society has been defended: following the shifting shape of state through australia’s christmas...

Society Has Been Defended: Following theShifting Shape of State through Australia’s

Christmas Island

Peter Chambers

The University of Melbourne

The interdiction and detention of irregular arrivals has become one ofthe key means by which wealthy states enforce and promote securemobility. This article presents a detailed genealogy of the problems andsolutions that enabled Australia’s Christmas Island to become an inte-gral site for the reproduction of Australian society through practices ofborder protection. A close examination of Christmas Island revealsbroader, deeper currents that follow the shifting shapes of state interna-tionally, and the dreams and ruins such transformations produce intheir wake.

Dreaming of Islands

Islands, with all the plans, dreams, and wrecks they carry within their apparentlydiscrete selves, are some of the great imaginative resources and experimental labo-ratories of western politics. What this paper seeks to do is to follow the exemplarymoments of governmental worrying about one island: Australia’s Christmas Island(‘‘CI’’). What follow is not a definitive historical account of CI, but rather, a gene-alogy of those moments and events problematic enough to warrant the gatheringof officials, information and reports and, secondly, an assembly1 of the successivesolutions that have emerged in light of problems and crises. As we will see, theyare often solutions that, as they recombine according to the complex set of factorsthat comprises the changing specificities of each implementation, generate thegrounds for new problems—or stimulate the emergence of unanticipated transfor-mations. Islands as objects of governmental worrying and intervention prove to beat least as unruly as the people we imagine can be contained within them.

The Leviathan Hiding in the Map

Before proceeding with the genealogy, what needs to be borne in mind through-out is the extraordinary geography of CI: the ongoing crises of its status are deci-sively shaped by its locus. The Territory of CI is situated approximately 320 kmto the south of Java and 2,630 km northwest of Perth. CI is the tip of an extinctoceanic volcano, surrounded on all sides by the Java trench. It consists mainly of

1The theoretical understanding driving the construction of this paper has been made through a dialogue withthe work of Michel Foucault and Deleuze and Guattari, approached through critical interpretations of Didier Bigo(2002), Wendy Brown (2010), Stephen Collier (2009), Aihwa Ong (2006), Mark Salter (2007), and Saskia Sassen(2006). The limits imposed by the genealogical approach pursued in this paper precludes a discussion of thisengagement here, but will be elaborated in Chambers (forthcoming).

doi: 10.1111/j.1749-5687.2011.00118.x� 2011 International Studies Association

International Political Sociology (2011) 5, 18–34

limestone interstratified with volcanic rock. The surface area of the Island isapproximately 135 km2; on most sides, its edges are limestone cliffs of between30 and 500 m, topped with tropical rainforest containing several endemic spe-cies, including the millions of red crabs whose yearly migration presented novelchallenges to the humane detention of boat arrivals, as I will return to. On thenortheast side, Flying Fish Cove, close to the three settlements where the perma-nent population (1,403) live, presents the only usable shelter from swells andstorms; however, it is not a useful port, making shipping to and from the islanddifficult and expensive.

Christmas Island’s geography is decisive for the purposes of this paper whenwe consider it as ‘‘a part of Australia’’—as the Commonwealth Government ofAustralia (the Commonwealth) does at certain moments for certain purposes. CIis a ‘‘far cry’’ from Australia: it is nowhere near the more than 7,617 million km2

of the Australian landmass, nor does it factor as a part of the everyday lives ofthe vast majority of Australia’s 22 million inhabitants, most of whom, staring outto sea (or stuck in traffic) in coastal suburbs on the eastern seaboard, exist at agreat distance from CI. Almost every key decision affecting CI and its populationover the last 52 years has been made from Canberra, over 5,000 km away, a dis-tance nearly as great as that between New York and London.

Considering the government of CI from Australia’s capital in Canberra showshow the Island’s political geography is paradoxically extraordinarily distant andconstitutively relational—and this is a tension I want to keep in mind through-out. CI—so significant a part of what constitutes Australia and what defends theconstitution it helps comprise—is so small it is barely perceptible. It is anythingbut insignificant, but it is tiny and distant. As a seventeen-year-old Afghan Hazaraboy recently detained on the island put it: ‘‘When we studied geography, ourteachers never showed us Christmas Island… [i]f we look at a world map, Christ-mas Island is hiding in the map. It’s so small’’ (Onishi 2009). But first, with thisin mind, we have to turn to see how CI becomes a territory of Australia.

Genealogy of a Problem of Government: Christmas Island

Prehistory to Postwar

Christmas Island takes its name from Captain William Mynors of the Royal Mary,who sighted the island around Christmas Day in 1643. Despite occasional visitsduring the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth century, CI was nevercolonized or even occupied for a significant period of time. From a Europeanperspective, little was known or thought about the Island right up until the1880s. In 1888, WJT Wharton, hydrographer to the admiralty, stated that ‘‘[i]tappeared a disgrace that no accurate knowledge of this island should be forth-coming, and the Admiralty therefore in 1886 directed H.M. surveying vesselFlying Fish, Captain Maclear, to call at the island on her way home from Australiaand gain some knowledge of it’’ (Wharton 1888:615). After visiting the Island,Maclear sent mineral samples collected back to Edinburgh, from where, under amicroscope, Murray noticed a pebble of almost pure phosphate lime. This is thetrue moment at which CI was really discovered.

Prompted by the pebble, Murray ordered a return voyage. The equally highquality of the second set of samples obtained convinced Murray to write to theduke of Argyll, who in turn wrote to the prime minister Lord Salisbury, whoinstructed the admiralty to ‘‘bring Christmas Island under British jurisdiction’’(Williams and Macdonald 1985:45). CI was annexed to the British Crown onJune 6, 1888, which also enabled the sovereign’s authorities to grant leases andextract taxation for all mining activities. Nine years later, John Murray formedthe Christmas Island Phosphate Company (CIPC) with George Clunies-Ross. In

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1898, John Murray marshaled his alliances and resources to invest in the devel-opment of a full-scale mining operation on the Island. By 1900, he was in Tokyo,shoring up deals with trading partners—an exemplary case of the smooth transi-tions between exploration, science, and adventure capitalism, all enabled by thesecuring underwriting of the British Empire.

