Category: Sri Lanka

What Sri Lanka Taught Me and Why I am Done with My Passport Privilege

I spent years avoiding developing countries like Sri Lanka. I knew I would fixate on the unfairness of life in developing countries. The first few days were confronting to the point where I had to take a break. There wasn’t just rubbish along the roadside, there was rubbish everywhere, piles of it, plastic caught in drains, spread across open ground, sitting in places people walk through every day, and the water was filthy, green and stagnant. I found it hard to look at and harder to accept that people live with it. I found it hard to reconcile we are providing aid and I couldn’t see the impact.

I visited the traditional tour offering of temples and ruins, but I didn’t linger. As a child, I stayed for hours. This time, I looked elsewhere. When I stand in front of iconic sites, I am looking for a specific photo, not a history lesson. I listen to the dates and names, but I forget them immediately. History books offer a static version of the past that lacks heart They lacked lived experience no matter how good our guide was and he was exceptional, I walked through the ancient cities because they were on the itinerary, but the stones remained silent.

My photographs record what is left. When I look through the lens at a ruin, I think about the people who originally cut the stone and shifted the earth. I wonder what they would think of these remains. I find myself wishing I could have a conversation with the people who actually lived there over the centuries. I want to know how they navigated their world, not just the names of the kings who ruled them. Since I can’t talk to the dead, I look for the modern version of their story in the people I meet today, staff in the hotels and the families in the villages. I want to see how they are navigating their world right now.

This is the source of my frustration. I didn’t go there to see iconic sites. They are important because they exist, but that is all they are, landmarks on a map. I have zero interest in ticking off a list.

I travelled with a group of twenty Australians. They were well-read, and our conversations kept circling back to the mess of global politics, the threat of war with Iran, Netanyahu’s next move, and what Trump’s latest act of disruption meant for the rest of us.

These are not distant headlines when you are travelling through a country like Sri Lanka. Decisions made by powerful men in wealthy nations and heavily armed states do not stay inside their own borders. They travel through fuel prices, food prices, trade, sanctions, aid, tourism, debt and fear.

We spent time connecting the dots between how people vote in countries like the United States, the leaders they put in power, and why a family somewhere else suddenly pays more for groceries, petrol or the bus to school. Power first, people after, is not an abstract idea. In countries with less room to move, it arrives quickly at the kitchen table.

Our guide Ash broke down how it actually works in his country. Fuel is available but it is rationed The government makes sure tour buses keep moving because tourism feeds the economy. Meanwhile, a local parent can’t get to work, a teacher misses their class, and a nurse can’t make their shift. You see how quickly a community starts to implode struggle when other countries make decisions that impact well beyond war zones. See my blogs  see my blogs on my conversations with Ash here, here  and here

When you see the impact first hand it makes the global imbalance feel very real. Wealthy countries set the rules to keep their power, and everyone else just has to find a way to survive.

We’re part of that system. The people we put in office make decisions that travel a lot further than our own borders. When we choose leaders who only care about their own leverage, “power first, people second” becomes the standard. It shows up here in what a family can afford or whether they can even get from A to B. Once you see a system strain like this, you realize that everyday dignity is much more fragile than we think.

The parts of the itinerary that resonated most strongly with me were the safaris. We visited national parks and saw animals living in their natural habitats. We drove through the park, watching closely, becoming spotters ourselves.

An animal would emerge from the scrub, tolerate our presence for a moment, then disappear again. It felt unpredictable, immediate and alive. It also gave us the chance to see native animals we do not have in Australia, in the landscape where they belong.

I remembered the Botanical Gardens for their curated beauty. I have a garden at home where I plant things and hope for the best. In Kandy, I saw those same plants thriving in ideal conditions. It was a welcome relief from the reality of the streets

I am a stickler for well laid out design. When I arrive at a hotel, I notice the bathroom, the desk, the lighting and the power points. I want to see whether someone has thought about the person using the room.

At Jetwing in Kandy, that instinct led me somewhere else.

In several of the other hotels, I noticed the public facing teams appeared to be mostly men. Women were present, yet often in roles that felt more decorative than central, appearing from time to time as the smiling face of hospitality rather than as people visibly running the place.

Jetwing felt different. I saw what appeared to be a more equal mix of men and women across the team, and women seemed to be part of the working life of the hotel rather than added to the edges of it. I wanted to understand whether this was accidental or deliberate, so I asked Ash, our guide and the constant thread through the trip, why this hotel seemed to offer young Sri Lankans, including young women, a stronger pathway into a tourism career.

