By IPS Correspondents
CANBERRA, Aug 18 2003 (IPS)

A major shake-up of regional security, aid and development programmes is likely after the Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Auckland over the weekend, now that regional heavyweight Australia has gotten its way in having a national lead the key Pacific grouping.

Symptomatic of these changes was the eventual success of Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, in having an Australian career diplomat, Greg Unwin, appointed secretary-general of the Suva-based forum secretariat – with a brief to overhaul the organisation.

The secretariat, based in Suva, employs some 70 staff to promote trade and investment in the region and to coordinate common political and international affairs of the sixteen-nation forum.

Unwin’s appointment was opposed by the six members of the small island states – Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, Nauru, the Marshall Islands and Niue – who wanted a Pacific islander to head the secretariat. This would have been in keeping with the 32-year-old tradition of the forum.

Where previous appointments have been made by consensus, the small island states rejected personal pleas by Howard and insisted that the position be decided by secret ballot.

After intense lobbying and five separate votes spanning two days, Unwin was elected on Saturday, defeating nominees from Tonga, Nauru and Samoa.

Unwin’s election was described by observers as being in spite of, rather than because of, Howard’s personal lobbying. Symptomatic of Howard’s clumsy approach was his uninvited intervention at a closed meeting of the six small island nations.

When asked whether he had gatecrashed the meeting to lobby for Unwin, Howard sought to ignore the question. ”What’s the next question?” he said. When pressed once more, all he would say at the concluding press conference was ”I just pass”.

Central to Howard’s vision of reshaping aid in the Pacific is a greater level of sharing of resources between nations.

A proposal for a five-year, 11 million U.S. dollar programme to train 900 police a year from within the region won support from the forum. The forum also agreed to undertake studies into the potential of pooling resources for shipping and aviation services. A specific group was established to review the current secretariat.

In an effort to overcome his reputation within the region as a fair weather friend – due in part to his patchy attendance record at previous forums – at the start of the meeting Howard professed a newfound enthusiasm for the Pacific.

”I have come to this conference as a very fully engaged Australian prime minister in the affairs of the Pacific,” he said on Thursday. ”That means we want to help, we want to achieve reform, we want to achieve change, but we are entitled to ask that things that have not been handled well in the past be handled better in the future à The provision of Australian aid is conditional on good governance.”

However, Howard’s victory has come at the cost of further cementing the reputation of the Australian government as domineering when it wants Pacific nations to bend to its will – and indifferent when they want its support on issues that cut across Australia’s self-interest.

”When it comes to issues like climate change and nuclear shipments through the Pacific, the position of Australia is at odds with what the Pacific nations want,” said Shane Rattenbury, political liaison officer with Greenpeace Australia, who attended the forum meeting.

After three years of unsuccessful attempts to persuade France, Britain and Japan to end the shipment of nuclear waste through the Pacific, Pacific nations decided in February this year to pursue legal, diplomatic and other options to end the shipments.

However, the forum backed away from this position after the New Zealand government sought to moderate the determination of the Pacific nations with the opposition of the New Zealand and Australian governments.

”New Zealand. . . oversaw the deletion of the section of the proposed resolution that would have resulted in the forum stating its willingness to take tougher actions against the shipments such as legal actions,” Rattenbury said.

Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare objected to Howard’s insistence that aid funding be tied to the adoption of anti-corruption measures. ”The word ‘corruption’ in your definition seems to highlight regions like the Pacific,” he said on Friday.

But the director of the PNG community legal support group Alotau Environment, Brian Brunton, despairs at the lack of political determination of Somare’s government to tackle endemic corruption and hopes Howard may help drive change.

For instance, ”you can’t tackle corruption in PNG without dealing with corruption in the forest sector”, said Brunton, a former judge in the Supreme Court of PNG.

While a report from a Senate committee of inquiry into Australia’s relationship with the Pacific – tabled in Parliament last Tuesday – agreed there was widespread corruption in the logging industry, they baulked at making specific recommendations about the issue.

The report was ”very disappointing”, Brunton said. ”We need an Independent Commission Against Corruption to be created, just as has occurred in Australian states such as Queensland and New South Wales. The legislation has been drafted but it’s going nowhere. Until some high-level people end up in jail they won’t take the issue seriously.”

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