POLITICS: Resentful Islanders Adopt Australian ‘Pacific Plan’

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Kalinga Seneviratne

SINGAPORE, Oct 28 2005 (IPS) - The ‘Pacific Plan’, a blueprint for regional development and integration largely drawn up by Australia, was adopted by the 16-member Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) at a summit this week but amid resentment over a ‘neo-colonial’ approach.

Leaders, particularly from Papua New Guinea (PNG), hosts of the summit and Fiji, where the PIF secretariat is located, were critical of the plan as trying to impose a ‘one way’ integration scheme under which the small islands will open up their markets for goods and services from developed members, Australia and New Zealand.

Other members of the PIF include the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu

In return for opening up their markets, neither Australia nor New Zealand were required to open their labour markets to Pacific Islanders under a plan pushed through by the PIF secretariat that is headed by a former Australian civil servant Greg Urwin.

Indeed, this was a sticking point leading up to the summit as well as at the end of it. Upon arriving in the PNG capital, Australian Prime Minister John Howard ruffled many feathers by announcing that Australia will not open its labour market to unskilled Pacific Islanders – though, a day earlier, the Australian Farmers Federation had asked that they be allowed to come on short-term work permits to overcome serious seasonal labour shortage.

“We have had some long-standing reservations about the concept,” Howard said on arrival in Port Morseby on Tuesday, adding, “…we have always had a preference for permanent settlement or permanent migration”.

His New Zealand counterpart, Helen Clarke, added to the resentment, when she said on arrival, “If a case is to be made for seasonal permits from the Pacific, our foremost concern would be that people do go home at the end of the permit, … obviously our first obligation is to our own people”.

New Zealand also has near zero unemployment and chronic shortages of seasonal workers to pick fruit and harvest crops. Many Pacific Islanders see this attitude as racist because both countries offer working-holiday visas to thousands of European ‘backpackers’ each year, even from some poor former East European countries, who come and work in the farms. Many have overstayed their visas.

The Suva-based Pacific Concerns Resource Centre’s coordinator Adi Ema said, ”A legacy of colonial racist policies seen to be discriminatory towards dark-skinned people could be a factor in the difficulty Pacific people face in gaining access to these two countries”.

The ‘Pacific Plan’ is based on the concept of regionalism where countries work together for their joint and individual benefit. The plan divides a very large number of proposals into three broad areas – ones which can be implemented in the next three years; those that require agreement in principle and those that need further study.

On the anvil for the next three years are a regional technical training institute, a sports institute, bulk buying of petroleum, strategy for information and communication technology, setting up a regional audit service, an anti-corruption agency and work permit scheme to be classified as a trade in services and be included in the Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA) by January 2008.

The last item was inserted into the plan through pressure from Pacific Island governments, who saw this as a concession to be given by Australia and New Zealand , in return for open access to the markets of the 14 small island member states of the PIF for Australian and New Zealand goods and consultants (services) under the regional integration plan.

Urwin was quoted saying before the summit that the plan ”is designed to help Pacific Island states to cope with globalisation through regional cooperation and set targets to achieve economic growth, sustainable development, good governance and security”.

But, Rex Horoi, executive director of the Foundation for the People of the South Pacific, argues that a major flaw of the plan is that in the drafting process grassroots communities across the Pacific, which constitute the bulk of the population, have not been consulted.

”The people who have been consulted are the bureaucrats in the cities, in the government machineries and little groups who live in towns,” he told Radio Australia. ”(If they) had been embraced in the consultations, people would have been telling you issues such as housing, water and sanitation, health, literacy for women and youth, income generation, those are the issues which confront people in the rural areas”.

There is deep resentment across the Pacific, especially among the darker-skinned people in Melanesian countries like Fiji, PNG, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu towards the Howard government’s ‘neo-colonialist’ attitude.

The U.S.-led ‘war against terror’ since 2001, in which the Howard government is a senior partner, has been used to justify Australian intervention in these countries, under the ‘failed states’ theory which holds that these countries could become a security threat to Australia.

Australia has used the aid stick to place Australian advisors and police throughout this region. Fiji now has multiple layers of Australians within its government, including its Police Commissioner.

After sending an ‘intervention force’ to Solomon Islands to stem a deteriorating law and order situation in 2003, the country has virtually turned into an Australian colony.

Attempts to penetrate Vanuatu have been less successful, with contingents of Australian police twice expelled amidst allegations of spying and political interference.

Attempt to impose Australian Police in PNG was thwarted by a Supreme Court decision last year, which said granting of immunity to them was unconstitutional. Thus, Australia was forced to withdraw some 200 policemen, some of whom were reported to have been placed in the intelligence gathering division. Recently, 40 were sent back under a new agreement which does not grant them immunity from PNG laws.

Many critics believe the Howard government’s policy towards the South Pacific is driven by a fear of Chinese and Taiwanese economic and political penetration of the region. China has recently increased its economic aid and investments in the region and is stepping up its political influence.

Thus, Australia’s ‘Pacific Plan’ is seen as a pre-emptive strike at possible Asian domination of Australia’s backyard.

PNG Prime Minister Michael Somare has been an outspoken critic of the Australian attitude. Speaking on Australia’s SBS-TV network, last month, on the eve of the country’s 30th independence day celebrations he said, ”We want a plan that is acceptable to Pacific Islanders, not necessarily the plans that are imposed from outside and particularly from Australia”.

”Their real intention is they want to have some controlling device in the whole region,” he added. ”They want to control the region, so that the Prime Minister (Howard) can go back and talk to the Prime Minister of Britain and President of United States and say ‘the Pacific is no problem, we are looking after it’… with that kind of mentality in the Pacific leadership, you’re undermining the integrity of the Pacific Island people”.