Upfront

Scott Whitney

Caught between the continental would-be mini-superpower of Australia and the community of Pacific Islands, New Zealanders know that they are Islanders too. This is not just a question of geography, since Australia just comes under the wire in terms of continental eligibility, at the same time that it just makes it in the gate (the barbed wire gate at the ranch in Crawford, Texas, for instance) of the Big Guys fighting the Bad Guys, as the Bush administration so subtly calls anyone threatening American security.

As the conservative Howard Administration moves Australia into the Solomons, the more liberal Labour government of Helen Clark could almost be pictured as hiding behind its larger neighbor, peeking out from time to time to see how things are going-worried, no doubt, that ignorance or clumsiness by its continental neighbor could damage Aotearoa's Island relations, which for several decades have been rather better than Australia's.

These relations are better, perhaps, because New Zealanders tend to think of themselves as Islanders. As Michael Field points out in our special section on Aotearoa, Auckland is the largest Polynesian city in the world. Tangata Whenua and Pasifika people-the two au courant terms for Maori and Pacific Islanders respectively-have mixed in such a way that Field refers to this New Zealand phenomenon as the youngest culture in the world. This knowledge and this comfort with a mélange of peoples in their population have made Pakeha New Zealanders much more accepted by Islanders. It has also made Aotearoa's foreign policy and aid programs in the Islands much more skillful than those of its bigger neighbor.

Still, New Zealand and Australia were both criticized at the recent Auckland Forum meeting. The issue was the poaching by both countries of star rugby players who leave their Samoan, Fijian or Tongan teams to play for bigger audiences and bigger money in Australia or Aotearoa. No, really, this is a serious issue! Anyone with even the scantest acquaintance with the South Pacific will know how positively batty people get about rugby. This issue is both a real example of the inequities of globalization, and symbolic of a deeper, more subtle missive from Island leaders smarting from the big place-small place tensions that define the Islands' relations with the larger powers at the Rim.

And of course neither Aotearoa nor Australia is free of current racism or historical colonial cruelties. Helen Clark apologized to Samoa for the early twentieth century massacre of a group of Samoan warriors who today would be called freedom fighters.

Somehow I can't picture Howard doing any such thing. He is not comfortable in Island settings and he is not well briefed culturally. At the recent Forum meeting in Auckland, he botched the traditional Maori hongi greeting and ended up kissing his partner's nose, which would have been an act war in times gone by. And Island leaders still recall his refusal to get up and dance at the festivities ending the last Forum. He froze when the Island dancers tried to coax him to his feet.

In all of this, I think Kiwis have a better chance at being more influential in all respects in the Pacific, whereas Australians have the power of their regionally huge economy as their main selling point.

New Zealanders have that island sense that we're all related and that, since we're likely to run into each other on a plane, on the road or in the local market, we might as well be polite to each other.

I still remember a cab driver in Auckland, in the late 1980s, who apologized to me for New Zealand's anti-nuclear stance toward the U.S. Apologize is not the right word, really. He was not repudiating the policy, he was merely saying to me, a visiting American, "Nothing personal, mate. Glad to have you here." It was an Island thing to do.