Pacific Magazine > Magazine > October 26, 2007

High Tide

A New Route

Australia’s Election Is An Opportunity

By SAMANTHA MAGICK

Before the year’s end Australians will go to the polls in a choice between long-standing Prime Minister John Howard, and the relatively new Australian Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd.  The opinion polls have Rudd ahead by an unfeasibly large margin, and domestically the contest has been portrayed as generational contest. Depending on your point of view or campaign advertising, that choice is between the experienced and reliable, or old and tired Howard and the young and dynamic, or untried and risky Rudd.

But what does the contest and eventual result mean for Australia’s Pacific neighbors? Regardless of who wins, we should see it as an opportunity to turn a new page.

It comes as relations between Australia and Papua New Guinea, Fiji and especially the Solomon Islands, are at a low point. In early October Solomons Foreign Minister Patteson Oti told the United Nations of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) that “howsoever dressed and rationalized, intervention and occupation allow ‘assisting’ nations to spend and earn substantial revenue.” Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Oti was among those Solomons leaders who “want to destroy RAMSI” and that Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare had “embarked on quite a long campaign of personal abuse of Australia and Australian leaders and of attacking RAMSI.”

Would a Labor government be able to improve this situation? Rudd says his government would move away from military responses to regional issues (that is how RAMSI began) but it has proposed no specific fundamental changes. However, the animosity between the Australian and Solomon Islands leaders is so personal and so prolonged that a change at that level in itself would relieve some pressure, if only temporarily.

Australia was quick to condemn last December’s coup in Fiji. But there appears to be an ever-so-slight softening in Canberra, with Downer recently acknowledging the positive steps have been taken by the interim government toward the holding of elections with the census now underway supported by Australia. A Labor government would take a similar approach.

Labor and the coalition government are now taking the same attitude to calls for Australian labor markets to be opened up to Pacific Islanders. They both say they are watching closely the labor mobility pilot program currently underway in New Zealand.

Labor would likely put a lot more emphasis on its relations with Asia. Rudd is a fluent Mandarin speaker and makes much of his familiarity and comfort level in Asia. Howard has looked about as
comfortable in that context as he has in the aloha/bula shirts of Pacific Islands Forums through the years.

Both parties recognize the double edged sword that is increased Chinese involvement in the Pacific. Downer says Chinese assistance mustn’t undermine Australian aid programs in the region. Rudd claims that poor relations with Australia’s island neighbors “is creating an unprecedented strategic opportunity for other non-regional states to occupy the vacuum and to further displace Australian interests.”

Australia and the U.S. appear to be reviving their military links and cooperation in the Pacific region, and the build up on Guam will amplify these opportunities. A government of any political color would be likely to nurture this development.

There is one issue where the parties have taken distinctive positions.

A Labor Government would ratify the Kyoto Treaty and commit $150 million to helping Pacific Island and South Asian neighbors prepare for and adapt to the effects of climate change. The former commitment will never happen under the current government and it is only now prioritizing climate change as a policy issue in the public domain, prompted by a domestic drought.

Regardless of who wins the election, and Rudd is by no means a sure bet, our Pacific Island governments should take the opportunity to offer some creative solutions of their own in mapping the future relationship. By all means, we should “look north/east” to Asia, but for many islands, there is no denying the historic, economic and political ties to Australia. We just need to improve them.