At least we know what Australia we are talking about

1Australia is the lucky country.

Today, as questions swirl around about what it means to be Australian, at least we know where we are talking about. In many parts of the world this essential first question lies unanswered.

Look to Europe for the most obvious examples of nations failing to overlap countries' international frontiers. We all talk of England as if it were a country, which it is not in the strict sense, but rather a nation within the United Kingdom, or Britain. Having been born near Oxford, I have the option of describing myself as English, British or European depending on the situation.

Cross the channel and the situation continues. At President Nicolas Sarkozy's request, the French parliament is debating French national identity. There are over a dozen historic nations clamouring to gain greater recognition from the irredentist central government. The Bretons, Corsicans and the like want to the right to be described not only as French.

Australians are also lucky to have one national sporting team to support regardless of the event.

In Britain it is a minefield. The UK fields four national teams in soccer, three and a half in rugby, two on cricket, but only one in league and at the Olympics. In golf we are part of a European team.

Nor is Britain alone in this; 10 Caribbean island nations, three British colonies, a South American country club together with French, Dutch and US dependencies field a West Indian cricket team. As do a handful of rugby-playing Pacific Isles from time to time. The Danish Faroe islands have their own soccer team in international comps, and Hong Kong had to cheer on a windsurfer as its best gold medal hope during the recent Olympic Games held in another part of its country.

Of course national identity goes deeper than sport, but you can forgive we Poms for being less nationalistic when we fly the St George Cross on the football terraces, but the Union Jack at Wimbledon. Despite this, most Britons are comfortable with the shifting question of nationality, with UK identity reserved for official form-filling.

Britain is far from unique in this respect. Andalusians, Basques, and Catalans are defined as belonging to specific nationalities within Spain. French-speaking Québécois got their own claim to being a separate nationality written into the Canadian constitution four years ago.

Australian is the lucky country in part because national identity is simple matter. For most, being born in Australia equals Australian citizenship, Australian nationality and a guernsey to barrack for Australia in sport.

Even our closest neighbour New Zealand, having been settled by treaty with the Maoris, has a keener sense of conflict in defining its nationality. The United States, having absorbed other nations through the Louisiana Purchase, the Mexican wars and statehood for Hawaii, can also be considered a multinational country. China's autonomous regions are a hornet's nest of pent-up nationalist fervour contained through economics and central government force.

Here, West Australians will sometimes remind you when grumbling about the dominance of the eastern states that since they joined the Federation a year late, they can leave it any time they want to. There is a question mark hanging over Australia's annexation of Norfolk Island in the minds of many islanders, yet neither of these constitutes a serious threat to national unity.

There are even a couple of self-styled Royal micro-nations within Australia: His Royal Highness Prince Leonard of Hutt River enjoyed non-recognised, but non-challenged independence from the Commonwealth government for his principality four decades. Meanwhile, the Clunie-Ross family are still heirs to the throne of Cocos (Keeling) Islands, in the eyes of some.

On Australia Day immigrants to this country join one Australian nation. Again, in other countries it is not so simple. South American immigrants in Barcelona say their hearts belong to Spain, not Catalonia. There is a Black British identity among those with Caribbean heritage in London, but no Black Englishness. The divide in Quebec over whether to celebrate Canada Day or Quebec's national day, Saint-Jean-Baptiste Day a week previously, is largely ignored by immigrants, who drape themselves in Maple Leaf flags, rather than the Quebec Fleur-de-Lys.

Pity the Poms again, as we have no national day to celebrate. Scotland's St Andrew is honoured with a day off work north of the border, but April 23, St George's Day goes by with barely a mention in England. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, a Scot, was laughed down for his proposal two years ago to create a British national day.

There are serious issues around Australian national identity, not least the question of the 300 or so indigenous language groups that could be considered nations in other settings.

But luckily for Australia, the question of what nation you are debating is not one of them.

Justin Wastnage is a Sydney-based journalist and author of a thesis on linguistic nationalism

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Fare go: long-haul costs rise

Justin Wastnage quoted in article by Jessica Mahar published in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on January 22, 2010

TRAVELLERS flying home to Australia from Britain in economy class have to pay air passenger duty of £55 ($98), and it will rise to £85 from November. For those in premium economy, business or first class the duty will be doubled.

The British Government raised the charges in November, the rate depending on the distance travelled. Australia is in the ''more than 6000 miles'' bracket and is charged at the highest rate.

