Bali is a Theme Park!

I am an asshole, by Paul Sheehan.

The Sydney Morning Herald pays me good money to talk out of my ass. Harken unto the flapping of my asscheeks!

It is difficult to imagine the strong relationship between Bali and Australia surviving this latest outrage after the battering it has received since the first blow was delivered on October 12, 2002, when 88 Australians were among the hundreds killed and maimed by Islamic terrorism. The timing of Saturday's co-ordinated attack was without question a macabre anniversary of the 2002 event. So was the attempted destruction of the Australian embassy in Jakarta on September 9 last year.

Since then have come the hammer blows of the tsunami, which caused havoc not just to much of the Sumatra coastline but to all of Indonesia's reputation as a tourist destination. There has been the made-for-television Schapelle Corby saga, which caused real damage to Indonesia's standing with Australians. Then came the arrest of nine Australians for drug smuggling, the "Bali nine", with the likelihood that the alleged ring-leaders will be sentenced to death.

The Boxing day Tsunami, terrorists who blow up Balinese because we invaded Iraq, Schapelle Corby smuggling drugs and 9 morons with the contents of Keith Moon's liver strapped to their bodies are all really the fault of... The Balinese!

Then this: on May 28, the front page of The Daily Telegraph ran a photo of Abu Bakir Bashir beside a banner headline that thundered: "NATION'S FURY - This terrorist planned the murder of 88 Australians and got two years. Yesterday, Schapelle Corby got 20."

That just about summed up the mood.

"I are two stupid to watch teh TV! Paul Sheehan! Paaaul Sheeeehan!"

In August, another young Australian beauty, Michelle Leslie, was thrown into a Bali jail for drug possession. Now Bali Bombings II, three bombs instead of two, with more young Australians among the dozens minced by ball-bearings. The word "Bali" has lost the connotation of tropical escapism that it enjoyed for 50 years. Australians kept coming back after the bombings in 2002, after the tsunami, after Corby's ordeal, but surely the flow will fall back to a trickle again, perhaps this time for a long time.

"Bali" now brings to mind drugs, death and danger. The Balinese will pay doubly for all this.

Yes, doubtless some Balinese prostitute will be denied the heaving, sweaty bulk of Sheehan looming over him/her.* "Stupid Balinese. Make your island back into a tropical paradise so I can visit!! Move oompa loompas! scurry, scurry for Paul Sheehan! Block out the reality I support!"

Yesterday, the Prime Minister, John Howard, was saying the right things, but for all his talk about national security, for all the cost of new security initiatives, for all the compromises involved in the new security laws, all is undermined by the Howard Government's intimate involvement in the military adventures of President George Bush in the Middle East. Australia has become a higher target for terrorism. This is self-evident. It is part of John Howard's legacy.

So wait, Iraq has some part to play in this? It's not all the fault of the Balinese? So what does Paul have to say about the man whose legacy is the endangering of Australian lives for no benefit whatsoever?

Howard is, however, a lucky politician. For 10 years, he has been aided by the hysteria and ineptitude of his ideological enemies, who have constantly invented causes to attack him which have merely served to strengthen him. Out in the Australian electorate, the deafening campaign on behalf of illegal immigration was dead on arrival. The hysteria over Iraq was dead on arrival. The fetish over the Taliban sympathisers in Guantanamo Bay was dead on arrival. The latest concocted outrage, the hysteria over new anti-terrorism laws, has just fallen at Parliament's door - dead on arrival.

"Paul Sheehan like torture! Paul Sheehan go to Bali, make pyramid with Indonesians!"

We have to stand with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. We have to stand with the Balinese. We need more and stronger links to Indonesia.

Except by actually going there, or, like, obeying their drug laws. Or not doing things that make people want to kill Balinese to get to us.

Paul Sheehan ladies and gentlemen.

*This is merely hyperbole, for all I know Mr Sheehan doesn't actually visit prostitutes. In fact he may never have visited a prostitute in his life. If however any prostitutes contact me regarding having sex (ugh) with Mr Sheehan I will doubtless take this down and replace it with something more suitable. Like a billboard.