This was published 5 years ago
Opinion
Peter Dutton? It's fair to say we have our differences of opinion
By Nyadol Nyuon
Unless you are an early bird, you may well have slept through a change in leadership on Tuesday morning - a new prime minister, Peter Dutton. As it happened, separated by only seven votes, we still have the same Prime Minister and in many critical ways the same country.
Illustration: Matt Davidson
What’s next is anyone’s guess. One journalist, Laura Jayes from Sky News Australia, tweeted that “the reaction from one backbencher was 'F--- me dead' ”. Well, if they'd been in South Sudan, that might have happened - being dead that is.
In 2013 I arrived in South Sudan, shortly after President Salva Kiir Mayardit decided to fire his whole cabinet, including the vice-president, Riek Machar Teny.
President Kiir arguably had the constitutional authority to do so, but some believed the cabinet was fired for personal reasons. A number of Kiir’s political party members, including Riek Machar, had made their intention to contest the next presidential election known.
Liberal MP Peter Dutton addresses the media during a doorstop interview at Parliament House.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
It was almost guaranteed in South Sudanese politics that whoever was the chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement would be the next president. The SPLM, being the party which historically fought for the liberation and independence of South Sudan, had monopolised the political scene in the country.
Kiir was chairman of the SPLM and by firing everyone in his cabinet, he made sure there was not going to be a contest. And this, what was to be an administrative issue, sparked a civil war.
Deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop and Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull speak to the media on Tuesday after the challenge.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Even before the announcement was to be made on state-owned television, soldiers with AK47s and tanks were rolled onto the streets of the capital, Juba, in anticipation of a violent uprising.
By the end of 2013, four former members of the cabinet or ministers were arrested and put on trial for treason, the vice-president fled Juba to his support-base strongholds. Within days he had gathered a large force and formed an armed opposition.
The war was now in full force and soon it engulfed nearly the whole country. The biggest tragedy, however, fell on the people of South Sudan.
So many are dead that no one knows the true numbers. It is estimated that more than 300,000 people have been killed. Of those who managed to flee the violence, 3.5 million are displaced within the country and over 1.5 million are now refugees in neighbouring countries of Kenya, Sudan and Uganda.
Rebel soldiers patrol and protect civilians from the Nuer ethnic group, as they walk through floods to reach a makeshift camp for the displaced in South Sudan last year.Credit: AP
The fighting also led to famine, leaving 6 million people at risk of starvation. It is a catastrophe.
Yet even with hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced and two peace agreements, the war is ongoing with no foreseeable end in sight. I cannot help but compare the stark differences watching the Liberal Party spill dominating this week's news - which I slept through.
Of course there are many differences between South Sudan, a country ravaged by war for decades, and Australia.
Some of the more than 30,000 Nuer civilians sheltering in a United Nations base in South Sudan in 2016 for fear of targeted killings by government forces.Credit: AP
However, I can’t take for granted what a wonderful thing it is to live in a country like this. That even at such a politically significant moment as this, we can afford to ignore it, laugh at it, go to work, go home to our families and loved ones that night and sleep in a bed without the fear of being woken by gunfire.
Dutton might become the next Australian prime minister and there is no doubt he is a man who generates as much passion from those who support him as he does from those who oppose him.
Personally, his comments about African communities have been deeply hurtful and divisive. The effect of his comments will be long lasting and hamper our trajectory of integration as Australians of African descent. So it is fair to say we have our differences.
Strangely, even that is a great reminder of the country we live in. A reminder that these differences can play out in a way that allows us all to come out in the end, at least relatively, able to continue our lives with some stability, and even some meaning and dignity.
I am reminded that even having been critical of some of Dutton’s remarks and policies, I have no fear that my family will become a target of government wrath or that I will be arrested should he assume power - something which has happened to too many people I know in South Sudan.
These people include the human rights lawyer Dong Samuel Luak, who was kidnapped in Kenya around February last year. No one has heard from him since. There is also Peter Biar Ajak, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and peace activist, who was picked up at the airport in July this year by security forces. He remains detained and is yet to face court on the grounds that his activism amounted to a call for regime change.
I know there are serious consequences from a change of leadership in Australia. It is not lost on me that many people including children remain in horrible conditions in detention centres on Nauru and that some little children have known suffering so deep that they do not want to live - there are no buts about this, Australia is failing at standards which it said through international agreements it would respect and implement.
In the scheme of all this, I am grateful also. Because no matter what the outcome of this political contest is, we will still have a country we can recognise and the body count will only amount to some political careers and big egos - as significant as that might be to those it affects directly.
Maybe there is also another lesson; that we should not confuse the country with its politicians. And that differences between people and politicians afford us the chance to change and remake our country without the mass killings and wholesale violence that so many countries around the world continue to experience.
Nyadol Nyuon is a lawyer at Arnold Bloch Leibler.