New Era Unfolds

As election campaigning season opens in Australia, the big question about its role in the Pacific is changing. As recently as a year ago, it was: does Canberra care? Now, it is rather: can Canberra keep it up?

For the Pacific Islands have moved during 2003 into a new era, in broad-brush terms the fifth. The first was pre-colonial, whose millennia were marked not so much by splendid isolation as by indigenous globalization through trade cycles, violent expeditionary forces, and mass migrations. This was followed by a century of colonialism, and then a rapid transition to independence for most islands, leading into an era of disillusionment as the early leaders‚ visions faded or narrowed, and economic and ethnic barriers appeared to block the paths to progress.

This new era is one already being signified by greater national and regional cooperation, by a lowering of some expectations as leaders adjust to realistic goals, by a determination to reduce to manageable limits the corruption that emerged in the preceding era, and by a more intense focus on economic development. The leaders of this new direction-they would call themselves, more diplomatically, catalysts-are Australia's Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, and their New Zealand counterparts Helen Clark and Phil Goff. They are long-term, established leaders of countries that have competed successfully in a rapidly globalizing environment. In the early post-colonial years, advice and assistance from such directions was discarded as patronizing, unwelcome and irrelevant. Today it is being sought by emerging Pacific leaders who are addressing the future, whose frames of reference are 21st Century.

For the two governments‚ teamwork has been crucial. But given New Zealand's demographic composition, its location, and its political drift over 20 years toward the Islands, and given Australia's size and its broad-ranging global roles, it is Australia's newfound appetite for engagement in the Pacific that has been the more surprising and the more significant.

Thirteen months ago, Australia published the second white paper on foreign affairs in its history, in which it gloomily admitted that while "instability will be a feature of our immediate region for the foreseeable future," there was not much it could do about it, because "Australia cannot presume to fix the problems of the South Pacific countries. It is not a neo-colonial power." But the extensive interview that Downer gave to Pacific Magazine (March 2003) at that very time indicated that he was already having second thoughts about the Canberra establishment's received wisdom, about its historic distance from-in some quarters, disdain for-the Islands region.

The events that followed were rapid, costly, daring and controversial. But they can now be viewed as crucial turning points in the emergence of the new, pragmatic Pacific of the 21st Century, which is at last shedding the 20th Century shibboleths that failed it.

The changing of Australia's mind can be in part attributed to the frustration widely expressed when Canberra failed to respond effectively to the coups in Fiji and Solomon Islands in mid-2000, which each successfully removed elected governments.

The resulting sense of abandonment helped trigger the engagement of influential think tanks. Not Australia's universities, which had largely turned their back on the region since the heady days of decolonization, but the Australian Strategic Policy Institute-a new body funded by the government and led by top security expert Hugh White-which decided, to the derision of many, to focus on Solomon Islands for its first major report, and the Centre for Independent Studies, a private sector funded body that had recruited formidable veteran development economist Helen Hughes. Hughes, a former senior executive with the World Bank, gained a hearing for her argument that more of the same aid would not change anything: "Australia and New Zealand have feared the opprobrium of being thought 'colonial'‚ to such an extent that they have not empowered their aid agencies to think strategically so as to negotiate with Pacific governments to achieve development for islanders rather than elites."

The ASPI report unflinchingly described the Solomons as a "failing state" on the brink of anarchy. Unless the rot was stopped there, "we risk seeing our neighborhood degenerate into lawless badlands, ruled more by criminals than by legitimate governments." Effective lobbying of Howard and Downer was also conducted by church people appalled by the situations in the Solomons and Papua New Guinea especially, by businesses led by ANZ and Westpac with operations throughout the region, and by aid organizations with their own networks.

The success of the Australian-led engagement in East Timor from 1999, and the ensuing deployments to Afghanistan and then Iraq-as well as the praised collaboration between the Australian Federal Police and the Indonesian police that led to the rapid arrest and conviction of most of the Bali bombers of October 2002-reinforced the confidence of the security forces that they could help stop the rot in Melanesia, too. The model that was adopted, however, was not so much any of the above, as that of PNG's island province of Bougainville, where a peace monitoring force from Australia, New Zealand, Fiji and other countries had played a vital role in stabilizing the situation following the fragile accord that ended the 12 years of civil war there.

Australian Army troops patrol Red Beach near the Solomons capital of Honiara last July. Photo: AP Wide World Photos

Last March, Solomons' Prime Minister Sir Allan Kemakeza ran out of options, as warlord Harold Keke carved out a whole chunk of Guadalcanal island, the Weathercoast on the south, as one where the rule of law no longer applied, and as sections of his own police force behaved more like tribal armies or criminal gangs. The PM, facing oblivion, called on John Howard for help. Howard had declined to do the same for Bart Ulufa'alu when he had been prime minister three years earlier, before being dislodged at gunpoint. But the Australian leader is not the kind of politician to make the same mistake twice.

Kemakeza was within days flown to Canberra in an Australian government plane. Soon a plan was agreed for what Foreign Minister Downer called "cooperative intervention." The foreign ministers of all14 Forum island states flew swiftly to Sydney, where they agreed the new strategy.

In July, "Operation Helpem Fren" began, spearheaded by 2,300 Australian troops and police, of whom just 800 remain. It has been a considerable success, leading to the arrest of the most dangerous gang leaders including Keke and Jimmy "Rasta" Lusibea, the handing in or seizure of large numbers of weapons, the re-establishment of the police force with an Australian number two to back up the British commissioner. Investigations are proceeding into the activities of politicians, public servants and police. A government minister has already been jailed for three years. And the role of Australian auditors, lawyers and economists are coming to the fore as that of the security force declines, much of their initial job done.

