Cover Story
Our Pacific Man Of The Year
John Howard: The Big Man of the Islands
Can "Little Johnnie" really have transformed himself into John Howard, Big Man of the Islands? What's going on here? A master of domestic politics, he has in his third term as Australia's Prime Minister also discovered the world. - ADVERTISEMENT - He already knew London. His middle name is Winston, and his political model is the only Liberal leader who has been prime minister longer than him: Robert Menzies, who remained an admirer of the British way of life even though Australia had by then turned‹after the United States came to its rescue from Japanese invasion from the United Kingdom to America as its chief global ally and protector. He also already knew, to a lesser degree, the United States. He was in Washington on September 11, 2001, which has helped cement an already close relationship with President George Bush. After the Bali bombing of October 12, 2002, which killed 88 Australians, Howard re-applied attention to Indonesia, whose government had been cool to Canberra since East Timor's shift to independence. Jakarta proved receptive to Australian professional support from the federal police and other anti-terror agencies. He was also starting in his third term, that began in November 2001, to discover China, fast growing into the dominant power in Asia. He has visited China four times as prime minister and played a central role, during 2002, in helping Australia's liquefied natural gas consortium land the biggest single contract yet awarded by the People's Republic: a $A25 billion deal to supply gas to generate power at Shenzhen for the dynamic southern province of Guangdong, next to Hong Kong. Global Statesman So far, so good for domestic political reasons as well as for his personal evolution into a global statesman. Australian voters, anxious about their security in such troubled times, have so far trusted Howard in his new big picture role. But less predictably, he has also become, in 2003, engaged in the Pacific islands region, Australia's immediate neighbourhood. How this happened will probably have to await his retirement memoirs, but most money in Australia is being placed on his winning a fourth term at the election due by the end of 2004, so this may take some time. But the contributing factors appear to have included: the widely applauded military operation in East Timor in 1999; the publication of some strong papers by Australian think tanks (the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra), arguing for a shift to a more pro-active policy in the region generally and in the Solomon Islands particularly; the model of "coalition of the willing" interventions elsewhere, most importantly in Iraq; and a concern that without intervention now, Solomon Islands could collapse, reflecting "however unfairly" for much of the rest of the world, a failure of Australia to manage its own backyard. Pacific Solution Howard has never resiled from his Pacific Solution that saw a wave of boat-people wash through Indonesia in an attempt to land in Australia, only to be repulsed by the Australian navy and escorted to camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea's Manus island. But it remains a very divisive issue within Australia.
Leading roles in pushing past this older Pacific Solution towards a new strategy, have been played by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, still shocked by the failure of multilateral institutions, especially the United Nations, to act to prevent horrors in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, and determined to prevent more bloodshed locally; and by the ambassadors to Washington, Michael Thawley, and London, Michael L'Estrange, both of whom had been foreign affairs advisers to Howard and are still constantly consulted. Howard's attendance at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders' meetings was poor in his early years. But his performance is now improving. He has flown to five of the eight such summits held during his term so far. He built a particularly strong relationship with Papua New Guinea's then prime minister, Sir Mekere Morauta, now opposition leader. And in hindsight, Australia's response to the two Pacific coups of mid-2000, in Fiji and the Solomon Islands, appears to have been inadequate. An opportunity is now widely perceived to have been lost when Howard declined to provide federal police assistance sought by Solomon Islands Prime Minister Bartholomew Ulufa'alu before the coup. Solomon Islands intervention When the present Solomon Islands Prime Minister Sir Allan Kemakeza asked to see Howard in mid-year, he was immediately flown down south and this time the request was treated seriously. A Forum Foreign Ministers meeting followed on June 30, a "cooperative intervention" force was despatched swiftly, and by August 25, Howard was in Honiara, being greeted by thousands of cheering, flag-waving Solomon Islanders openly displaying their support for the intervention forces. "Thank you Uncle Howard," one placard read, another: "Thank you Australian and New Zealand taxpayers." (Howard has been assiduous in involving New Zealand's Helen Clark in this new strategy, while global partner the United States has played only a marginal role in satellite logistics support.) Beautiful words, surely being stored up for election adverts. Much of the self-conscious "hard headed" foreign policy commentaries in Australia had earlier ruled out greater Australian regional involvement as all risk and cost, no gain either strategic or electoral. Howard has moved on, as widely predicted, from the Solomons to the major target when it comes to poor governance, decline in service delivery, and law and order challenges: Papua New Guinea. Three hundred Australian police will be despatched there early in 2004, to function in practical, hands-on roles rather than as theoretical advisers as in the previous, long-standing police aid project there. And 200 people‹lawyers, economists, accountants, administrators‹will be deployed to help the public service regain its former efficiency and impartiality. The hard years are starting in the Solomon Islands, following the early successes in arresting many of the ringleaders responsible for the violence there. Redirecting the culture of public life will prove a long haul. And it will be no less challenging in Papua New Guinea. Australian involvement
Indeed, probably more so, given the frequently frosty responses of Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare to increased Australian involvement. The length of his public life‹he was first chief minister in 1973, then prime minister from independence in 1975‹frames statements like the following, responding to an Australian desire to review aid programmes: "We have existed, all the islands countries have existed all this time. We have gained independence as sovereign nations. We have survived, even before elected governments. Pacific islanders have always survived." He was talking in Auckland, where he was attending the Pacific Islands Forum summit where Howard succeeded in having veteran Australian dip-lomat Greg Urwin appointed, against some odds, as the organisation's next Secretary-General, another initiative that Howard might previously have felt carried too much risk of failure, too little domestic upside. But the above statement from Somare highlights the continuing culture clash between the Pacific's "old guard" whom he now leads, who continue to focus substantially on process and form, and the insistence of Howard and some of the younger islands leaders on quantifiable outcomes. It is that practical, can-do, step-by-step approach to reshaping the world that has driven Howard in this third term. It is because he readily identifies similarities of approach in the American and Chinese leaderships, that he has focused considerable efforts towards respectively reinforcing and cementing special relationships with each rewarded by simultaneous visits by Presidents George Bush and Hu Jintao in late October. Big Man of the Islands In the September 29, 1999 issue of the Australian weekly magazine The Bulletin, well respected journalist Fred Brenchley interviewed Howard, and summarised that he viewed Australia operating in a deputy peacekeeping capacity in "our region" while the United States maintains its global policeman role. Since then, United States leaders have answered leading questions from other Australian journalists by pinning "deputy sheriff" badges on Howard. But Howard himself declines such labels. Is Australia Asian? "Australia will never define its place in any part of the world other than to behave as we are," he said in October. Journalists look in vain for Big Picture philosophising from the new Big Man of the Pacific. But there is little doubt about the effectiveness of his re-injection of Australian focus on the Pacific, in Canberra, almost as much as in the islands themselves. Importantly, the "cooperative intervention"‹Downer's phrase‹strategy for the region comprises a rare case of bipartisanship in Australia. For its ultimate test of success will come over a decade rather than any time before the next Australian election.
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