Peripheral Screen: Territory, or a Right to Extract Tax and Resources

Prior to the Second World War, CI was seen by the CIPC as a ‘‘miningisland’’—a quiet source of tidy profit hauled out of the ground by coolies whowere considered, if they were ever considered at all, as temporary workers. It wasan unpopulated resource and object of interest only insofar as it continued tofunction ‘‘as it should.’’ Crucially, the Island was not considered to be a properterritory; it was not considered to have an indigenous population; it was notworth governing, or even worrying about.

Until the outbreak of the war, the Island had been the major source of Japan’sphosphate. In the wake of the Island’s invasion and occupation by the Japanese,in the emerging contexts of British decolonization and the Cold War, and withthe massive postwar expansion of super phosphate-enriched agriculture in Aus-tralia and New Zealand, the geopolitical importance of Christmas Island wasquickly recognized by the Australian federal government (see Lowe 1999). Bythe late 1940s, both the Australian and New Zealand governments had becomekeenly interested parties involved in the de facto administration of phosphatemining, just as the Australian government began to notice the embryonic forma-tion of another kind of CI, which, within a few years, would be clearly visible as adesirable strategic asset. The British Phosphate Commission took over miningoperations on CI on December 31, 1948, after CIPC failed to return to profitabil-ity following the destruction of infrastructure during the war.

By the early 1950s, the British Phosphate Commission was being actively‘‘brought to heel’’ by both governments. As the 1950s progressed, the interestsand voice of the British Phosphate Commission was almost totally subsumed bythat of the governments of Australia and New Zealand and the powerful voicesof their respective agricultural lobbies. For the New Zealanders involved, theextent of this interest remained limited to the prompt, regular delivery ofthe cheapest possible phosphate—repeating and reinforcing the prewar view ofthe British. But for the Australian government of the early 1950s, CI now lookedless and less like a ‘‘mining island,’’ and more and more like something in needof arms and armor—to some it even looked like an aircraft carrier.

However, it was the idea of ‘‘Asiatic penetration’’ (Lowe 1999:48) that primar-ily worried key figures in Australia’s Menzies government between the years1950–1954. In January 1954, R. N. Hamilton, an official in the Department ofExternal Affairs, issued a memo detailing Australian federal government policyon the ‘‘arc of islands’’ surrounding Australia’s west, north, and east. Theexpress policy of the time, according to Hamilton, was ‘‘[t]o exert a dominantpolitical influence in the area with a view to maintaining Australian securitybehind a peripheral screen of islands’’ (in Goldsworthy 2002:51). It was in thiscontext that Australia began to negotiate the delicate matter of the transfer ofCI’s sovereignty. The Australian federal government, led by Prime Minister Rob-ert Menzies, began making representations to the British government to requestthe transfer of CI’s sovereignty—informally and softly, to avoid drawing undueattention and critical scrutiny. After a process of confidential correspondenceand official overtures, formal talks began; on March 14, 1955, government-to-government talks between Australia and Britain were held in Singapore.

From 1955 until the final assumption of sovereignty in 1958, CI shifted shapeonce more, morphing from an urgent component in a peripheral screen back

20 Society Has Been Defended

into a definite piece of transferable property, one whose transfer would necessi-tate intricate, drawn-out, and thorough discussions about taxation and royalties.As CI became a piece of property, fears about Asiatic penetration were slowlysubstituted for concerns about Singaporean taxation. The outrage was now thatan ‘‘Asian’’ government—with socialist sympathies—was receiving £170,000 annu-ally from an operation whose proper beneficiaries were held to be British, anumbrella term that both the Australians and the New Zealanders still consideredthemselves to belong under. The fear here, arguably, was being ‘‘held to ran-som’’ by a soon to be ex-colony of unknown intentions, or worse, a takeover bythe hostile nationalist forces of Sukarno’s Indonesia.

This shift of imaginaries, ambitions, and interests also unfolded in the clenchof a definite desire to keep such matters quiet from the United Nations, andthose sections of press and polity expected to be critical of the moves, especiallyafter the extremely touchy issue regarding the citizenship of Cocos (Keeling)Islanders.2 On October 22, 1956, the British informed the Australian andNew Zealand governments that they intended to detach Christmas Island fromSingapore to administer it as a separate entity (Stephan 1999:64).

On January 1, 1958, CI was detached from Singapore by Britain. The matter oftransfer was then presented via an enabling bill to the House of Commons. Thesuccessful passage of the bill through the house gave the Queen power to placethe Island under the authority of the Commonwealth of Australia by means ofan order in council. From January 1, 1958, until October 1, 1958, ChristmasIsland was administered as a separate British Crown colony, until the orderplaced Christmas Island officially under Australian authority. On October 1,1958, the detached colony became a territory of the Commonwealth of Australiaunder the Christmas Island Act (1958), completing the transfer.

Discovery and Crisis of Working Population: Territory, the Citizen Machine

Of the several key conditions securing the legitimacy and durability of thetransfer of sovereignty to Australia, one factor, population, came to be crucial.Recalling the point emphasized in the last section, earlier forms of CI were heldto lack an indigenous population. Yet as the Island’s contemporary form beganto emerge, it would be the existence of certain populations on and around CIthat would prove to be most problematic and provoke the strongest governmentinterventions.

Australian sovereignty over CI derives from the following factors: effectiveBritish occupation and administration of the Island; a valid transfer to Australiaby complementary legislation; continual governmental and judicial activities byAustralia; and the absence of any competing claims to sovereignty, especially froman indigenous population (Report of The House of Representatives StandingCommittee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs 1991). Considering the exchangefrom the British perspective, CI was ‘‘theirs to give’’ for the same stated reasons,written by Her Majesty’s authorities in ink legibly legal to both parliaments.

The absence of an indigenous population was maintained and repeated by theAustralian government throughout the 1960s and 1970s, quickly rising to settleany doubts about the legitimacy of its sovereignty, territory, and property. But itwas also a pragmatic consideration, mobilized to prevent the possibility that CImight come to be regarded as a non-self-governing territory. Such a recognitionwould set in train a process which would require ongoing UN scrutiny, includingyearly reporting and bi-annual visits, accompanied by inevitable exposure in the

2Menzies had sought, in vain, for ways to resolve the apparent contradiction between the offer of Australian citi-zenship to a non-White population and their full inclusion, as Australians, within Australia. This telling episode inthe history of White Australia policy is covered in detail in Goldsworthy (2002).

