By Maureen Penjueli and Wesley Morgan
The Rudd Government has made much of its "new approach" to Australia's island neighbours, but the view from the Pacific is that not much has changed......Governments in the Pacific are wary about a new FTA with Australia and NZ because they have a lot to lose. A recent AusAid commissioned report published by the Institute for International Trade at the University of Adelaide suggested PACER Plus would result in a 30 per cent increase in trade in the region. This report failed, however, to indicate that the vast majority of that increase will be in favour of Australian and NZ exporters.
Academics in the Pacific are predicting that 80 per cent of Pacific manufacturing could close down under PACER Plus, leading to unemployment for thousands of workers. A report commissioned by the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat and released in November 2007, found that countries such as the Solomon Islands, Cook Islands, FSM, Niue and Nauru could lose between five to 10 per cent of their recurrent revenue and for about half the Pacific, including Samoa, Vanuatu, Tonga, Kiribati, RMI and Tuvalu full trade liberalisation would present a major fiscal challenge as the adjustments would be between 10 and 30 per cent of revenue.
Furthermore, most Pacific countries lack secure social nets, such as state welfare, to assist unemployed workers. At the same time, Pacific governments will face a double burden as revenues fall through tariff slashing, undermining the provision of public services in the region. This picture is a very different one to that painted by Simon Crean.
11/23/08
What's So New About Rudd's Pacific Policy?
11/19/08
8/12/08
Bougainville opposes Australian Neo Colonialism
Papua New Guinea's Autonomous Bougainville region is opposing Australian plans to engage advisors in its government.
Australia through its international aid agency AusAid has put forward an advisory submission to the Bougainville government.
It wants Australian officials to be placed in advisory roles in the Bougainville government administration.
continues here
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Coconut Revolution shows the island of Bougainville fighting a revolutionary war for control of their own resources.
Bougainville has tremendous reserves of both copper and gold, and it has been at the hands of European colonialists for centuries. BBC Bougainville Timeline (only up to 2007)
Bougainville Copper's mine regains shine
Resources editor
Francis Ona, leader of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army, with his troops. Mr Ona's death has helped spark renewed interest in the island's copper and gold mine.
In the 1970s, Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto) began exploiting the island's huge copper reserves. Resentment over the negative effects of the company's activities on the area and the lack of any tangible benefit to the islanders erupted into conflict in the 1990s. Attempts at proclaiming the independence of Bougainville (Republic of North Solomons) have occurred twice: in 1975 and 1990. In the second case the government of Papua New Guinea moved to put down what became a secessionist movement led by Francis Ona, a former surveyor for BCL. The PNG army received military aid from Australia and enlisted the support of SandlineInternational, a mercenary firm. The island was embargoed to weaken its people's resistance.However, they proved much more resilient than expected, designing their own weapons and converting engines to vegetable oil. Peace talks brokered by New Zealand began in 1997, leading to autonomy for the island.
8/9/08
Viewpoint: Labour mobility deals
Under pressure to sign on to new free trade agreements, Pacific Islands governments interested in securing positive outcomes for their peoples see deals on labour mobility as potential development gains. But is this the right approach? And what are the potential costs?
Islands Business (Suva) | August 2008
Viewpoint: LABOUR MOBILITY DEALS
Wesley Morgan
Under pressure to sign on to new free trade agreements, Pacific Islands governments interested in securing positive outcomes for their peoples see deals on labour mobility as potential development gains. But is this the right approach? And what are the potential costs?
For much of the past decade the Pacific Islands Countries have faced pressure from developed-country partners and aid donors to move towards trade liberalisation through new free trade agreements (FTAs).
Free trade agreements involving the region include the Pacific Islands Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA), the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union, and the extension of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) with Australia and New Zealand to include deeper “economic integration”.
The move towards free trade is driven largely by the interests of business (exporters, service suppliers and potential new investors) based in the Pacific’s developed-country ‘partners’.
Businesses in Australia and New Zealand, in particular, want to see tariffs reduced on their exports to the Pacific and changes to laws in the region to allow multinational corporations to establish new enterprises and invest (and remove profits) without obligations to the countries in which they invest.