Ash helped me get an interview with the General Manager. He told me they target young people in schools. They introduce the, to women in upper management. They work on the principle “You can be what you can see”.

Ash was the strongest link in the itinerary.  His stories provided the context I sought. He offered real insight into the economy and the focus on education, giving young people the opportunity to have careers that provide a genuine liveable wage and opportunities beyond traditional life. But even with Ash, I realized I was still inside a closed loop. I had his professional narrative and the intellectual debates on the bus, but I was missing the unfiltered local voice and the younger members of his team Dino and Lucky helped provide this. See blog post here 

I am a listener, not a collector. I want to understand systems and power, yet the tour is built for people who want to tick off a list. I want to talk to the engine room, yet I was shown the museum. Sri Lanka reminded me I’m not a typical tourist, and that leaves me between a rock and a hard place. When my friends ask where I will go next, I honestly do not know. I am home now, and I see my own world differently. I remember the insight, not the landmarks. Going there showed me how decisions made far away arrive in people’s lives, in the price of food, the cost of fuel, and the dignity of an ordinary day.

The leaders we choose decide more than our own future

Back home after three weeks in Sri Lanka. I saw what fuel shortages look like without passport privilege.

The petrol stations aren’t empty. There is fuel.
It goes first to tourism, because tourism brings money into the country.

Families miss out. No transport. No income. No school. No healthcare.

Teachers can’t reach their classrooms.
Parents who sacrifice everything for their children’s education watch that chance slip because a bus can’t run.

Nurses can’t get to clinics. Medicines don’t arrive.

Drivers, farmers, shopkeepers are left waiting while the system they serve no longer functions.

And still, people stretch every rupee. They put their children first.

Then you come home to abundance.

Where one person throws away food, another is searching for it.
Where one person chases wealth, another is trying to stay healthy.

And above all of it, the imbalance is obvious.

Countries with everything still want more.
More influence. More control.

Those who already hold power set the rules.
Those without it are told to accept them.

And we’re part of this.
The way we vote carries.
If we vote for me, me, me, we get leaders who think the same.
Power first. People after.
And people far from us live with the consequences.

After seeing what happens when something as basic as fuel is taken away, you understand how quickly everything can fall apart, and how much dignity depends on the basics.

Drop the good guys and bad guys for a second.
You know who decides who gets in the club and who doesn’t.

The countries with nuclear weapons set the rules.
They still have theirs.
Others are told they can’t have them.

If your country was being told no, would that seem fair to you?

Sri Lanka through the people who make the journey possible

Ash our tour guide, Dino our bus driver and Lucky our driver’s assistant, spotter, and passenger support.

Sri Lanka is my fifth group tour overseas tourism experience. We all know the feeling at the beginning. A group of strangers, a guide you have yet to meet, fifteen days ahead. Each of us arrives keen to meet each other. The group, and the guide, will shape the trip as much as the country itself.

Our tour guide Ash (Niruth Ashendra) meets us at the hotel the night before. We stand around in a loose circle, share a short backstory and why we have come to Sri Lanka. The first challenge of meeting new people begins. There are no name tags. The test starts immediately. Some people write names down. I start linking names to faces and their stories, hoping it sticks. It rarely does. Then Ann and Adam introduce themselves. A and A.  “A” breakthrough.

 The conversation carries into dinner. By the time we arrive at breakfast the group has started to connect.

We walk out to the bus to the bus. You step on and see the seats, the windows, the air conditioning, check for charging points and if the seats recline. Then you see the team.

Lucky (Mohottige Shalitha Lakshan), stands at the door with a tray of flowers. He hands one to each of us as we step onto the bus. People smile, cameras come out, conversations begin. It happens again the next day, and the day after that. It becomes part of the trip.

Dino (Rajapakshe Pathiranage Dinushan Isurinda), is in the driver’s seat. Lucky moves between the door and the aisle, handing out refillable water bottles.

Ash, walks down the aisle, doing a head count, all warmth and welcome, something we discover is typical of Sri Lankan people

After my first two blogs (see here and here), I had feedback from two Australian readers who work in the social and environmental justice sector. Bill worked in international development and understands how aid is designed, funded and delivered across countries like Sri Lanka. He reminded me that what I was seeing from the bus sat alongside years of programs, partnerships and investment that a visitor rarely sees. He encouraged me to have conversations with people on the ground, to move beyond what I could see from the bus. It became clear very quickly that the only people I had real access to were Ash, Lucky and Dino. Neil remined me about passport privilege, the ease of arriving, observing, and leaving.