21Peter Chambers

press. Worse, it might even set in train desires for self-determination, flaggingthe possible birth of a people with unassailable claims to rights and representa-tion, as well as a percentage on every gram of phosphate dug up and draggedoff the Island.

In 1975, in United Nations Involvement with Australia’s Territories, the SenateStanding Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence began to delineate this statusby emphasizing the ‘‘major difference’’ between CI and the Cocos (Keeling)Islands: ‘‘The economy of Christmas Island is dependent solely on the extractionof phosphate which is mined by a labor force on contract to the Phosphate Com-mission from South-East Asian countries for periods of some years. On Cocos(Keeling) Islands, on the other hand, the economy is based on the productionof copra and the workforce is permanent, if not indigenous’’ (Australian Parlia-ment Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence 1975:109). To thisdistinction is added the lack of distinctness. ‘‘As Article 73 refers to ‘territorieswhose peoples have not yet attained a full measure of self-government,’ and to‘the inhabitants of these territories,’ this Committee considers that the argumentthat a territory which has no permanent or indigenous population is not andcannot be a non-self-governing territory is irrefutable… although it is quite clearthat Christmas Island is geographically separate from Australia, neither ethnicnor cultural distinctiveness apply permanently to the territory’’ (Australian Par-liament Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence 1975:110–111).Rights claims, as we will explore further, have always been something that theAustralian government has tried to interdict before they have the chance toarrive on CI.

Returning to the question of population, two questions follow—the first spe-cific, the second general. First, who had been living without interruption on CIsince 1888? Second, what is a population? Where, how long, and under whatconditions do a number of people have to live in a place before they canbecome a proper population in need of peace, order, and good government?Further, what could make such a population a permanent and indigenous onethat can claim rights, autonomy, and even go on to achieve a measure of self-determination? The answer from CI suggests several partially extant, imbricatedconditions, overdetermined by the Island’s legal status and locus, and therepeated overruling of the de facto situation by the de jure status.

The situation on CI when major mining operations began made the regularreturn of many workers prohibitive; isolation, instability in China, insufficientwages, and brutal conditions obstructed or even precluded this course ofaction for most. The Island had one employer, and many workers apparentlyfeared that, if they left the Island, they would never be allowed to return towhat was, for many of them, the only home they had known. Any workerscould be dismissed without appeal and deported within 24 hours. For thesereasons, many workers remained on the Island for 40 years or more; some ofthem had children—born on the Island—some of whom in turn had chil-dren. ‘‘By the early 1970s,’’ records The Union of Christmas Island Workers,‘‘people born on the Island constituted at least ten percent of the total popu-lation. Some of these were almost 40 years old. This percentage, thoughsmall, nevertheless did comprise what could be seen as a permanent, andeven indigenous population’’ (Waters 1983:4–5). The Annual Report of 1975,meanwhile, states that the population as of June 30, 1975, totaled 3,032,which suggests an inter-generational island-born population of over three hun-dred people. Undoubtedly, this constitutes a significant number of intergener-ational residents on the island.

Yet the existence of these residents as a possible permanent or indigenouspopulation was negated, in several different ways. Key among them was the infor-mation gathering and reporting practices of the federal government.


From the period of the transfer of sovereignty onward, the federal governmentproduced annual reports, which included accurate counting and brief qualitativestatements about population. In each report for the years 1966–1972, the follow-ing statement is reproduced without alteration:

The population consists mainly of persons recruited for employment from Malay-sia, Singapore and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. There is a small European popu-lation (mainly from Australia) and some Indians and Indonesians. Chinese formthe largest racial group and Malays the second largest group. Details of racial dis-tribution of population are given in appendix III. (Australian Department ofExternal Territories 1970–1971:2)

By making no mention of the historical conditions of those ‘‘persons recruitedfor employment,’’ the annual report removed from possible knowledge what wasbeing repeatedly avowed by the government at that time to reassure sovereigntyand prevent UN interference: that there never was, and never had been, anindigenous population on the Island. As we have seen in United Nations Involve-ment with Australia’s Territories, this was the interpretation that was repeated andcame to be decisive. In this way, the reproduction of ‘‘persons recruited foremployment’’ also functioned as an effective contraceptive device against anyoneeither permanent or indigenous.

The other key device was the changing of recruitment practices. As early asJune 4, 1964, the secretary to the Department of External Affairs wrote to thegeneral manager of Border Protection Command (BPC), reminding him that‘‘the Australian Government was anxious to limit the numbers of the Asian pop-ulation which might, because of long residence, be considered by internationalagencies to have the rights of indigenous inhabitants’’ (Waters 1983:14). As aresult of this correspondence, BPC ensured that workers employed on the Islandwere required to leave every 3 years and then reapply to work, precluding theemergence of breeder documents attesting to documented continuity and givingrise to permanent residence, then citizenship. All of which strongly suggests aconscious understanding of the existence of a permanent population as well asevincing coordinated, active, ongoing efforts to prevent its becoming capable ofrecognition and reproduction.

Yet because of the catalysis of sovereignty CI had been producing a living,growing population of Australian citizens. As we have already seen, the assump-tion of sovereignty on October 10, 1958, allowed the birth of a territory. Fromthis time onwards—and this is crucial—the regular, proper, careful governing ofa territory under the authority of political sovereignty induced the growth of apopulation. And while reporting practices—initially with judicious care, then sim-ply by careful copying of the former year’s ‘‘stated facts’’—negated the possibilityof some of the resident’s indigeneity, they were nonetheless capable of beingaccepted—with certain exceptions. Under the terms of the Christmas Island Act1958, people resident on the Island before the transfer who were British subjectsordinarily resident in Christmas Island (but who were not Australian citizens)could make a declaration that they wished to become Australian citizens within2 years of that date; such residents under twenty-one had to make such a declara-tion within 2 years of their twenty-first birthday (Australian Department of Exter-nal Territories 1971–1972:5–8).

With the growth of a proper Australian population came the growing need forongoing processes of problematization, reporting, and intervention, all in thename of producing the ‘‘peace, order and good government’’3 that would

3This is a reference to the direct wording of the legislative powers of parliament in Section 51 Part V of theAustralian Constitution (http://www.comlaw.gov.au/comlaw/comlaw.nsf/0/19541afd497bc2e4ca256f990081e2cf/$FILE/Constitution.pdf).

