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?