There is something a little disconcerting about the work done jointly by the Department of Communications and the Arts and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in their report of the review of Australian broadcasting services in the Asia–Pacific. Not because the report lacks informational worth, but for its underlying premise and the hermetic sense it conveys about Australia’s place in Asia and the Pacific.
Read the detail and you’ll find that Australia is located 3,200 kilometres from Papua New Guinea—a claim that is broadly correct if you’re standing in Melbourne. From Australia’s northernmost population centre of Saibai Island, on the other hand, it is only four kilometres to the PNG mainland—roughly the distance across Port Phillip Heads from Point Lonsdale to Point Nepean.
Similarly, the report gives the distance from Australia to Indonesia as…