23Peter Chambers

enable the entirely legitimate reproduction, without interruption, of a locus witha status capable of producing a demos. A demos, furthermore, whose ongoing,everyday existence as Australians over time returned the gift of inheritance tothe mainland by guaranteeing the existence of CI as Australia in perpetuity—ina way that would also durably prevent any perceived diminution of Australiansovereignty through UN interference. Thus did the state of affairs on CI movefrom statements of status to a settled state, as certain as death and taxes.

From 1972, many of the stable segmentarities of CI’s colonial microworldbecame intensely problematic, provoking reporting, revision, and unconditionalreform.4 The 1972–1975 annual report continued to speak of the Island’s popu-lation in a similar, albeit condensed way to the earlier statements from the mid-1960s onward. However, the introduction, which refers to the 1972–1975 reportas a ‘‘document of change,’’ also notes several new objects of problematizationthat became the subject of specific interventions.

From the British Phosphate Commission’s takeover of operations in 1948until the early 1970s, the Island’s schools had been scrupulously divided: theEuropean School, for the children of supervisors, followed the WesternAustralian curriculum; the Asian school, for the children of workers, followedthe Singaporean curriculum. This hermetic separation of students and curriculaon strictly racial lines had been implemented for ‘‘practical reasons’’ in the mid-1960s. By the mid-1970s, these partitions were recognized as discriminatory, anda complete revision of educational arrangements was called for, buttressed by astrongly integrationist stance including offers of inclusion, scholarship, and amainland future.

However, this new offer of study and a scholarship on the mainland wasalso a key component in a larger set of instituted techniques intended toreturn the Island’s growing population to zero, anticipating a future timewhen an indigenous culture, attached with affection to CI, would no longerbe able to find a gainfully employed future there. No sooner had the Austra-lian government recognized CI’s emerging population than it was trying, how-ever humanely, to yank it from the topsoil before it put down deep roots anddemanded sustenance.

The inclusive, integrationist agendas established by the 1972–1975 reportcontinued to be reiterated through the latter part of the 1970s. The 1982Inquiry into the Long Term Future of Christmas Island contains an extensive elabo-ration of CI’s population via a discussion divided into full chapters entitled‘‘people at work,’’ ‘‘The residents’’ and ‘‘aspirations’’ (Australian Departmentof Home Affairs and Environment [ADHAE] 1982:9). Now not only workingand living, but also dreams and the future, find themselves within the purviewof governmental consideration. The resettlement program initiated and activelypursued by the Commonwealth in the mid-1970s had been abandoned: now,the population was properly Australian, permanent, and reported to be dream-ing of an island future. Notably, there is a slippage at work in this report.What was formerly described in the annual reports under the section ‘‘Popula-tion’’ is now detailed as ‘‘people at work.’’ In this section, the group formerlyknown as ‘‘persons recruited for employment’’ is re-described as follows:‘‘Christmas Island’s population is engaged in mining, processing, and shippingof phosphate to Australia and New Zealand and (to a lesser extent) to South-East Asia’’ (Australian Department of Home Affairs and Environment 1982:11).The opening statement of the section—entitled ‘‘the residents’’—asserts,boldly: ‘‘Christmas Island’s greatest resource is its people’’ (Australian

4From 1972 onward, the term ‘‘racial group’’ disappears from the Population section of the government’s yearlyreports (never to appear again), replaced by ‘‘ethnic group’’ (used in the appendices in earlier reports). We alsosee the emergence, for the first time, of environment as a specific concept, eliciting a chapter of concern.


Department of Home Affairs and Environment 1982:14). The section headed‘‘aspirations,’’ bears closer scrutiny. It features a photograph of threeuniformed children captured in a school classroom gazing at a liquid-filledbeaker atop a Bunsen burner. The girl, the most ‘‘hands-on’’ of the three, isstirring the liquid in the beaker, while the boys observe. The middle boy has asmile and empty hands, while the one to the right, who appears to be olderand taking things more seriously, holds a pencil close to a notepad. Belowthe photograph, ‘‘the residents’’ opening statement, ‘‘Christmas Island’sgreatest resource is its people,’’ is repeated, with the further explanation:‘‘Students at the Area School’’ (Australian Department of Home Affairs andEnvironment 1982:19). From a condition of near total governmental invisibility,and after two decades being seen as anomalies to be fiddled out of existencewith a wide range of legal and policy instruments, the residents of CI hadbecome a people, represented as living emblems of Australia’s multiculturalfuture.

Territory, or the Place Where Rights-entitled Citizens of Equal Standing Live

From April 1982, the Commonwealth implemented three related policies: itabandoned the resettlement scheme of the early 1970s; it constituted theChristmas Island Services Corporation (CISC), which involved taking responsi-bility for the non-mining functions of the mining operation, including ‘‘muni-cipal-type functions’’ involved in care of the mine’s workers (Christmas IslandServices Corporation [CISC] 1984–1985:1); and, more broadly, it decided onthe necessity of raising living conditions to comparable mainland standards.From this time on, the operative principles emphasized in government report-ing shifted yet again: now, CI was ‘‘a part’’ of Australia, a territory whosecompatible comparability worked hand in hand with the substantive equalityof its citizenry to generate various necessities and the ongoing managementof all issues as matters for the Commonwealth. The argument that now heldstated that because Christmas Islanders were Australians like anyone else, theywere equally deserving of Australian rights, standards, and conditions, and thisapplied across the island, without exception. CI was no longer apart fromAustralia, it was an equal part of Australia. It was even in Australia, or, atleast, reports from this time insisted that it should be brought as close as pos-sible to this final location.

Yet within a few years, the stable growth of this thoroughly equal Australianpopulation would be redeployed as a new argument applied to the old questionof CI’s distinction. The abandonment of the resettlement scheme meant—in away that was clearly intelligible to the government—that a ‘‘permanently settledpopulation with a distinct ethnic and cultural identity is likely to develop’’(Islands in the Sun 1991:264). An analysis of this conundrum submitted by theCenter for Comparative Constitutional Studies to the standing committeeexplained how the formation of such distinctions might, once again, generategrounds for the recognition of CI as a non-self-governing territory, to which theattorney-general’s department replied: ‘‘CI has no indigenous population andtherefore cannot be regarded as being distinct ethnically and ⁄ or culturally fromAustralia’’ (Islands in the Sun 1991:45). At this conjuncture, integration was alsoa way of forever postponing the possibility of UN interference while also clarify-ing and reinforcing sovereign authority. The permanent entry and residenceof CI’s population into the Australian mainstream would resolve any visibleindistinction, for the Island now existed in every governmentally recognizableway inside the modern, multicultural nation-state of Australia—indeed, it wasindistinguishable from it.

