Up close and spineless: Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs

Instead, Australia appears impatient to return to business as usual. Last week, the Victorian Government hosted a Sri Lankan delegation for trade talks, including the country’s Prime Minister and Education Minister. Next, Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard is off to Israel, on a junket with politicians, journalists, academics and executives. Payback, perhaps, on her statement, at New Year, that the attack on Gaza amounted to nothing more than Israel exercising its “right to defend itself”.

There does seem to be something about Australian politics that sees human rights as an inconvenience, to be brushed aside from important conversations about making money. Canberra refuses US requests to accept 17 Uighurs from Guantanamo Bay for resettlement here, because China views them as “terrorists”. Asylum was granted to 42 leaders of the West Papuan struggle, but only after a large picture of them making landfall on Australian territory featured prominently in the media, making them “unignorable”. The subsequent Lombok Treaty appeased Indonesia by shoving human rights off the countries’ joint agenda altogether.

Israel should not be able to enjoy normal relations with the outside world as long as there is no justice in respect of its serial violations of international law. In the Sri Lankan case, a clear path of action has been set out for the international community, in the statement by Tamil representatives here. As well as the investigation of alleged war crimes, Australia is being asked to join other countries in insisting that Sri Lanka open up the war zone, and the internment camps where 300,000 Tamils are presently held, to international scrutiny, and release detainees including three doctors who treated the wounded almost to the bitter end.

Smith has warned Sri Lanka that its “longstanding international reputation is now very much at stake”, but there is no sign that Canberra is willing to make any part of its relations with Colombo conditional on these demands being met. He also called for “political reconciliation” in Sri Lanka, but you can’t get reconciliation without justice. The Palestinian and Sri Lankan Tamil struggles are for human rights, based on human needs, and those cannot be traded away. So the conflicts will continue, and if we don’t join in providing forms of access to justice that don’t involve further violence, we will be helping to make that grim turn of events more likely in future.

The timidity of governments leaves the rest of us to take matters into our own hands. Hence the growing campaign for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against Israel. One highly symbolic target here is the tour by Sri Lanka’s cricketers, scheduled for a test series against Australia in 2010-2011. The national sport relies, for pre-eminence, on a wholesome image, appealing to every section of the Australian community. British politicians have already appealed to the English Cricket Board to break off contacts with Sri Lanka until some of these issues are satisfactorily addressed - it’s time for Australia to follow suit.