Airlines and tourism industry representatives protested about the increased duties, and the president of Virgin Atlantic Airlines, Richard Branson, condemned them as ''unjust taxes''.

The duties were designed as a tax to account for the impact aviation has on the environment, which increases as people travel further. Virgin Atlantic encourages all its passengers to protest against the tax.

Nick Larkworthy of Virgin Atlantic said: ''A further increase in air passenger duty by the UK Government under the guise of an 'environmental' tax will adversely affect Australians travelling to the UK and vice versa.''

The news editor at Travel Weekly, Justin Wastnage, said the tax might appease people's guilt at travelling longer distances.

People might take flights from Britain to the Continent, and fly home from other cities on the Continent, he said. ''There will be dodges and weaves around it.''

A spokesman for Flight Centre, Haydn Long, said that while fares to Britain were cheap people were less likely to care about the taxes.

Read the article in its original form by clicking here.

Yemen's problems evident at the border

The following article originally appeared in the National Times on 7 January 2010 and on The Age and Sydney Morning Herald websites.

To read the article as it originally appeared, please click here.

Stepping inside Yemen even briefly cements the view that it is a failed state.

Admittedly one should never judge a book by its cover, but you can learn a lot about a country from its border. Mexicans, for example, would be horrified to think of Tijuana as a showcase for their country, but the infamous underage drinking town over the border from San Diego gives a glimpse into this vibrant, chaotic and exciting country, albeit with a heavy extra dose of seediness.

Crossing into Yemen gives a similarly superficial yet informative peek at the country's psyche. On a recent trip to neighbouring Oman, I goaded my guide to take me up to the border and then over it. Nervous, he suggested leaving our car and both my passport and camera at the Omani customs post and continuing on foot. Over the course of a kilometre or so of no-man's land, the contrast between the well-ordered, prosperous sultanate and the strife-torn state became more and more apparent. The road changed from a level, sealed highway to a pot-holed, rutted track held together, it seemed, by weeds.

At the Omani border post, smartly uniformed guards line vehicles up into neatly marked car parks before efficiently reviewing the documents of each person. Things are a little different down the road. Once at the border, marked with a faded "Welcome to Yemen" sign, the rusted gate is propped up to just over a car's height, to save border guards the inconvenience of having to raise it. Not that the border guards are evident. We found them playing cards in a decrepit building some time after we had strayed into their territory. Shirts open to the chest, heavily stubbled and cheeks full of the mild narcotic qat, the two guards excitedly stood up. They were excited at the prospect of fleecing a Westerner. A day's entry visa was offered for US$100, immediately reduced to $50 and then slashed to $30 by his colleague.

My guide Salim had had to be cajoled to cross the border, even briefly. He had been to Yemen twice, once wearing the white ankle-length, collarless gown worn by most Omanis. This attracted so much unwanted attention from hawkers, conmen and assorted vendors that the following time he shed the dishdasha and donned Western clothes. Omanis, especially those from the southern province of Dhofar, have strong cultural ties with those over the border in the north of Yemen, yet most Omanis felt a mix of fear, pity and shame for Yemeni. Salim said he would rather travel to the duller Gulf States or Saudi, rather than run the gauntlet of having car parts stolen at traffic lights or of the constant attempts to relieve him of money, or of the random gunshots that ricochet across Sana'a streets.

He also had a fear of the qat hours. Yemeni men of all social classes retreat into darkened rooms in the early afternoon with a small bush of the herb and quietly get themselves stupefied until after dark. Nothing can be achieved after about 3pm in Yemen, he said. This, Salim, ventured, was the root cause of Yemen's decline. Qat is chewed widely in Somalia, Djibouti and Eritrea, but is illegal in everywhere in Arabian Peninsula countries except Yemen. Today some 80 per cent of Yemenis chew qat regularly, or almost 100 per cent of men and half of all the country's women. The use of the drug, forbidden by the Koran, has quadrupled in the two decades since North Yemen and South Yemen officially united, according to Yemeni researcher Ali Al-Zubaidi. The country has, many Omanis mutter, chewed itself into a stupor.

Many Omanis also point to another failure in their troublesome neighbour. Yemen is a republic. Furthermore it has some semblance of democracy. Salim, a well-educated, thoughtful man, pointed out that all of the democracies in the Arab world were the least stable and most problematic. He confidently proclaimed democracy to be incompatible with Arabia. Oman's own ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said, has used extensive largesse and wealth redistribution to win the support of his own people. Dhofar contrasts so dramatically with Mahra on the Yemeni side in part due to Sultan Qaboos' desire to enrich the region after quelling a communist insurgency in the 1970s. Today the rugged hills that span the border land are bisected by British-built highways and every dwelling has running water and free electricity. A few kilometres away in Yemen, most of the same Mehri, or mountain-dwelling people, eke out a living for less than $US1 a day.