Concerns have been raised by many in the region, particularly civil society and academics, that these free trade deals will lead to rising inequality, dramatic losses in government revenue, de-industrialisation, business closures, job losses, a reduction in the quality and supply of essential services and the closing off of important ‘policy space’ that governments use to stimulate development.
Pacific governments have approached this push towards FTAs from a defensive position-understanding that trade liberalisation with much larger economies will have very real costs for the Pacific Islands, but hoping to win some concessions in areas of key interest to the region.
The link between labour mobility and FTAs
One of the areas Pacific governments have been keen to gain concessions in is in the area of labour mobility. The unique challenges faced by most Pacific Islands (small size, distance from markets, high transport costs, etc.) means that relatively few investors are interested in putting their money into the region.
Understanding that capital is not coming to labour in the region, governments are calling for the introduction of carefully regulated labour movement schemes that would see unskilled and semi-skilled workers temporarily move to developed countries to work-increasing remittance flows to the islands, improving skills for returning workers, and easing economic and social pressures created through unemployment (especially youth unemployment).
The temporary movement of labour (not permanent migration) is linked to FTAs through agreements on trade in services.
The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) generally forms the basis for bilateral FTAs that include agreements on services-trade.
The ‘temporary movement of natural persons’ (people who travel to another country to deliver a service) is known as Mode 4 under the GATS.
Pacific governments have spent much of the past decade arguing that concessions on Mode 4 labour mobility should be included in any FTAs with the EU, or with Australia and New Zealand-and this has become a central negotiating position for the region.
So important does the Pacific hold temporary labour movement that current negotiations with the EU for a comprehensive FTA (called an Economic Partnership Agreement) have stalled because the EU is refusing to offer any new concessions on Mode 4 labour mobility. This has become the ‘red line’ non-negotiable regional position in the EPA negotiations.
At a recent seminar on EPA negotiations, held in Madang, Papua New Guinea, Pacific trade ministers and regional trade negotiators told EU ambassadors they have “no mandate” to discuss services liberalisation until the EU gives way.
PNG Foreign Minister Sam Abal said the EU was “hearing, but not listening to the Pacific Countries” when it came to their key demand.
The EU forced Fiji and PNG to initial an interim free trade deal (covering goods trade) in late 2007, under threats the EU would raise tariffs on tuna and sugar exports to the EU, and is seeking to conclude a full FTA in 2008 (covering issues like services and investment, government procurement and intellectual property rights. At the time of writing, Pacific states had in fact requested a suspension on EPA Trade in Services negotiations with the EU, with a view to potentially returning to the negotiating table in the future.
An unrealistic option?
The EU has made it clear they will not offer concessions for movement of the categories of workers proposed by the Pacific, largely because immigration is the responsibility of Member States. In a letter from the European Commission’s deputy director for trade, Karl Falkenberg and the director-general for development, Stefano Manservisi, to the (then) Pacific lead negotiator (dated October 20, 2006), the EC stated the Pacific’s “ambitions in this area go far beyond the possible offers we will be able to make in the end”.
Evaluating the costs
The Pacific prepared a raft of proposals for the EPA negotiations to try to blunt some of the more damaging aspects of a free trade agreement with the EU and to argue for movement on issues of key interest to the Pacific (including labour mobility, but also improved Rules of Origin for tuna exports, innovative proposals for targeting investment at small enterprises, and duty/quota free access to EU markets for exports).
Not only have most of the Pacific’s proposals been rejected, but also, by focusing on what ‘concessions’ the Pacific could gain from FTAs (including labour mobility), Pacific governments have been drawn into the notion that FTAs will offer benefits for the region-ignoring the very real costs that will be incurred by signing these deals.
Pacific civil society, church groups and trade unions have all pointed out that FTAs will have negative consequences for Pacific societies that should not be underestimated.
