of hardened criminals. Not for them the solicitous prime ministerial phone call, the flurry of foreign ministers, the parents sleeping in the next room. As often as not their families have given them up for dead, believing they were lost at sea.
Let's not mince words here. This is an outrage. It is an offence against all the norms of Australian law and, indeed, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which we are a signatory. In condoning this cruel child abuse - even by benign neglect - the Gillard government is trampling fundamental Labor principles of decency and humanity.
If there is any doubt about the age of these kids, then give them the benefit of it. Let them go home. Now.
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WE must all hope that the Occupy Wall Street movement is the first wave of a great global uprising against the greed, stupidity and incompetence of the world financial system. It is early days, but the signs are that it might be. Increasingly, the guitar players, hipsters, and starry-eyed dreamers who kicked it off are being joined by middle-class, Main Street Americans infuriated by the havoc brought to their lives by bankers and governments.
Surely now we must recognise that the 1980s capitalist model has run itself off a cliff, as it was always bound to do. Call it Reaganomics or Thatchernomics or supply-side economics, whatever you like, but unshackling the banks to let them rip'n'tear in an explosion of debt upon debt has been an unmitigated disaster.
At the heart of it all was the lie that conservatives cling to even today, the so-called "trickle down theory" that everyone would win if the rich were allowed to get ever richer. Or as the great American economist John Kenneth Galbraith memorably put it: ''If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows."
The money just funnelled upwards and stayed there. Consider these interesting facts:
The richest 1 per cent of Americans now control more wealth than the bottom 90 per cent.
In Britain, half the population holds just 1 per cent of the country's cash. The gap between rich and poor is wider than at any time since World War II.
Forbes magazine, the plutocrats' bible, chortled this year that the world now has 1210 billionaires, up from 1011 last year, with a total worth of some $US4.5 trillion, more than the gross domestic product of Germany.
Even here, in lil ol' Australia, median pay for the chiefs of our top 100 companies has rocketed by 131 per cent in 10 years, with bonuses up by 190 per cent. But the stockmarket value of those companies has increased by just 31 per cent.
And what is being done about this scary state of affairs? Answer: nothing. Governments print money so that bankers can merrily continue to capitalise their profits and socialise their losses. Greed is as unbridled as ever. Roll on the occupation of Wall Street.
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JUST home from a holiday in Bali, I have developed some rules and and guidelines for international travel:
Sydney Airport is the most expensive in the world. It is a money-making machine with a couple of runways tacked on.
Duty-free aint. You can get better bargains on booze at Vintage Cellars or Dan Murphy's. If in doubt, take gin or scotch, because it goes further than wine.
The Aussie dollar will slump by at least 5 per cent the moment you leave the ground, only to rise again when you get home.
Your hotel room will never be ready when you arrive.
There is always one light in the room that cannot be turned off, no matter how hard you search for the switch. Conversely, there is never enough light in the bathroom for a woman to do her make-up.
Do not eat the club sandwich. Stale toast, cardboard bacon, limp lettuce, and synthetic mayonnaise substitute, it is the leftovers that the hotel is trying to get rid of.
At some point in your journey, no matter where on the planet, you will hear a truly crappy version of The Girl From Ipanema.
Jetstar will have carefully arranged your departure so that it is at least six hours after your hotel check-out time.
I hope this helps.
Bon voyage.
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