Australia's Regional Push Risks A Backlash

Small islands states serve at least two purposes at meetings of the Pacific Islands Forum.

One purpose is to voice the concerns of small and vulnerable islands states. Another, less obvious, is to be the unofficial voice of the Forum; to say the things that might not look diplomatic in the official communiqué. After all, who could argue with the small and vulnerable islands states? One large and seemingly invulnerable island state. Australia, to be exact. Answering a question many Pacific leaders did not even want asked, "somewhat disappointed," is how Cook Islands Prime Minister Dr Robert Woonton described himself. Australia had successfully lobbied for their man to be Forum's Secretary-General on a vague platform of anti-corruption. Before the historic vote, Woonton said small islands states decided they would like "someone from the Pacific who understands our cultural differences".

Many, but not most.

Happy to be cutting ribbons...New Zealand foreign minister Phil Goff and Fiji¹s prime minister Laisenia Qarase.

Freed from the "Pacific Way" decision making by secret ballot, most of the 16 leaders confounded media pundits and supported Australia's bid. Woonton shrugged at the outcome. "The forum has made its decision and it has been accepted. You have to accept change sometimes. It's one of those things. It's a new millennium."

Indeed, it is.

Some are even promoting post-September 11 new world scenarios where every imminent threat is responded to with overwhelming force. Incipient instability? Send in an intervention force. Cancerous corruption? Rewrite decades of aid-based, hands-off diplomacy. Crippling consensus? Force a vote.

In fact, Auckland was not the first Forum a vote had been taken. In 2000, notes the New Zealand Herald, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark stunned colleagues in Kiribati at the leaders' retreat. She moved a resolution to allow officials left out in the blazing sunshine to come in under a canopy and share the shade.

Since then, New Zealand and Australian officials have worked overtime to force Pacific politicians out into the sunshine. Three years later, Clark gave up the bad cop role to take over as Forum chair.

Howard smoothly stepped into her wedge heeled shoes‹and continued kicking Pacific Way down a side street called history.

Those who climb onto the high horse of morality on the low road of brute force, however, risk serious backlash. Witness Tony Blair in Britain. Mainstream media held off criticism of the allied invasion of Iraq. But, after wide criticism of their cheer leading role, the media ditched the pompoms and bit back with a vengeance.

Howard‹and Clark‹face similar risks in the Pacific. Alternative media based in Australia and New Zealand have already begun a beat that may be taken up by their colleagues in the island region.

"The roots of poverty in the region are the double burden of a legacy of long colonial oppression and neo-colonial exploitation in which formal independence has disguised the continuation‹and often stepping up‹of economic domination and dependence," comments Green Left Weekly, an Australian publication, with a self-explanatory title.

Jaded rhetoric? The weekly gives an uncomfortable example.

"The Australian-owned Gold Ridge mine in the Solomon Islands, which opened in 1998, doled out a mere 3% of royalty payments to the Solomons, divided between three parties 1.5% to the central government, 0.3% to the Guadalcanal province and 1.2% to the indigenous landowners."

Views once confined to the far-left now look like receiving wider airing. Media at the recent Pacific Islands News Association conference in Samoa rejected "ethnic tensions" as the cause for troubles in the region. They instead zeroed in on corruption and its causes. At the same time, there is increasing recognition that most of today's leaders were brought up during colonial times. New politicians say the era casts a long shadow.

In the Solomons, Joses Tuhanuku, an MP and leader of the Labour Party, told the influential Telegraph newspaper, "We were not prepared by the British for a parliamentary system. We've had only two proper general elections before independence. There wasn't enough trained manpower. You could count the number of graduates with your fingers."

One diplomat was unhappy at that. "There has been decades of mismanagement and corruption in government and among officials, which I don't know how you can blame on the British," he said. Typically, he preferred to stay unnamed. Other old hands say the Pacific Way and traditional loyalties to family, tribe, and island stand in the way of successfully adopting western-style democracy.

A suggestion knocked back by Tuhanuku.

"The parliamentary system can work here. It just takes time. Australia wasn't a perfect democracy to begin with."

Having seen Pacific Way tossed out the back door, more and more politicians like Tuhanuku are likely to embrace the same values as claimed by Australia. They may also welcome being quoted throwing questions at politicians like Howard about living up to those values.