Organisations like the Pacific Council of Churches, the Pacific Network on Globalisation, Fiji Women’s Rights Movement (FWRM), the Ecumenical Centre for Research, Education, and Advocacy (ECREA) and Oxfam NZ have highlighted the fact that FTAs will lead to dramatic falls in government revenue, business closures, job losses, an undermining of access to health, education and basic services, increased pressure for privatisation, restricted access to medicine and educational materials (through strict intellectual property rules), a reduction in policy options for creating local employment and stimulating local business, and restrictions on the ability of Pacific governments to regulate foreign investment in the social interest. These negative consequences arising from FTAs cannot simply be ignored, while looking for illusive gains-like new labour mobility schemes.
Separating development and free trade
When Pacific governments consider ways relationships with developed countries could be improved with positive development outcomes for the Pacific, it should be noted that there is no need for new proposals to be included within FTAs.
At the moment, Australia and NZ are looking at ways to induce Pacific governments to enter into a new FTA (dubbed ‘PACER+’) and are looking at using seasonal worker programmes as a ‘bargaining chip’ in negotiations set to get underway later this year.
Certainly New Zealand Trade Minister Phil Goff sees New Zealand’s Recognised Seasonal Employment (RSE) scheme, initiated in April 2007 as leverage for the creation of the PACER+ agreement.
In March this year, he explained; “it’s something the Pacific nations have been seeking and would be a major inducement for those countries to become part of an integrated economy in the Pacific region”.
NZ’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs sees RSE as “an excellent example of the benefits of regional integration. It may help stimulate deeper economic integration through the Pacific Plan and the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations”.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will formally announce a pilot seasonal workers’ scheme (similar to the NZ scheme) at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Niue in August. Australia can be expected, like NZ, to link this scheme implicitly, if not explicitly, to the PACER negotiations.
Pacific governments should be extremely wary of any such linkage.
The NZ seasonal labour scheme is employer driven - horticulture operators in NZ are struggling to find workers domestically, and are keen to find reliable labour from the Pacific.
In Australia, the National Farmers Federation has come out fully in favour of a similar scheme, anticipating a shortfall of 22,000 unskilled workers in Australia’s $7 billion-a-year horticulture industry as the drought ends.
With farmers in Australia and NZ desperate for workers and Pacific countries keen to supply them, such a scheme is a ‘win-win’. It would be completely cynical for Australia and NZ to use a seasonal workers’ scheme as a bargaining concession in negotiations.
Pacific governments should be asking whether it’s more feasible to pursue labour mobility agreements completely separate from FTAs. New Zealand’s RSE is an example of a temporary labour migration scheme (employing thousands of Pacific Islanders) that is not linked to an FTA.
As the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions explains: “If the seasonal labour development plan is a genuine development opportunity, then it should not be linked to discussion around free trade agreements”.
Some close followers of the labour mobility debate have argued that labour mobility needs to be included within an FTA in order to make any workers scheme binding-and thereby preventing governments in Australia or NZ sending thousands of workers home when unemployment rises, or if political relations sour with a particular country (like Fiji’s exclusion from NZ’s current seasonal workers scheme).
But we know already the EU, Australia and NZ do not believe GATS Mode 4 is supposed to cover workers in seasonal labour schemes, and it seems the binding nature of an agreement is likely to be more apparent than real.
The recent NZ/China FTA relegates short-term access to NZ’s employment market for Chinese on a working holiday to a side-letter with onerous qualifications. NZ can suspend the scheme for political reasons (in the event of a military coup for example) or end it with three months notice if unemployment rises dramatically. The issue here is the separating out of what should be a mutually beneficial labour mobility arrangement that has development benefits from FTAs that could have a whole raft of negative consequences for the Pacific.
Development in the Pacific: new visions required
One advantage of the Pacific’s defensive position in relation to the current free trade agenda is Pacific governments have (to a degree) had to ask what development outcomes can be gained through trade arrangements.
There seems to be a growing acknowledgement that the Pacific’s key offensive priorities, such as setting Rules of Origin for exports, development of regional fisheries, attracting investment, labour mobility, quarantine requirements or regional assistance, are not necessarily best served by FTAs at all.
The insistence of government and trade officials in Australia, NZ and the EU on linking aid with a free trade agenda is a form of neo-colonialism that ignores the Pacific’s right to set its own trade agenda.