A view from the bus shows moments. A conversation shows a life.

I had already spent time with Ash hearing his story (see my blogs on our conversations  here, here  and here.) I had now spent 12 days watching how well the three of them  worked together

Today I sat down with them in the hotel foyer. Ash translated for Dino and Lucky, and you could see how much their ability to understand and speak English will shape what opportunities open up for them next.

Ash works as a freelancer, often with Butterflies, the local partner to Bunnik Tours. He can choose when he works and who he works with. Dino and Lucky are employed by the bus company, which is contracted into the tour.

Dino is 29. He has been driving for ten years, across cars, vans and heavy vehicles. He went to Japan to earn money and send it back home. Getting there meant paying an agent a large fee and taking on loans. He worked long factory shifts until his back gave out and he came home.

He is married. He lives with his parents and is building a house on family land for his wife and himself. Each trip pays for more walls.

Lucky is 22. He worked in a hotel before this job. He notices when someone hesitates on the steps or when a bag needs lifting. He moves before you ask

He came into the job through Dino. They grew up in the same village. They trust each other and it shows.

Lucky is working toward a heavy vehicle licence when he turns 24. Ash encourages him to build his English and move into guiding, work that brings more income and more options.

Their choices keep pointing in one direction. Work, income, a house, and family stability.

On the road, Dino watches the traffic carefully and moves skillfully with it. Motorbikes pass close to the bus. Tuk tuks move into narrow spaces. Dogs cross. Cows stand in the road. When he overtakes, he uses the horn and the other drivers respond. It works as a signal. Everyone understands it and uses it.

Lucky watches everything else, the passengers, the luggage. In tight spaces he works like a spotter, out of the bus, guiding Dino through and directing traffic.

When we step off the bus to visit temples or markets, Dino and Lucky stay and wait for us to return.

As we talked, the conversation moved to what comes next.

Dino wants to keep driving and finish his house.

Lucky spoke about getting his heavy vehicle licence. He has to wait until he is 24. For now, he works alongside Dino and learns the job from the ground up. Ash encourages him. Better English opens the next step. Guiding, more responsibility, better pay, more opportunity.

I asked them what it was like working with travellers from countries like Australia, seeing how we travel and where we stay. Opportunities they can only hope for.

Lucky said he enjoys meeting people, hearing their stories, seeing how they live.

Dino nodded. “It’s good,” he said. “You see different things.”

We step off the bus and walk into hotels, temples, restaurants. They stay with the bus or head to driver accommodation nearby. Basic rooms, shared spaces, simple meals. The same trip, two different versions of it running side by side.

The conversation shifted again, this time to life outside the tour.

Do they have access to clean water. Yes, both their families are connected to the town water supply. I asked about the diseases I was vaccinated for before I left. Ash tells me typhoid is rare in today’s Sri Lanka. So is catching rabies, malaria or Japanese Encephalitis.

Whilst healthcare is free, they spoke about long waiting lists. If something needs to happen quickly, you find the money. Sometimes there is no money.

Dental care was another thing. If it costs too much to fix, you take the tooth out.

We spoke about growing up here. The civil war. The tsunami.

 Their memories are fragments. Ash remembers it well. He spoke about it as something that sat in the background of his childhood. On the bus he shared with us about his family’s frightening experience with the tsunami. He laughed when he told us his father who is Anglican was praying to Jesus, his mother who is a Buddhist prayed to Buddha to keep them safe.

Then the conversation moved to now.

Sri Lanka has changed, people talk more openly about politics. Ash described Sri Lankans as politically savvy. They follow what is happening. They talk about decisions and how those decisions land in their own lives.

There was a time when speaking out carried risk.

Women show up in public spaces here. Ash spoke about protests led by women, especially families still asking what happened to those who “disappeared” during the war. Mothers and wives stand together, holding photos, returning again and again, asking the same questions.

There is also a long history of women in political leadership. Sirimavo Bandaranaike became the world’s first female Prime Minister in 1960. Her daughter, Chandrika Kumaratunga, later served as President.

 Women have seen leadership at the highest level.

At the same time, what you see on the ground is mixed. Women ride motorbikes, work in hotels, and move into management roles in places like Jetwing Kandy Gallery. The General Manager spoke about mentoring and creating pathways for young women to step into leadership.

They also showed me their TikTok accounts ( Dino and Lucky). Short clips from the road, moments from the trip, small snapshots of Sri Lanka through their eyes.  This is their country, their work, their way of sharing it. In those videos they are  at the centre of the experience, showing places, telling stories, and building something of their own.

