We Say 1

One of the charms of the Pacific Islands region is that it is mostly still rather laid back. Part of being laid back is to take one's time, not to fuss or expend unnecessary energy on the execution of one's daily chores, and if possible put them all off until tomorrow in the hope that tomorrow won't come.

An unfortunate feature of a meeting convened by the current Pacific Islands Forum chair, Helen Clark, to be held in Auckland in April, is that it has an air of being convened in great haste, as indeed it has.

Within a very short time of having received in her hands a report on a review of the Forum and its Suva-headquartered secretariat, she announced what is now sounding like an emergency session of the normal annual Forum summit. The annual summit is due to be held several slumbering months away in August in Apia, the normally pleasant Samoan capital.

Ms Clark wants to get cracking on the implementation of the report, its pages not yet published officially, but said to contain a lot ideas for making the Forum more effective as the region's primary political institution. The secretariat will be galvanised by its new Secretary-General using the report's ideas into performing its functions more productively and in some different sectors of activity. Ms Clark is to be congratulated for wanting to get cracking so quickly, so quickly in fact that when they first read of the summons to Auckland in their local newspapers or heard about it from their local radio or television stations, at least some of the Forum's other 15 member countries were quite mystified. Shouldn't there be more time allowed for the report to be studied and then digested, perhaps, at the August Apia meeting?

After the "reflection", as Ms Clark termed it, by other Pacific luminaries summoned by her to reflect on the report by "eminent persons", there were reports indicative of her desire to forge the islands into a European Union manifestation. This also was received with surprise in the offices of the islands governments. They are wondering how to address themselves to the implementation of the modest little Pacific Islands free trade area they've committed themselves to get cracking on over the next ten or so years.

Ms Clark's vision of an EU-style Pacific Islands Union, and it is unclear whether it was hers or some figment of journalistic interpretive bent, has fortunately since faded. It is one to be put off until tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow. There are a lot of reasons why it wouldn't work.

Hurried preparations for the Auckland drama have proceeded, however, with the explanation from Ms Clark in mid-March that she wants to get cracking with implementing Forum reforms and re-engineering right away so as to steer the Pacific Islands from becoming, as she puts it, "ghettoes of poverty and conflict".

Mr John Howard, the region's current reigning supremo, has said he will attend the Auckland meeting. His impending presence there aroused a curious high degree of excited attention from the Australian press, rather few of whose representatives have set foot in the Pacific Islands, but who are expected to be at Auckland in unprecedently large numbers.

Auckland is a quick, easy place to reach, compared with some of the places where the Forum meets. It appears that Australian journalists are intent on treating the meeting as an epic event destined to set Australia as the region's superpower cum deputy sheriff.

There is speculation that the Australians are privately annoyed by Ms Clark's initiative since they regard it as a ploy intended by New Zealand to stick one up Canberra and demonstrate that it is the New Zealanders, not Australians, who know the Pacific Islands best. If that is so, then Auckland in April could be an entertaining place to be in.