West Papua comment.

Australia is committed to 4% plus growth.

Australia is located geographically next to the engine rooms of contempory global growth.

The Government is intent on Australia being the main provider of raw materials to fuel the engine room to maintain the desired growth.

As a Nation we are desperate to prove regional identity. To be discovered as not affecting acceptable integration may affect trade, a reduction in growth and BIG business - the backers of our political machine will be ungratefully, disappointed.

We are hence pulling out all plugs to prove our identity; place in the sun, is truly here - Asia and not Europe. Australia opens our doors to any acquisition of our land, bricks and mortar, or shares and every thing is for sale at a price - dont conquer just pay.

In reverse our neighbours all have limits on who can migrate too or invest in. Some, to the point of making access for migration or investment very difficult - or near impossible.

To maintain this posture our commonsense, our morals our religion our national identity, our principles our preparedness to unreasonably exploit our limited none renewable recourses, all are subject to interpretation, negotiation and utterly expendable.

This thrust of focused National momentum results in confusion when Chinese seek stay in Australia - for fear it may upset the Chinese power brokers.

A massive over response with public money to the tsunami - trying to appease the Muslim Indonesian/Asian sympathies following Timor and Bali.

An approach to climate change response that appeases regional nations and their big business mates, with nothing but technically nonsense.

Apparently, failure to address robustly any issues regionally with out first and for most measuring the impact of such a decision on the BUSINESS outlook - is standard policy

The West Papua malaise. The vote was a sham, UN supervised or not - PNG and Australia do not want to know. PNG for very different reasons, but equally and disgracefully - very tribal, do not want to even hear about their brothers over the border.

It is wrong shame.

Indonesia has now asked for the return of the 43 illegal entrants to Australia. The Australian Government should comply with the request and start spending more time on the well being of Australia and the people who elected them to run our country.

What Indonesia does is Indonesia's business. That country might eventually have to answer for its deeds, if it has anything to be ashamed of, but it does not have to answer to Australia, now or ever.

Hello Australians..

May I offer you a happy Australia Day, may the white race continue its dominance over all others in Australia.

@philo: Calm down, boy. You obviously has been brainwashed by Papuan separatist propaganda. The truth is, it is the Papuan separatists who are barbaric civilian-murdering thugs, as discovered by FBI. The barbaric Papuan separatists also the ones who kidnapped 15 WWF researchers in 1996, eventually murdering two of them while the others were successfully rescued by Indonesian soldiers.

http://www.library.ohiou.edu/indopubs/1996/03/19/0004.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopassus

Indonesian soldiers and police are the selfless individuals who build roads and bridges, taught at remote schools, and maintain law and order in West Papua. No wonder many Papuans flocked to join the Indonesian military. One, Freddy Numberi, reached the rank of Rear Admiral of the Navy. He is now Indonesia's Minister for Maritime Affairs.

Your fairy-tale stories are as cheesy and weak as your English spelling abilities. If you dare talking nice things about the barbaric Papuan thugs to the family of their innocent victims, I won't blame them if they want to harm you immediately.

The only mistake done by Indonesia is it is weak or don't care about overseas public relations, so the twisted anti-Indonesian lies of the separatist propagandaists abroad went unpunished.

@ro:
Relax, mate. I'm merely explaining the truth for your fellow countrymen who have delusional fantasies about my country. Maybe they have been smoking too much pot, like your fellow Aussiewoman Schapelle Corby.

PTBI.

Can you please respond to the questions posed by 'rlinday'

Leigh,
It is all very well to wipe your hands of any responsibility to the indigenous people of West Papua; but the fact remains I like mant Australians have close and personal friends living in the area and we want the opporyunity for them to live and participate in their society without fear.

The fact is the Indonesian army fronts up to their door or village brandishing guns so any person showing fear they shoot without trial and no questions asked. They burn down Churches in the village. They snatch and rape young village girls. Many of these girls are virgins and they cherish their virginity - any resistance means death. The Indonesian army are not more than maurading thugs imposing their rule upon a simple and civilised mountain culture.

A Papuan friend now living here in Australia had his youngest brother murdered in the bush and his body found just this week. The fact is anyone who has contact with people outside Indonesia are suspected of fighting for independence. This is the mentality of the Indonesian Army. They monitor all contact of the local people with the outside world and consider that contact as fighting for independence. Persons are not given a trial - just shot no questions asked.

@wre:

Again, read-up first before making nonsense statements, otherwise you'll look like a fool like now.

Indonesia is the world's 15th largest economy worth $ 900 billion, far bigger than Australia's economy of $ 643 billion. If Indonesia's GDP per capita is smaller than Australia, it is because Indonesia has 12.5 times bigger population than Australia. Indonesia has cut its poverty rate by half in the past six years. Our economic growth rate at 5.5%, is the highest in Southeast Asia. Indonesia's debt to GDP ratio is the smallest in Southeast Asia, only around 50%. Our economy is doing fine, thank you.

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/id.html

You seem to be pretty bad at history too, since you are clueless about the huge Australian defeat in Malaya in 1942, where nearly 100,000 Australians became Japanese slaves overnight. Australia also played very small role in Malayan Emergency as the stooge of the British. Even then, with so many Commonwealth soldiers fighting a small group of poorly-equipped insurgents, the communist insurgency continued in Malaysia long after the departure of the British, ending only in a peace deal with Malaysian government in 1989. Claiming such display of incompetence to be a "victory" is like feeling proud over a fail mark.

On the other hand, Indonesia has successfully ended countless violent radical Islamist, communist, separatist, and foreign-provoked insurgencies easily. Indonesia is perhaps the most successful country in ending insurgencies anywhere in the world.

You are also wrong about the nature of my country. Indonesia was an idea created by groups of students from all ethnicities, expressed on the Youth Pledge of 1928. There is no "separatism" in Indonesia, there has been only two weak separatist movements. The relatively organised Acehnese separatists has recently surrendered in August 2005. The Papuan separatists are just incompetent jokes incapable of doing anything more than killing civilians, the only thing about them is the big mouth of their propagandaists abroad. Hence, Indonesia faces no threat at all from separatism.