I have crossed many borders in my life and each leaves a lasting impression of the country you are about to enter. Italian border guards once took exception to me unintentionally driving around the back of their customs post at 2am and responded by taking my rental car to parts. But it was done with good humour and underlined to me that they took their job seriously. Crossing from Zambia into Botswana you are not only struck by the marked difference in wealth between the two countries, but also by the lines of trucks queued up, willing to undertake a diversion and river crossing by barge to avoid entering Zimbabwe. Yet the Yemeni border sticks in my mind as the least inviting customs post I have come across. Chaos, corruption and cronyism are sadly all too apparent in Yemen, even at its front door.

Justin Wastnage is the news editor at Travel Weekly.

Anticipating the next terrorist threat

The following article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on 6 January 2010

Amsterdammers, famous lovers of the unconventional, will soon have their most intimate body parts on display, down to the last piercing, when they fly.

Airline passengers leaving from Schiphol Airport to anywhere in the US will be the first in the world to be routinely scrutinised by security staff sitting behind full-body scanners.

The Netherlands will be the first, but other European countries will follow suit. The introduction of the scanners is likely to be a key part of US President Barack Obama's recommendations following the failed Christmas Day plot by Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bomb a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.

Australians should expect to shed their inhibitions and submit to full body scans, because the use of the radio wave devices will certainly become the international standard following the attempt. Yet history has shown that aviation security has consistently lagged behind terrorists' techniques. Worse still, it requires an attack or attempted attack on the US before security experts take notice.

At a recent Asia-Pacific Airport and Aviation Security conference in Melbourne, countless examples of terrorist groups learning successful techniques from each other were cited. In 1995, a plot to simultaneously detonate liquid explosive bombs on up to a dozen trans-Pacific flights was foiled after a dummy run went awry and a nitroglycerine bomb exploded, killing one, on a Philippine Airlines flight. Yet it took a plot by British Islamic fundamentalists a decade later targeting US cities before restrictions on liquids and gels were introduced.

Similarly, Algerian hijackers first thought of using a plane as a missile to hit Paris as far back as 1994, but only after the attacks of September 11, 2001, were cockpit doors reinforced. Baggage reconciliation was introduced only after Lockerbie and metal detectors became mandatory only after several hijacked Cuban aircraft killed Americans in the 1960s.

But every terrorist attack against a US-bound airliner has been trialled elsewhere. A month before Abdulmutallab loaded his underwear with plastic explosive, a Somali national was arrested trying to board a Dubai-bound Daallo Airlines flight in Mogadishu with the same choice of daks.

Full body scanners are more effective than traditional X-ray arches and produce a silhouette of the body, identifying any concealed items. Yet they also reveal breasts, genitalia and other intimate details many would rather remain hidden, leading to howls of protest by privacy groups.

Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney airports have all trialled the scanners, but only for volunteers. As an alternative to a pat-down, many find the walk-through less intrusive, the Department of Transport's Office for Transport Security said during the trial.

Dutch and British airports will be able to deploy the scanners quickly because they already own them, but had been blocked by European Union privacy laws from using them. EU ministers will meet next week to discuss what measures (such as same-sex scrutineers, deletion of images and de-identification of passengers) are required to get the ban lifted.

Canada and the US will also publish guidelines and together a new set of de facto international guidelines will be created. Australia will grapple with the privacy issues too, but faced with a likely ban on passengers flying to the US from airports without the new technology, resistance will be futile.

There is a whole arsenal of new kit out there, from spectrum analysers to pick up liquid explosives in drinks bottles to face-recognition technology linking closed-circuit television to watch lists.

To read the rest of the article, click here to go to the SMH site.

Weekend Sunrise - Luxury travel segment

The following video originally aired on Australia's Channel 7's Weekend Sunrise on January 3, 2010 at 0845


Sarah Cumming looks at the holiday habits of the rich and famous. Travel journalist Justin Wastnage and Bridget Daly from Hollyscoop talk about what money can and can't buy celebrity vacationers.

Click here to go to the Channel 7 Weekend Sunrise website.
Or click here to view the video clip on the Channel 7 website.