We Say 1

Oceania's outlook for 2004 is a reasonably good one, tinged with some perils other than those unavoidable inescapables; hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. The first great peril is SARS, the pneumonia-like disease that wrecked Asia's tourism industries when it first appeared last year. Scientists say that SARS could reappear at any time. Asian governments have made elaborate defence preparations against that possibility.

SARS didn't reach the Pacific Islands, but if it erupts again, it could. The Pacific Islands, say the Pacific Community's health specialists, stand terribly unprepared and ill-equipped to resist it. Next is terrorism, of the self-importing kind, not the rascal gang intimidation prevalent in some parts of Melanesia.

The slaughter of tourists in Bali, the Indonesian island of bliss, should have rammed home to Pacific Islanders that while their distance from the mainstream of the world's troubles affords them only a limited degree of shielding from the wanton attention of international terrorists, their vulnerability makes them an attractive ground for an easily mounted bloody demonstration by fanatics convinced of their invincibility, albeit suicidal, and intended to frighten their real targets, like Australia.

Otherwise, as we have previously remarked, the outlook for the Pacific Islands is quite encouraging. After a string of negative or barely perceptible annual growth rates, the islands, according to the Asian Development Bank, can expect modest growth averaging 2.5% this year, and 2.7% next year.

After dilly-dallying for far too long, Pacific Islands governments are at last facing up to the terrible threat that HIV-AIDS presents their people with, one capable of destroying entire societies as is happening in Africa. Concerted action is being mounted with substantial support from the United Nations Global Fund, Australia and France.

The quick positive results from the Australian-led intervention in the Solomon Islands are gratifying. Rounding up the bad boys, those with guns and those with sticky fingers, is however the easy part. The reconstruction of the country's public service, economy and political institutions will be a long slog. Whether the repair job will be lasting, only time will tell. Stability has, meanwhile, been restored to a large portion of Melanesia.

Australia's proposals for helping with the repair of Papua New Guinea's failing government structures are unpalatable only to the politicians responsible for wrecking them. In Papua New Guinea as in the Solomon Islands, grassroots people no longer view independence through rose-tinted spectacles. Thoroughly disillusioned by the excesses of disreputable leaders, they are accepting rescue with sighs of relief.

Fiji will reach a crossroads in April or May when its Supreme Court will produce a decision that will fundamentally affect the ethnic structure of its Fijian dominated government. The country may finally be put on track for lasting multiracial government; or it may again be derailed.

Tonga's old-fashioned monarchist government may be confronted with an unprecedented civil disobedience campaign mounted by the democracy movement. Concessions may at last need to be made by Tonga's rulers for the long-term security of their positions. Nauru will somehow stagger on. None of the Pacific's lowest atolls will slip permanently below the waves, at least not for many decades to come.

Tourism, now indisputably the great engine driver of Oceania's growth, is poised for an era of strong growth. New money is going into hotels in Fiji, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, and Samoa. But the reliability and viability of some national airline services remains in question.

The Pacific Islands remain over-dependent on the few trunk route operators that have real profit-motivated justification for operating into, rather than over the region, and will remain so as far ahead as can be foreseen.

Two new foreign low-cost operators, one from Australia and one from New Zealand, will open services to some island destinations in 2004.

They will be in competition with long established and complacent nationally-owned airlines, but the passengers they carry will not necessarily deliver the sort of custom that the region's tourism-dependent economies want to have.