For Dino and Lucky. The here and now is the focus.

Dino is building his house. Lucky sees new opportunities for him in tourism.

Tourism brings income. It also brings a window into other lives, every day, right in front of them.

I have been working in the environmental and social justice sector for twenty years. Most people I know want to support others. The harder question is how to do that in a way that helps people build the lives they want, rather than the lives we imagine for them.

The answer starts with conversation.

For Australians, support can be practical. Travel with companies that use local partners and treat local staff well. Tip directly. Share the work of people like Dino and Lucky, including their TikTok videos ( here and here), because visibility can become opportunity. Support programs that build skills, vocational training, women’s leadership, clean water, health access and safe futures for children. Support what is built with people, not for them.

Passengers sit on the bus and look out the windows, taking in the country they have come to see, immersing themselves in it as much as someone passing through can.

Ash, Dino and Lucky give us lifelong memories. We leave with their stories, their plans, and a clearer sense of how global support can strengthen the lives they are building.

Kamani survived the tsunami and asked the question no one wants to answer

The ocean came once. What happens after that point is not nature, it is policy, priorities, and whose lives are treated as expendable.

You walk in expecting a collection of photographs and meet a voice that speaks from every wall.

“Why are we creating disaster when nature gives us so many.”
— Kamani

It frames the room.

This is the Tsunami Photo Museum on the south coast of Sri Lanka, near Telwatta between Hikkaduwa and Ambalangoda. Kamani De Silva, a local woman who survived the 2004 tsunami, started it after losing family, home and history in a single morning. She gathered photographs, stories and fragments of what remained, many returned by aid workers, to rebuild a record of what happened and to place it in front of anyone willing to look.

She gathered these stories to keep the faces in view, to show what happens when protection fails, and to ask why we keep adding to what nature has already done, through conflict, through power, through choices that turn risk into catastrophe.

The stories sit on timber and tin. Handwritten, uneven, sometimes misspelt, direct, unfiltered, raw and immediate.

“12500 children were left orphaned.”
“We are so helpless.”
“We do not know where our parents are.”
“Please bring us back to them.”

Faces of children. Faces of mothers. Faces caught in the moment where everything has already gone. The facts sit there in full view. Death, 40,000. Missing, 5,650. Injured, 15,200. Displaced families, 84,031. A single event, one morning, one coastline.

Survival comes into view through early warning towers, instructions, what to do when the sea comes again, a community building its own system after the fact. The gap between what existed and what followed sits in full view. Preparation arrives after loss.

Then the argument widens.

“Million of people suffering in the world with the war.”
“We are so small, we are innocent, why you destroying our world of children?”
“Please do not do that.”

Images of war sit beside images of the tsunami. Children crying, displaced, holding onto each other. The cause shifts. The outcome remains.

“Our children are innocent. Don’t destroy their world for your unlimited power and greed.”

This is where it becomes personal. The sea takes, then human choices decide who carries the burden, where people live, what protection exists, who rebuilds, who waits.

Earth is calling. Are you listening.
When you destroy nature, you destroy yourself.
If you protect nature, nature protects you.

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Animals move before danger comes. They feel it, they leave, they survive.

“As the human we should follow them.”

This is her plea, act early, move before the damage lands. What sits around it tells a different story, warnings delayed, systems built late, decisions shaped by cost and distance from consequence. The pattern holds, people left exposed, then left to rebuild.

“Why? It is our karma? Why? It is true we have to pay for our sins?”

People look to fate for answers. The causes sit in human decisions made long before the wave arrives.

“Slow down and be patient with your life in this world.”

If you are looking for wealth, somebody else is looking for health.
When you smile, a tear appears in another place.
Each time you throw food into the dustbin, someone is looking for it.

Everything in the room holds the same thread, disaster, inequality, waste, conflict, each one shaped by decisions that fall on the same people again and again.

“PLEASE WE NEED PEACE”

The words sit in red at the bottom of the wall. They read as a demand.

The ocean came once. The difference between survival and devastation sits in what is built, what is funded, and who is forgotten.

Sri Lanka Shows The Gap Between Spending And Reality

These tanks sit at my hotel. Treated water. Ten thousand litres at a time. I can turn on a tap and trust what comes out. Safe drinking water should not depend on where you sleep. Everyone in Sri Lanka deserves it.

I came here as a tourist on a cultural journey. Everyone told me how beautiful the country is and how wonderful the people are. That’s what I expected.