Pacific people need a model of development that is sustainable and culturally and environmentally suitable. We need a renewed focus on addressing the real constraints in the Pacific-like access to health and education services, improving key infrastructure (transport, electricity, telecommunications, etc.), building service industry capacity (in tourism for example), supporting niche agricultural and industrial products, developing new markets (and improving market access) for Pacific exports, improving management and local value-adding for Pacific resources (in areas like mining, fishing, and forestry) and targeting investment at small and medium enterprises.
Labour mobility schemes can improve remittance flows, provide skills training, and ease unemployment pressures in the Pacific.
However, addressing the constraints faced by Pacific societies should not be linked with selling our sovereignty and exposing our markets to unequal foreign competition in binding FTAs.
source: Islands Business
see also
8/7/08
Censors and beat-ups in the South Pacific
Auckland, New Zealand --- Fiji's fourth coup in almost two decades and the military's failed attempt to censor key media has thrown a spotlight on growing challenges facing journalists reporting on the South Pacific. The Melanesian sub-region of the South Pacific, in particular, has been branded by some political analysts as an "arc of instability."
In the past two decades, coups (Fiji), ethnic conflict (Solomon Islands), pro-independence ructions (New Caledonia), paramilitary revolts (Vanuatu), secessionist rebellion and civil war (Bougainville-Papua New Guinea and the Southern Highlands) have troubled the Pacific.
While New Zealand argues from a "Pacific" perspective that sees the region as less threatening, a predominantly Australian view of the region, as argued by strategic analyst Paul Dibb (PDF), forecasts a "more demanding and potentially dangerous neighbourhood."
Australia's strategic objective was to promote stability with regional neighbours such as East Timor, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and the island countries of the Southwest Pacific. But in the wake of 9/11, the Bali bombing of October 2002 and a perceived higher level of internal conflict in several Pacific countries, Australia dramatically changed tack in the region.
Already strongly aligned with U.S. security interests and objectives, Canberra three years ago adopted a radical new "activist/interventionist" approach to regional security. "Australia sees the Pacific as potential or actual failed states, a potential source of terror and/or transnational crime and/or drug trafficking and/or pandemics (not to mention a corrosive China-Taiwan rivalry) and accordingly fashions an Iraq-style fixit response," says New Zealand Herald columnist Colin James.
In a recent speech, he added that a New Zealand analysis would say the policy is "bound to fail because it fails to see the island societies, economies and governments in their totality. New Zealanders, perhaps unjustly, would urge a more subtle analysis."
Military policing interventions will not deal with strategic issues such as the lack of jobs for the exploding populations in Melanesia. And Pacific labour mobility is just one of the crucial issues facing the region.
Simplistic notions and prejudices about the region pose challenges for journalists attempting to report with depth, context and analytical skill. Pressures and dilemmas for the news media continue to gain momentum in the South Pacific, often from a cultural as well as socio-political dimension.
After the military this week forced Fiji's major daily newspaper and sole television station, The Fiji Times and Fiji TV, to close for a day in response to heavy censorship, acting commander Captain Esala Teleni claimed it was a "misunderstanding" and pledged no further media interference.
Crises also pose major problems for Pacific media covering the region with very limited resources. While the media in some countries are refreshingly outspoken and courageous, in others there is a worrying trend towards self-censorship.
Background of conflict
Pacific media need more journalists with regional perspectives and experience in conflict reporting. In a 2005 survey of violent conflict in the South Pacific, political analyst John Henderson found that 10 political assassinations have occurred in the region since 1981.
These assassinations have been:
New Caledonian independence leader Pierre Declercq (1981); Belau President Haruo Remeliik (1985); Kanak independence leader Eloi Machoro (1985); New Caledonian independence leaders Jean-Marie Tjibaou and Yéiwene Yéiwene (1989); Bougainville Premier Theodore Miriung (1996); Samoan cabinet Minister and anti-corruption campaigner Luagalau Leva'ula Kamu (1999); West Papua pro-independence leader Theys Hiyo Eluay (2001); and two leading Solomon islands political figures, cabinet minister Augustine Geve (2002) and Peace Council member Frederick Soaki (2003). Fiji's current military strongman, Commodore Frank Bainimarama, narrowly escaped becoming the 11th assassination victim when rebel elite Counter Revolutionary Warfare Unit (CRW) soldiers staged a mutiny in November 2000.