The overall tenor of the engagement by Australia, but also by New Zealand, has changed considerably over the last year. Fourteen months ago, a New Zealand police sergeant, Graeme Crosson, said during a secondment to the Solomons: "If we come here and offend people there's no point. We have to become friends, by taking very small steps." Those steps, those boots, have become bigger by a considerable order.

Next came the Pacific Islands Forum in Auckland, New Zealand, in August. There, Howard succeeded in persuading the Island leaders to appoint for the first time an Australian as secretary general: Greg Urwin, the country's best known diplomat in the region for a generation, whose marriage to a Samoan added to his credentials. Australia also gained agreement for a regional police training college in Suva, to which it contributed US$10 million.

The anticipated answer to the question "Where next?" came sooner than most expected. In late September, Downer flew to PNG to propose a more hands-on strategy for Australia's annual US$230 million aid program there, 20 percent of PNG's budget. PNG's veteran Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare remained a subscriber to the "Pacific Way" philosophy first espoused by his old friend Fiji's Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, and now consigned in this fifth Pacific era to the dustbin of history. He was critical of the whole project, fretting: "The old Pacific way is disappearing."

Somare had led his country to independence from Australia, and he now suspected Canberra's motives, and said as much in Auckland and back home. But the two sides kept talking, and success coincided with a subtle shift in gear by Somare himself, back toward the role with which he scored his great initial success as the father of the nation: less as the interventionist Asian-style patriarch, more as chairman of the board boosting national spirits by his speeches and delegating the detail to his capable team of ministers. As a result, the annual joint ministerial forum between the countries in Adelaide, Australia, in December, proved a remarkable success. Australia is now sending 300 police and 200 public service professionals to PNG, to perform line duties-teaching by doing-rather than just offering backroom advice. This is an input extra to its annual aid, which is itself being reviewed.

What next for Australia and the Pacific Islands? The country has committed itself to considerably increased spending in Solomon Islands and PNG over the next few years-with the total of new commitments, on top of the regular US$700 million aid to the region, probably comprising US$1 billion over the next decade. And in February

Howard moved to establish a 500-strong regional deployment force within the Australian Federal Police, which would be trained and available for swift action. This was again underpinned by new research from the ASPI, which stresses "the increased use of police on the front line of maintaining regional security." Howard himself spoke on his first of two visits to the Solomons over the last six months: "What has been achieved so far is only the first stage. The next stage is to consolidate the gains in the area of law and order with a frontal assault on corruption and poor governance."

This new course is not without its critics. And if something goes wrong-Australians are killed, there are complaints about heavy-handedness, costs overrun-the strength of political support, in Australia and in the wider region, will be truly tested. David Hegarty, the convener of the State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project at the Australian National University, and one of Australia's few deeply experienced Pacific watchers, says the interventions "may be seen as useful external mechanisms for assisting in the amelioration of conflict, but they clearly offer no fix."

That, he says, requires long term, broad-based commitment, "particularly through second track‚ mechanisms, educational linkages, visitorships, and a special migration/guest worker scheme." The intervention strategy has been criticized by one of the most prominent Asia-based journalists, Philip Bowring in Hong Kong, as a partial turning back from Australia's emphasis under Howard's predecessor Paul Keating, of "meshing with Asia." Former defense intelligence officer Paul Monk warns that "the policy of expensive intervention could prove as futile as the labor of Sisyphus-that classical figure doomed to roll a rock up a hill time after time, only to see it roll down again and have to start again." And former foreign affairs department economist Peter Urban says: "Cooperative intervention is likely to fail the most important lesson of the history of our aid program: that aid only helps those countries that are trying to help themselves. If our aid program continues to support corrupt politicians and/or corrupt political systems, it is doomed to continue to fail.

But while the detail will naturally be discussed and argued over, the trend now appears to be set-at least for the next year or so. Within Australia, the opposition Labor Party's new leader, Mark Latham, has never traveled to the Pacific, and while its foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd is an Asia specialist without significant exposure to the Pacific Islands, he has consistently emphasized the region's significance: "The South Pacific is of central importance to Australia's long-term future," he has said. There remains a major gap between the awareness of a few senior politicians and advisers, of the importance of the Pacific, and the need to inculcate that sense in government departments, in universities, in media organizations and in many boardrooms.

The Australian Senate's Foreign Affairs Committee attempted to build a broader coalition of concern when it produced a report that urged a European Union-style Pacific Community including a common currency, and called on Australia to open up its immigration-moving away from long-held universal principles-to advantage Pacific islanders. But the proposals have not found warm welcomes, either within the Islands or back in Australia, even though alternatives are still struggling. The earlier Forum Economic Action Plan has still been only partially implemented, and the free trade platform, the Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA), is hedged in by masses of conditions despite its already low horizons. Making economic progress will prove a major challenge for the new interventionism being spearheaded by Australia.

Satish Chand of the Australian National University says: "One sensible way to proceed to greater unification within the region but with an open trade regime is to embark upon deep integration involving freeing up of restrictions on movements of goods, services, capital and labor in the region. Locking in with the trade liberalization agenda of Australia may assist the members to resist domestic lobbies opposed to such reform."

The crucial bottom line for the region is that among Canberra's decision makers, Australia-the world's eleventh biggest economy, a major ally of the United States and increasingly close to China, increasingly confident in its place in the world-is again interested in the Islands.

Rowan Callick is Asia-Pacific editor of The Australian Financial Review.