25Peter Chambers

The Assembly of a Governmental Solution: Christmas Island II

Construction and Operation of the Casino: Orgy of Cash, Normalization and Alignment,Wards of State

In September 2001, Risky Business, a report of the joint standing committee onthe national capital and external territories, reported the following facts of popu-lation, under the heading ‘‘The people of Christmas Island.’’ ‘‘The populationis multicultural, reflecting both the Island’s geographical position and its uniquecultural heritage. In the 1996 census, 70% of the population were ethnic Chi-nese, 20% European settlers and approximately 10% were Malay’’ (AustralianJoint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories2001:3). The writing of Risky Business was provoked by the problems generatedby a casino built on the Island in 1993 as a joint venture between a West Austra-lian businessman Frank Woodmore and Robby Sumampow, an Indonesian withvery close links to the New Order (ORBA) regime of President Suharto.5

The Christmas Island casino and resort thrived on the island until the mid-1990s. Its successful operation, in tandem with the marked decline of high-quality phosphate reserves, made it the island’s major employer; it contributedover $11 million per year to the local economy (Australian Joint StandingCommittee on the National Capital, External Territories 2001:XV) and gener-ated dazzling profits for its owners. It was not unusual to turn over $15 millionprofit in a weekend. An ex-employee quoted in the ABC Four Corners reportdescribed it as ‘‘an orgy of cash’’ (Neighbour 2002). At its peak, the casino’sannual turnover was $5 billion per year (Wright and Narushima 2009). Thissetup was also a tidy earner for the Australian government, which charged anannual license fee of $1 million—and took eight to ten percent of gross profits.

The success of the casino came from the combined effects of discreet, discretedistanciation, and cozy connections. The majority of the casino’s clientele werethe ORBA elite, who visited the casino to dispose of millions in the convivialityof the resort’s intimate gaming rooms, something impossible in Jakarta since1982, because of pressure from Islamic interests. But in 1998, the Asian Mone-tary Crisis and the overthrow of Suharto brought the good times to an end; thehigh rollers disappeared, the money dried up, the casino was left profoundlyinsolvent, and the resulting mess took the remaining years of the decade andmany hundreds of hours in the High Court to resolve.

Where the success of the casino had profoundly restructured CI’s economy,its collapse had thrown the Island’s future direction and purpose intodoubt—occasioning, once again, the gathering of evidence, the holding of hear-ings, and the writing of a report. Typically, as we have seen, government reportson CI include the proposal of solutions requiring the immediate implementationof certain measures, subject to a political decision, typically of the relevant minis-ter. In this instance, however, those sections Risky Business that speculated at thelimit of the report’s terms of reference left both the casino and its former bene-ficiaries without the impression of a clear future, while on the Island, nobodyknew how to transform this problematic situation into a viable future. There wastalk of eco-tourism, there was even a plan for a $1-billion spaceport (the dreamof a Korean entrepreneur), but once again, the effects of geography on theterritory—and where that left the population—rendered each proffered proposi-tion marginal, each solution unpalatable.

5As well as a ninety percent share in the casino, a subsidiary of Sumampow’s holding companies Guntur MaduTama, held the local coffee and sandalwood buying monopolies on East Timor—granted to him after the invasionin 1975. Sumampow was directly implicated in the brutal repression of East Timorese independence supporters thatoccurred throughout an occupation marked by the killings of at least 102,800 people. (hrdag.org http://www.hrdag.org/resources/timor_chapter_graphs/timor_chapter_page_02.shtml).


Recalling the previous section, throughout the 1990s, the Commonwealth hadbeen pursuing its desires on CI through the overall strategic concepts of ‘‘align-ment’’ and ‘‘normalization,’’ intended to position the Island under direct, total,and final administration of the federal government. But the pursuit of this stabi-lized, proper de jure status in relation to the sliding, unstable de facto situationgenerated a new and profound dependency. By 2001, CI and its population hadbecome, in the absence of any audible or visible signs of autonomy, direction, orpredictable purpose, wards of the state. The bastard offspring of British imperial-ism and phosphate mining were now, entirely and onerously, delivered over tothe Commonwealth as a docile population and an intractable problem. In theabsence of an island-saving industry on the dreamy scale of a spaceport, even thefully delivered, mainland-compatible legal regime that had finally and fullyarrived installed on the Island was powerless to compel gainful employment froman increasingly idle population. No sooner had the status and locus of CI’s popu-lation had been definitively located and settled once and for all than its substan-tive meaning and future began to dissolve, leaving the Islanders with nothing todo and little to be done about it.

Excision and Construction of the IRPC

A month before this existential limbo was published in Risky Business, a newsituation appeared on the horizon, in the form of a boat. The widely reportedand studied Tampa incident (see Mathew 2002; De La Torre 2003; Marr andWilkinson 2004; Budz 2009) was the trigger event for the implementation of anumber of measures that would transform the status and locus of CI yet again,enabling its transformation into a complex instrument for the subjective delinea-tion of Australia from its others.

Imagining this island future as a new reality requiring immediate implementa-tion entailed the legal, political, and material renovation of CI to enable it tobecome the key component of a fully implemented apparatus of border security.It was an apparatus that needed to appear to be all about impenetrable lines andoverwhelming force while actually operating to surveil, interdict, detain, and pro-cess boat arrivals in a way that was as unobtrusive as possible. The erection of anapparatus of such extraordinarily complicated functions and semblances beganwith three pieces of legislation.

The first of these was the Border Protection (Validation and Enforcement Powers) Actof (2001) (Border Protection Act), which validated the government’s actions in rela-tion to Tampa and enacted ‘‘new protection powers, including the power ofinterdiction’’ (Mathew 2002:663)—a concept I will return to. The Border Protec-tion Act re-placed the sovereign decisionist prerogative, giving the executive a freehand to eject any border crosser and vesting in the Commonwealth’s authoritiesthe power to interdict, transfer, and detain any vessels or people suspected of ille-gal immigration. Thus, empowered, a federal minister, the attorney-general orthe prime minister can act in the name of a sovereign power that can unilaterallydeclare as unauthorized any movement within the Exclusive Economic Zone(EEZ) that it deems suspicious—and eject accordingly, raising the threshold ofinterdiction and spreading it, like a great slick of enforceability, thousands ofkilometers outward from the Australian continent’s northern coastline.

