Nauru’s Justice Minister, David Adeang, may well be telling the truth when he says that Australian journalists approach Nauru officials with arrogance and even “an air of racial superiority”. It wouldn’t be the first or last time journalists have been rude or peremptory in the pursuit of a story.

But since the interaction between Nauru and journalists consists of journalists putting in electronic or faxed visa applications at $8000 a pop, which are then summarily rejected, we are sceptical about this justification for barring all but a senior journalist from a right-wing newspaper (and former Liberal Party adviser) from the island nation.

Instead, we believe the reason Nauru bans journalists is because it isn’t an island nation. It’s a former colony that has been recolonised by Australia precisely because it has a vestigial sovereignty that can be used to flout Australian law.

Island prisons are a dime a dozen. Sovereignty is the prize. The Naurans have lost theirs due to the disastrous mismanagement of compensation funds for decades of mining — funds that should have put the island on a firm footing. Now, with no exports or tourism to speak of, substantial ill-health and essential equipment they cannot afford to maintain themselves, all they have left to sell is their sovereignty.

Australia’s relationship to Nauru is clearly imperialist and exploitative — little more than blackmail on an international level. But acknowledging their right to sovereignty doesn’t mean we have to acquiesce to the current pretense of it. If Nauru’s small, interconnected elite is willing to do Australia’s bidding through some charade about disrespect, then their complicity in the repression and denial of human rights needs to be called out.

In the long run, or even the short one, they are doing no good for their country, whose current corrupted relationship with us is only staving off a crisis for the island that can now not be avoided, and to which our government is contributing.