Q & A

Amid some controversy, career Australian diplomat Gregory Lawrence Urwin was selected to take over as Forum secretary-general this January. Although he has been identified with the Australian Foreign Ministry, serving as special envoy to Nauru, and high commissioner to Fiji and Vanuatu, among many other assignments, he has also worked for the United Nations-most recently in the United Nations Development Program-and even served, from 1979 to 1982 as Secretary of Foreign Affairs for the government of Samoa. Urwin spoke to Pacific Magazine by phone from Apia, Samoa, where he resides with his wife Penny (nee Keil). They have two sons in Apia and one in Suva. They also have two grand-daughters in Apia.

Greg Urwin faces the media after his selection as Forum secretary-general.

Pacific Magazine: Every journalist in the region has asked you if you'll be carrying an Australian brief as the new Forum secretary-general.

Greg Urwin: Actually, I don't mind because I do know it has to be answered. I will be the servant of the Forum.

PM: What do you wish people were asking you?

GU: Well, I'll be talking more and more in the coming months about alternate ways of looking at the Pacific, rather that always seeing the region as going to hell in a hand basket.

PM: You said in a Radio Australia interview that you saw the Pacific now as being in a "particular historical moment." What did you mean?

GU: It's hard to talk in generalities about this because each country has its own history, but if I did talk generally, the first point is that it's been a region that's suffered mightily from generalizations.

Broadly, I'd say that countries have been operating in terms of what they inherited from the colonial era-the constitutions, the economic structure, courts and so on. The first generation of Pacific leaders took those tools and did their best. The situation in the Solomons is the most graphic example of a place where older issues and divisions were masked during the colonial era and into the independence era. We now see some of the limitations of what people were given. The [governing] methods from the colonial era are losing their relevance.

But rather than seeing this as the onset of chaos, the real issue is how to run these countries in the future. This will be a very long historical moment. I think in the next 20 years we will be looking at new structures of governing.

PM: Some observers are saying that this historical moment just means democracy hasn't worked in the region.

GU: That's all too categorical for me. At independence, Pacific countries were handed off-the-shelf constitutions. What's been going on in Fiji is an example. It seems to me if you plunk a naked Western system down into a nation where there are deep divisions, it will not work. The Westminster system presumes some level of harmony, but in Fiji the divisions are too entrenched. In Papua New Guinea, which by some definitions is a very robust democracy, you have a different problem. People are trying to make things less fluid than they are.

PM: What's the relationship between the Forum and the South Pacific Community? What are the roles of each?

GU: There are of course historical differences, but the review undertaken of the Forum in 1995 decided that the Forum should be a policy service for its members. It should get out of the service delivery business. And a fair bit of that has gone on. The new review we are undertaking will have to look at that. The Forum does some research, especially in the trade area. I think we could strengthen the Forum's relations with other organizations, like University of the South Pacific.

PM: What issues are you interested in for the Forum to work on?

GU: I think the Forum leaders are looking for a secretariat that has the ability to be more proactive with issues in the region. Structurally, the secretariat needs more capacity and we will look for some readjustment. I think one of the lessons the Forum leaders have learned from the Solomons is that we have to be more proactive.

A question that interests me is: What is the meaning of security in the region? I'm also interested in where the trade structure is going and in our relations with the European Union. The question is: How does a region of very small places find its way in a world of globalization? Do we just let it roll over us?

Another thing I'd like the Forum to do is to encourage more second track diplomacy. By that I mean the ability to bring together officials from the region to think thoughts that officials can't think. Everyone needs a source of new ideas from outside their own organizations. If we are contemplating some forms of regional integration.

PM: The decline in Pacific fisheries seems to be a real issue around the region.

GU: Yes, we're beginning to see a certain readiness of Pacific leaders to think about more cooperation, and fisheries is one of those areas where there are immediate national and regional needs. This is going to require that we become more regionally integrated.

PM: Prior to the Forum appointment, you'd been working for the United Nations Development program in Suva. What were you working on there?

GU: We were consulting and helping parliaments in the region, especially with transparency and human rights issues. We were also looking at anti-corruption matters and at the interface between modern governments and traditional societies.

PM: What's your way of motivating staff?

GU: My managerial method has always been very consultative. I place a high premium on people looking outward, not gazing at their navels.