The second piece of legislation is the Migration Amendment (Excision From Migra-tion Zone) Act (2001) (Excision Act). The Excision Act added amendments to theMigration Act 1958 that removed certain territories, including CI, from the migra-tion zone, re-specifying them as ‘‘offshore excised places.’’ The amendments alsoadded the new category of ‘‘offshore entry person.’’ The extraordinarily cleanlines of this cut, and the messy implications of what happens when ‘‘entry per-sons’’ arrive in ‘‘excised places,’’ are a legal fiction of striking audacity that

27Peter Chambers

deserves further analysis, which I will briefly attempt before moving on todescribe the third piece of legislation at work here.

The excision of CI can be understood as the political translation of a geo-graphic loophole into a legal gray area for reasons of necessity (a necessity uni-laterally defined by the declarant). In general terms, excision is removal effectedby cutting out, but in CI’s case, it did not cut both ways: neither the citizen-residents already on CI nor the many governmental officials moving back andforth between the Island and the main since its implementation have been com-mitting acts of emigration—all remain Australians within Australia, acting onbehalf of, and protected by its laws. Jurisdictionally, CI remains Australia to almostall intents and purposes; for example, CI is still an area where Australia exerciseswater column, seabed, and subsoil jurisdiction. Maritime search and rescue andsecurity forces take responsibility for the area surrounding it, as part of the EEZ,and conduct regular patrols there. But for those who arrive with the status of‘‘unauthorized non-citizens’’ after the excision, their welcome is to be cut short:they have arrived in a ‘‘place’’ that is, as far as their claims of asylum are con-cerned, outside Australia. Boat arrivals interdicted on the high seas and trans-ferred to CI after the excision are effectively held under the law, while beingbeyond the full protection of the law; they are made subject to the law, withoutbeing made full subjects of the law. However—and recalling and integratingmuch of what we have looked at thus far in this paper—it was only the prior exis-tence of CI as thoroughly, totally, irrefutably Australia throughout the 1990s,with all the decades of construction and reconstruction that had required thatenabled Australia’s government to construct this seemingly watertight ‘‘notAustralia.’’ CI was, in this way, made seaworthy enough to prevent ‘‘inflows’’of non-Australians on leaky boats from translating universal claims into locallyapplicable rights, while still retaining an aggressively iterated and irreduciblyAustralian sovereign power that could nonetheless be exercised over them byauthorities who were Australians who remained in Australia, even when workingoffshore. A minor miracle: boat arrivals were excised, while sovereign powerwas nonetheless exercised—in a way that did not upset, but—without soundingforced—enforced, reinforced, and added resonance to the legal utterance ofwhat and where Australia was, and why that overruled any contravening claim ofrights and responsibilities.

The third piece of legislation was the Migration Amendment (Excision From Migra-tion Zone) (Consequential Provisions) Act (2001) (Consequential Provisions Act) whichenabled authorities to detain ‘‘offshore entry persons’’ ‘‘in Australia’’ or transferthem to a ‘‘declared country,’’ a country declared by the minister to be able toprovide access to procedures for assessing the need for protection; to provideprotection, pending a decision on refugee status; to provide protection for peo-ple granted refugee status ‘‘pending their voluntary repatriation to their countryof origin or resettlement in another country’’ (Mathew 2002:664); and that isheld to meet relevant human rights standards.

The Consequential Provisions Act also created two new classes of ‘‘offshore’’ visas,both ‘‘temporary protection visas’’ (TPVs), amending the previous categories ofrefugee, global special humanitarian, and woman at risk to ‘‘preclude applica-tions by people perceived to have given up protection possibilities en route toAustralia’’ (Mathew 2002:665). In practice, the Consequential Provisions Act meantthe Howard government making phone calls (then payments via electronic fundstransfers) to the governments of Papua New Guinea and Nauru in exchange forallowing the erection of permanently temporary camps on Manus Island andNauru, where some asylum seekers, including hundreds of children, weredetained, often for as long as 5 years.

The armature just described comprised key legislative parts of the Pacific Solu-tion, an appellation whose dark historical undertones indicated either a blithe


unawareness of twentieth-century history or a bureaucracy with a very black senseof humor indeed.6 From late 2001 until October 2006, the enforcement arm ofthe Pacific Solution was Operation Relex, which involved using all three of theAustralian Defence Forces to ‘‘detect, deter and return’’ ‘‘Suspected UnlawfulNon Citizens’’ aboard ‘‘Suspected Illegal Entry Vehicles.’’ Since the arrivals ofpeople fleeing Vietnam in the late 1970s, the navy’s role in analogous cases hadbeen to escort boats to Australian ports, where they would be received and pro-cessed by immigration authorities. Operation Relex marked a profound shift forthe ADF—the new role consisted in actively thwarting boat arrivals from reachingAustralian territory.

We appear to have strayed somewhat from CI; however, the above operations Ihave just described were the integral activities of the new implemented apparatusof border protection, taking place around what was to become the centerpiecein the ‘‘new normal’’ of border security—the construction of a purpose-built,state of the art Immigration Reception and Processing Centre (IRPC) on CI. Itwas to be the crowning gem in the state’s constitutive new vision of its powers,borders, and order.

IRPC: Full Concretion of the Dreamt-of Apparatus

The IRPC was built on the grounds of necessity, but it was a necessity givenground that was shaped, as we have seen so far, by geography, history, andcontingency, cleared by the process of excision, reinforced by urgency, and thatfollowed rationally from active decisions made from the point of view of a spe-cific and popularly supported policy. But even given such grounds, CI must haveappeared to the Howard government in the first half of the decade like a kindof Fantasy Island, a place where the imperatives of the moment could be trans-lated into durable walls; the IRPC is what happens to such dreams when dreamsbecome concrete. The Commonwealth was now in possession of a definite planfor a facility that, like the territory it was to be installed in, could shift shape asthe contingencies of reception and processing necessitated. It was the spatial per-fection of the imagination of mandatory detention, a place that could evincedemonstrative, indefinite, and banoptic (Bigo 2002) features with offshore effi-ciency. Or, to put it in the language of the Department of Finance and Adminis-tration’s report, the IRPC would deliver, and what it would deliver was:‘‘appropriate facilities for the humane detention of unauthorized arrivals; an effi-cient and secure facility appropriate to the location; and cost-effective executionof the government’s policy of offshore processing of unauthorized arrivals’’(Australian Government Department of Finance, Administration 2003:2). TheIRPC was intended to be the perfection of detention and the realization of adream of contemporary government: the inscrutable monopolization of humanmobility for the maintenance of profitable spatial integrity.

