Australia Engaged

When the Australian Senate committee charged with reviewing Australia's relationship with Papua New Guinea and Pacific Islands came to name their report, its members decided on "A Pacific Engaged." Perhaps a more appropriate name would have been "Australia Engaged," for the report comes as the Australian Government is involving itself in the affairs of the region at level not seen for some time.

Three years after first requested by the then-leadership of the Solomon Islands, Australia is leading an intervention force charged with restoring peace and stability to the country. Australian Prime Minister John Howard has just participated vigorously, and controversially, in the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Auckland. Coming out of that meeting, Australian diplomat Greg Urwin is the new Pacific Islands Forum secretary-general.

Right, with hat is Governor of Western Highlands and former Prime Minister Paias Wingti, center is Don Polye, Minister for Works and Civil Aviation and to the left is Agriculture Minister Moses Maladina. All attended the anti-corruption rally. Photo: Michael Field

Since March 2002 the Senate committee has examined the current state of, "political, economic and development cooperation relations and implications for Australia of political, economic and security development in the region."

Given that its brief was quite a mouthful, the resulting report was predictably broad ranging. Presenting the final report in Senate, its Chairman, Labour Party Senator Peter Cook, said the inquiry had allowed the Committee to have a "close look at a significant and somewhat neglected part of our neighborhood."

Senator Cook said the inquiry was not only an opportunity for review, but also a means of putting forward big ideas "which raise issues for public debate and an alternative vision for policy direction."

The biggest of these ideas is the proposal for a Pacific economic and political community. As described in the report, this community could work along the lines of the European Union. It could eventually lead to the Australian dollar existing as a regional single currency, a single labor market and common budgetary and fiscal standards.

Australian Prime Minister Howard was at the Pacific Islands Forum meeting when the report was tabled in the Senate. He told journalists, "There are some things in that report which are quite good. There are some things in that report which are for the sort of never-never, such as the common currency. I think we should crawl before we walk. We should focus on things like police training, airlines and other matters."

However, Howard's own confidential briefing paper to Pacific Island leaders at the Forum included many of the same issues, such as a regional approach to monetary and exchange rate policy, a central bank, pooling of regional resources in justice and security-related areas and a regional unit to respond to complex transnational crime and terrorism issues.

President of the Australia-Pacific Business Council, Bob Lyon, says that while the Pacific economic and political community is in theory a good idea, in practice it would be very difficult to implement because of the different visions Pacific nations have for development and the diversity of cultures.

"A common currency would help, and there is some precedent for this in the Cook Islands' adoption of the New Zealand dollar ... but it would be a very painful experience for many Pacific economies as they would essentially have to buy Australian dollars, and that would require cost cutting elsewhere, particularly in the civil service." The Business Councils strongly support one of the inquiry's other recommendations, the opening up of seasonal employment in Australia for Pacific Islanders.

"It is about looking after people in our own region," Lyon says. "It would be a godsend for people in the Islands because income would flow back to Island nations."

At this stage, however, the Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (www.pcrc.org.fj), a non-government organization with over 100 affiliates around the region, is less convinced of the merits of some of the proposals.

Director Hilda Lini is concerned about Australia's motivations in the region, and the lack of consultation she perceives in processes such as the Senate Inquiry. "We Pacific Islanders want to have equal status in the partnership with Australia. But they often want to have their feet elsewhere, and represent United States, European or G8 views in the region," she says.

Steve Ratuva, a political sociologist and Fellow at the Australian National University, is concerned that over-reliance on regional mechanisms would undermine the ability to find local solutions in meeting the interests of Pacific Islanders.

"I've met a lot of young, well trained but disillusioned people around the Pacific whose potentials are not even recognized by their own governments," Ratuva says. "This itself needs creativity and innovation. For many, the easy way out is asking for aid, more aid and soon intervention."

The Senate committee devotes a substantial chapter of its inquiry report to the future of development assistance, and in particular the good governance agenda, concluding, "Australia should consistently review its approach to ensure that the governance agenda adequately takes account of Pacific political relationships, cultural and social impacts, country specific requirements and embraces all levels of society."

Prime Minister Howard, speaking at the Pacific Islands Forum was firmer.

"The provision of Australian aid is conditional on good governance," he said. "That is what the Australian taxpayers wanted of me-and in the end I represent the taxpayers of Australia, I represent the Australian people. They want to help countries that need help. But they also expect in return that there be proper standards of governance."

AusAID is now reviewing its AUD$350 million annual aid program to Papua New Guinea, an initiative that has polarized debate in the letters pages of PNG's newspapers about the true value of Australian aid to the country.

So there is no doubt Australia is engaged. The Australia-Pacific Islands Business Council, which has bemoaned the lack of Australian political leadership in the region, (aside from Foreign Minister Alexander Downer), says the new interest from John Howard is a welcome change.

In Australia, certainly, political response to the Senate Committee report has been broadly positive. And there has been a high level of media coverage of the Solomons crisis and the Pacific Islands region broadly, even if much of it has been of the kind that the Senate report itself identifies as, "the simplistic depiction of the region as either 'paradise' or 'paradise lost.'"

"The Pacific is seen in terms of media images and stereotypes-corruption and tribal warfare in PNG or coups and rugby in Fiji," Ratuva says. "Even many within Australian academia, think tanks and policy people only rely on secondary data and assumptions about the Pacific."

That the debate about Australia's responsibilities and roles in the Pacific region is even happening in Australian public life is healthy. The challenge will be to ensure that at least one of the Senate committee's hopes comes to fruition, and that the debate is informed by a much better understanding of our region's complexity and diversity than has been the case in the recent past.