I wasn’t expecting to finish each day reflecting.

Reflecting on the gap between what I have and what people here manage without. Reflecting on how normal clean water, reliable health care and basic infrastructure feel at home, and how visible their absence is here.

Reflecting on how quickly you understand why vaccines sit at the centre of daily life. Reflecting on how easily illness can become something serious when the basics aren’t in place.

Reflecting on why people leave.

And then reflecting on something else. What this says about us, about the choices we make at home, and where we spend our money. The gap between what we know and what we are prepared to act on.

We are not standing on the sidelines. Australia is already spending money in places like this. Bill sent me some background that shifted the question for me. Bill is someone I trust on these issues. He has worked in the sector, served on the board of World Education Australia and Good Return, and is widely respected by those around him for his steady commitment to social and environmental justice.

He reminded me that there is already a serious structure behind Australia’s aid and development work. The Australian Council for International Development is the peak body for Australian NGOs involved in international development and humanitarian action. Its membership includes more than 130 organisations working across more than 90 developing countries. Large agencies, smaller community based groups, secular and faith based organisations, all part of the same system.

This is not a loose collection of good intentions. There are standards, reporting, accountability. There are people who have spent years trying to make this work.

So the question changes.

It is no longer enough to say Australia should spend more upstream and less at the punitive end. We are already spending upstream.

So why does it still look like this?

Bill’s advice was simple. Ask people.

I won’t have the chance to do that on this trip in any meaningful way. So I am drawing on what people in this space have already heard when those conversations do happen.

The answers are not complicated. People want the basics to work.

Clean water you can trust. Waste systems that don’t sit in the open. Health care that is close, reliable and affordable. Jobs that provide steady income. Transport that gets you to work safely. Schools that lead somewhere real.

They want consistency. Not programs that arrive, run for a while, then disappear. Not pilots that look good in reports and never scale.

They want work more than workshops. Income more than messaging.

They want to see where the money goes. They know aid exists. They also know it does not always reach them. That creates scepticism.

And they want to be asked at the beginning, not at the end.

None of this is surprising.

What is confronting is how closely it lines up with what I am seeing.

I thought the story was simple. We spend too much on borders and not enough on the causes.

Now I can see a more nuanced version of the story.

We are already part of this. Money is already flowing. The question is whether it is reaching the right places, whether it reflects what people actually need, and whether we stay long enough to see change last.

That is what I am reflecting on now.

Not only what I am seeing, though what sits behind it. Who decides. Who benefits. Who gets heard.

None of this is an argument for blank cheques, donor vanity projects or money that never reaches the people living with the consequences. It is an argument for asking harder questions about what works, what lasts and who gets to decide.

The next step is obvious.

Ask better questions.

Then listen.

Australia Funds the Warning Signs and Ignores the Problem

I came on a holiday and now I am putting together a briefing note to get an audience with Penny Wong.

Six days in Sri Lanka and it has become impossible to dodge that Australia spends billions on detention centres, offshore processing, border enforcement and surveillance, locking up children and stripping people of hope, and far less on the conditions that drive people to leave.

Billions on Warnings, Almost Nothing on Solutions

In my first piece I wrote about vaccines, public health and the visible conditions that make disease prevention a daily issue, not a travel checklist.

This second piece comes from a different place. I have taken a day out and stayed at the hotel because I needed a break from what I am seeing. The contrast is confronting. Writing this is how I turn that into action.

I am drawing on the leadership training I trust. Goal, problem, solution. In an ideal world we would sit down with the people we want to support and listen, and listen, and listen.

We pour money into deterrence after people decide to go, when the wiser investment is supporting them to stay

You do not need a policy paper to understand the pull of Australia from here. You need eyes and a nose. You need to walk past polluted water, rubbish piled where people live and work, and the kind of infrastructure gap that turns an ordinary stomach bug into something far more serious. You need to hear that Australia funds bus shelters carrying warnings about people smugglers and recognise the absurdity in full view.

We will pay for the warning sign. We drag our feet on the conditions that might remove the need for the warning.

And of course people look at Australia and want what we have. Clean water. Reliable health care. Schools that open doors. Work that pays enough to build a life. Streets that do not force public health into every hour of the day. Add a strong Sri Lankan community already living in Australia and the path becomes easier to imagine. People are not chasing fantasy. They are responding to the visible difference between one set of conditions and another.

Now place that against our politics at home. We live in a country of abundance, still right wing politics thrives by feeding grievance. Migrants are taking our jobs. Migrants are buying our houses. Migrants are the problem. It is the old script. Find a villain. Feed the resentment. Keep the public focused on who to blame rather than what to fix.