The September 11, 2001 attacks, the Tampa, and the Pacific Solution that camein the aftermath (or, at least, were certainly narrated and re-projected from thistrigger event) generated implacable political imperatives throughout 2001 and2002 that forced measures to be implemented immediately and by all means neces-sary. This fast tracking included the waiving of public works committee scrutinyand other normally procedurally necessary environmental considerations. But inFebruary 2003, after the federal government announced that no boat arrivals hadreached Australia since mid-2001, the IRPC was re-specified: decreasing in capacity

6Added to these shady terms of art was the disproportionality of the numbers involved, relative to the deploy-ment of resources. The Pacific Solution costs at least a billion dollars per year; the cost per person has beenestimated at $550,000 (AUD); the largest number of boat arrivals to Australia was 5516 in 2001 and the lowest,in 2002, was 1 (http://www.aph.gov.au/LIBRARY/pubs/BN/sp/BoatArrivals.htm#_Toc233686295).

29Peter Chambers

from a three-story complex designed to accommodate 1,200 people to a series of‘‘low-rise, functionally integrated buildings’’ intended for 400, but with contin-gency ‘‘overflow’’ accommodation for 800. Plans for the re-specified IRPC—Australia’s first purpose-built immigration detention center, designed as apermanent offshore facility with an operating life of thirty years—werecompleted by Phillips Smith Conwell (PSC), a medium-sized Brisbane-basedarchitectural firm with more than 24 years of experience in building correctionalfacilities. In his reply to a question from Brendan O’Connor, then a member ofthe Senate committee reviewing the construction of the re-specified IRPC, LloydRoss Carseldine, the director of PSC, explained the following rationale that hadgoverned the brief:

(The centre) is significantly different (to a prison) but, at the same time, thereare some common characteristics. For example, in the design of a prison, provid-ing humane accommodation is part of it; we do not expect to lock prisonersin black holes or anything like that these days. (Australian Joint Committee onPublic Works. Official Committee Hansard 2003)

The IRPC was built by Australian construction corporation Baulderstone Horn-ibrook, based on PSC’s re-specified plan, with characteristics both in commonwith and uncommon for a prison, on an unused mining lease on the west partof the island, surrounded by rainforest classified as national park but exemptedfrom environmental acts on the grounds of national interest. The final con-structed complex comprises more than sixty buildings and includes accommoda-tion units; a medical center; reception, induction, and administration facilities;education services and facilities; interview ⁄ conference rooms; flexible-use rooms;recreation areas (active and passive); industrial and accommodation-area laun-dries; kitchen and dining facilities; and storage facilities.

The IRPC also contains a variety of ‘‘security measures,’’ as the reportdescribes: ‘‘an optimized matrix of physical, electronic and observational secu-rity’’ woven ‘‘into the fabric of the facility’’ (Australian Government Departmentof Finance, Administration 2003:10). These include a range of physical separa-tion and ‘‘lock down’’ zones varying from individual rooms and family groups toa range of groupings for up to 100 people, and a perimeter security system com-prising two fences, one of which is equipped with an electronic detection systemand a microwave detection system.

Another one of the integral aspects of the design is the so-called managementsupport units, intended for ‘‘detainees requiring constant surveillance due toself-harm or behavioural issues’’ (Australian Joint Committee on Public Works.Hansard 2003:15). The report states that the units are explicitly designed tomeet ‘‘both the government’s… and the community’s expectations on appropri-ate and meaningful management of people in this sort of situation’’ (AustralianJoint Committee on Public Works. Hansard 2003:4). Then, there were consider-ations of materials: an acoustician was employed to ensure that the building’scompleted design is a quiet one. Sited seventeen kilometers away from CI’s maincommunities so that it was silent to the ears of the island’s other population, theIRPC was also intended to deliver a decidedly muted detention experience. Thematerials used in its construction are even intended to be fire-retardant, a specialconsideration insisted upon by the then minister for territories, Wilson‘‘Ironbar’’ Tuckey. Tuckey’s was a rational consideration, Carseldine explainedto the Senate committee, simply because ‘‘a detention centre is not like buildinga house. There will be times when people will possibly try and abuse their sur-roundings, so they need to have a level of robustness’’ (Australian Joint Commit-tee on Public Works. Hansard 2003:22). So, a detention center is not like aprison, but also, not like a house: it has to be humane and robust. At the same


time, the design is also intended to be sustainable and equitable—it evenprovides wheelchair access (as all government buildings must, by law). As PSC’sbrief states, ‘‘The Village Dominates’’:

The security is discreet. The innovative planning divides the centre into twozones. A ‘‘green heart’’ links living spaces, gardens, recreation areas and commu-nity facilities. This series of boulevards, gardens and sports fields create a self-contained human-scale ‘‘village’’ accommodating the day-to-day activities of theresidents. This ‘‘village’’ is complete with a main and business street. Outsidethis zone, and screened from view, are the discreet ‘‘Secure Perimeter Zones’’providing the level of control required for secure, safe and efficient operations.(Australian Government Department of Finance, Administration 2003:10)

All of which, it is hoped, will allow ‘‘flexibility for efficient management andprovide security and dignity for the residents’’ (Australian Government Depart-ment of Finance, Administration 2003:10). So it stands: Australia’s purpose-built,functionally integrated, flexible-use detention facility, erected in the middle of arainforest in the middle of the Indian Ocean. An Australian first, made fromstate-of-the art fire-resistant, quiet materials, surrounded by a microwave securityfence, with all the Secure Perimeter Zones discreetly screened from view of thedetainees, who dwell quietly and securely within the green heart of the village.

Conclusion—Waiting for Christmas to Arrive

In 2004, with the re-specified plans approved and construction of the IRPCunderway, the Howard government received a report, requested by the primeminister, enquiring into Australia’s coastal surveillance arrangements. The reportrecommended the formation of the Joint Offshore Protection Command(JOPC), which was renamed and permanently instituted as the BPC in October2006. BPC effectively rolled the permanently temporary and spectacular enforce-ment measures of Operation Relex into a new ensemble of quiet, continuous,scrupulous border surveillance and enforcement measures, all operating underthe heading of ‘‘border protection.’’7

Having asserted the decisionist sovereign prerogative, then imagined, devel-oped, and implemented the agencies, processes, and facilities to operate it, theCommonwealth rammed its durable solution into the breach, right through theheart of the Island. In doing so, it also constituted an important technology ofstate (re)formation, a fully operative machine that can and does regularly decideupon what is and is not Australia, who is and is not Australian—shoring up andin this way regenerating an order within a border and a society capable of enjoy-ing the full richness of the rights grown in Australian soil.

Where does the assembly of the IRPC leave CI, its population, and any futureisland genealogy? Throughout 2009, under the Rudd Labor government, CI sawan unanticipated increase in arrivals. In October, the Commonwealth announcedthe expansion of detention accommodation on the Island to 2,200—more thandouble the permanent citizen-resident population, currently around 1,200. Theexistence of such numbers has rendered the fully operational purpose-builtdetention center almost totally inadequate, adding absurdity to grotesqueness as

7To achieve this, the BPC incorporates, coordinates, and deploys forces from all three forces of the ADF, theAustralian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA), Customs and the Australian Quarantine Inspection Services (AQIS),as well as numerous other partner agencies (http://www.bpc.gov.au/site/page5603.asp). It is no stretch to say thatBPC’s capabilities engage combinations of resources and personnel from the full spectrum of the state’s intelli-gence, defense, policing, and enforcement agencies, such as are required. A full exploration of this fascinatingtransformation implied by the formation of BPC is beyond the scope of this paper. I develop this in detail here:http://inside.org.au/the-rising-tide-of-border-security/.

31Peter Chambers

the concrete dream of offshore detention struggles to cope with the 2010 reality,maintained at great cost by the current government.8

Processing ‘‘at capacity’’ on CI means that, in practice, many adult male arriv-als wait up to 40 days in the IDC, in conditions little different to solitary confine-ment—no visitors, no regular communication, no social recreation, and onephone call (monitored by immigration staff) (Australian Human Rights Commis-sion 2009). Processing at capacity also involves the work of many hundreds ofgovernment staff, all of whom must be fed, housed, and kept using the Island’salready stretched resources.

October 2009 also saw the transfer of the day-to-day operations of detentionfrom G4S to the new ‘‘detention services provider’’ Serco Australia,9 the outcomeof a tender process that saw the awarding of the private contract to a known humanrights-violating, profit-seeking company by a Labor government with a previouslyavowed policy of deprivatization.10 Serco Australia was awarded a 5-year contract,worth $200 million annually. In all likelihood, Serco Australia’s contract will mostlikely be renewed for a further 5 years—making the practice of immigration deten-tion in general, and Serco’s business operations in particular, the two key indus-tries upon which the Island’s residents will depend for the foreseeable future.

The most recent counter-solution to CI’s economic woes and its string ofdependencies has been its development as a niche eco-tourist destination. Biolo-gists have been drawn to many unique aspects of CI’s ecology for over a hundredyears; however, the natural event for which the Island is most notable, at least asa tourist trump card, is the migration of the red crab from one side of the Islandto the other. Large-scale eco-tourism is precluded at present by the small num-ber of flights, most of which are fully booked months in advance, directlybecause of the transport of food, supplies, and people, all of which is vastlyincreased by the administration of detention.

Recent reports have also suggested that the side effects of this administrationare destroying the kind of environment upon which any viable eco-tourism mightbe based. In June 2009, the revised interim report of the Christmas Island expertworking group to the Minister for the Environment, Heritage, and the Arts,reported the following about the general environmental conditions on theisland. ‘‘[T]he conservation problems on Christmas Island are pervasive, chronicand increasing and, unfortunately, will not have simple solutions.’’ The reportalso detailed the particular fate of the red crab, a problem that has been exten-sively documented since the 1990s.

Christmas Island is suffering dramatic losses of the Red Crab. The Red Crab isnot only its most conspicuous and remarkable species, but also the pivot of theisland’s unique ecology, which is of international significance…. These factsimply a deep ecological malaise. (Australian Government Minister for the Envir-onment, Heritage and the Arts 2009:5)

8Throughout 2010, contingency accommodation was added at various sites around the Island. This includedhousing women and children in the construction camp previously occupied by the workers employed to build thepurpose-built facility, and the release into the community of detainees who had passed the government’s currenthealth and safety checks. At the time of writing, the current Gillard Labor government is in negotiations with EastTimor to build a ‘‘Regional Processing Centre,’’ the new keystone of what it describes as a ‘‘regional solution’’ tothe issue of irregular maritime arrivals.

9Serco Australia is the Australian arm of Serco UK, a multi-billion-dollar FTSE 100 company that has been atthe forefront of providing ‘‘support services’’ (including running immigration detention) for the British govern-ment. Serco Australia also provides maintenance services for the University of Melbourne. See: http://www.serco-ap.com.au/infrastructure_services/melbourne_parks_and_gardens.html

10‘‘The length and conditions of detention must be subject to review and detention centers managed by thepublic sector’’ (Labor Party Charter & Constitution 2007). Serco appeared to be awarded the contract despite previ-ously avowed opposition to privatization—primarily because of the absence of public sector alternatives. The federalgovernment now claims that, at present, it does not have the skills or resources to run its immigration detentionfacilities.


Yet, it is not as if the Commonwealth had forgotten the red crabs. Theirmigration was integrated into the design of the detention center. In the firstinstance, a site was chosen away from the crabs’ main migratory route. Butthe design brief also mandated the construction of special ‘‘crab crossingfacilities’’ for those creatures that did stray close to the facility. For them, spe-cial channels, directing and ensuring their orderly and secure migrationacross the island, were duly constructed. Here, surely, both a government’sdream and the absurdity of its fulfillment are united in one gesture. It is adream of orderly migration in which even red crabs are induced to followthe migratory routes designed by the experienced architects of prisons andreinforced with concrete.

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