This is where the debate in Australia becomes so shabby. We hand the microphone to people who reduce human desperation to border slogans, as though cruelty counts as policy. They rage about boats, numbers and national strength. They rarely talk about sanitation, disease prevention, local health care, waste systems, corruption proof delivery, or long term partnerships with communities. They talk about the last stage of the story because outrage plays well at home.

There is another audience for this conversation. People who already know Australia has obligations beyond self protection. People who understand that generosity without discipline achieves little, and discipline without humanity turns ugly fast. This is where the hard thinking belongs. How do we help build safer, healthier lives in countries people are leaving? How do we do it from the ground up, with local knowledge, clear goals, open reporting and constant scrutiny? How do we keep money out of corrupt hands and get it to the people and projects that can change daily life?

We Warn Them Not to Come, Then Do Nothing About Why They Leave

None of this is beyond us. Trial programs. Local partnerships. Transparent metrics. Public reporting. Long term commitment. Real listening before money moves. Australia knows how to design systems, monitor spending and explain outcomes when it chooses to. This is a choice.

Sri Lanka has made one part of this brutally clear to me. People do not hand over life savings to smugglers because they are reckless. They do it because paradise looks believable from where they stand, and because home has stopped offering enough protection, dignity or hope.

That should force a different question onto the table in Australia. Not how loudly we can declare the border secure. How seriously we are prepared to invest in the basics that give people a reason to stay where they are.

I came here for a holiday. Six days in, I am thinking about budgets, public health, political courage and the poverty of a national debate that still treats deterrence as the main event.

This is the second piece. I will come back to the question in another six days, and I doubt it will have become any easier.

Why does Australia pay to lock people up rather than fix the reasons they leave?

Australia spends huge sums punishing desperate people at the border instead of spending earlier on the health, sanitation and opportunity that might help people build a life at home.

Sri Lanka has forced me to see something I have managed to avoid for years. I have travelled in first world countries, stayed in clean places, come home with photos and impressions, and rarely had to think about the public health conditions that shape daily life for millions of people. This trip changed that within hours. The vaccines alone told part of the story. The streets, the water and the smell told the rest.

Before I left Australia, I went to my chemist to check what I needed. COVID, flu, diphtheria, tetanus. Then typhoid. A check on hepatitis A. A conversation about Japanese encephalitis. Malaria risk. It felt like a long list for a short trip.

Then I arrived and understood exactly why the list exists.

You step outside and you see how easily disease can move. Waste sits in the open. Water carries what it should not. Heat amplifies all of it. This is daily life for people who do not have the infrastructure many Australians take for granted.

I am drinking a cocktail standing in water that you wouldn’t dream of drinking 

And then, in the middle of this, 0ur guide pointed out bus shelters funded by Australia.  He asked if we knew why they were there. We did not. He told us they carried warnings about people smugglers. Sri Lankans, he said, look to Australia and want the life they believe exists there.

Of course they do.

You can see the reasons from here. Reliable health care. Clean water. Education that leads somewhere. Jobs that pay. A future that feels secure. Add to this a strong Sri Lankan community already in place, people who help new arrivals find work, housing, a foothold.

So people make a calculation. They sell what they have. They take risks. They hand money to operators who promise a way out.

And this is where we shake our heads.

Australia spends huge sums punishing desperate people at the border instead of spending earlier on the health, sanitation and opportunity that might help people build a life at home.

We will pay a fortune to lock people up after they leave, still we drag our feet on helping create the conditions that might let them stay.

Standing here, that choice looks harder and harder and harder to defend.

We already spend money in places like this. Those bus shelters prove it. We fund messages telling people not to leave. We fund systems at the other end designed to stop them arriving. The spending is real. The intent is clear.

Still the gap sits in front of you.

What would change if a share of that money went into the basics people talk about here every day. Clean water systems. Waste management. Local health services. Vaccination programs delivered as standard care, not as travel protection for visitors. The kind of infrastructure that reduces disease, improves daily life and gives people a reason to stay.

The aim does not change. Fewer dangerous journeys. Fewer families risking everything. Less money flowing to people smugglers.

The starting point shifts.

Travel can be many things. This trip has stripped something back for me. Vaccines protect people like me when I arrive. Investment in public health and basic infrastructure could do far more for the people who live here.

Here is the question again for all of us.

Why are we willing to pay a fortune to lock people up after they leave, still so reluctant to help create the conditions that might let them stay?