The South Pacific's military and paramilitary forces have been a major contributor to violence in the region, particularly in Melanesia. About 120,000 Pacific Islanders have died in conflicts over the past quarter century.
The region has so far experienced:
- Four coups -- two in Fiji in 1987, and a further one in May 2000, followed by a putsch in the Solomon Islands the following month. The fourth Fiji coup happened this week.
- Seven mutinies -- the Vanuatu paramilitary in 1996 and 2002, PNG military forces in 1997 (over the Sandline mercenary affair), 2001 and 2002; and part of the Fiji army in July and November 2000.
- One cross-border military strike by a friendly nation -- French secret service saboteurs bombed the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand in 1985.
- Systematic military oppression -- by Indonesian forces in West Papua since Jakarta seized the province from the Dutch colonisers in 1963.
Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) responses -- including the Biketawa Declaration, a collective crisis response in 2000, and Nasonini Declaration, a 2002 implementation of anti-terrorist measures -- led to the establishment of the multinational Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) in early 2003.
University of the South Pacific academic Dr. Jon Fraenkel argued in a 2004 article in the Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics that the major security threats in the region are "internal, not externally inspired terrorist atrocities." He added that there are "no movements in the Pacific like Al Qaeda, or the Red Brigades of the 1970s, which...retreat into committing bloody terrorist atrocities against perceived opponents."
In contrast, Melanesian conflicts in Bougainville, Fiji, Papua New Guinea Highlands, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu are fuelled by local disputes, including demands for autonomy and/or independence, clan-based or ethnic divisions or land-related disputes.
In the more recent case of rebellion against the Polynesian feudal monarchy of Tonga -- seven people died during last month's rioting -- the conflict is about greater democracy and self-determination for the citizens.
"When the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) warned of a developing 'post-modern badlands' in the Pacific Islands, and politicians began talking seriously of the need for urgent 'pre-emptive' action, you had to wonder whether their perceptions of the Pacific were being coloured by the type of images conveyed in futuristic movies such as Minority Report," Fraenkel wrote in 2005.
"In that film, tomorrow's murderers can be identified, arrested and convicted using a psychic machine before they are even conscious of having decided to commit crimes.
"To anyone familiar with Pacific politics, these images of postmodern security threats were outlandish scaremongering."
The case of West Papua
The major conflict in the region has been West Papua, often billed the "forgotten war," and indeed this issue has been largely neglected by international media and the issue of state terrorism is rarely addressed.
Now through a new security treaty with Indonesia, Australia is even more overtly being drawn into repression of pro-independence activists. Diplomats expect the recent Indonesia and Australia Framework for Security Co-operation to put an end to the diplomatic rift caused when Australia granted 43 Papuans political asylum earlier this year. Both nations will agree to respect each other's territorial integrity. The treaty will recognise Indonesian sovereignty over Papua and commit both countries to suppressing independence activists.
South Pacific news media have played a crucial role in exposing corruption and abuse of political power or office in the region -- in some cases leading to justice. Now the Pacific needs more journalists with the skills necessary to address globalisation and "the new regionalism."
There is an urgent need for more journalists who can make sense of the new Australian, New Zealand and international "interventionist" engagement with the Pacific that is broadly shaping regional trends.
This article is based on Dr. Robie's keynote paper at the Media: Policies, cultures and futures in the Asia-Pacific Region conference at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia, on Nov. 29, 2006. You can access the complete paper as a PDF via Robie's website
8/6/08
Australia Bullying Pacific Over Free Trade Deal
Australia has been accused of trying to fast-track new free trade negotiations with Pacific Island countries at a recent regional trade ministers' meeting in the Cook Islands.
Trade officials from the Pacific leaked details of the meeting to the Pacific Network on
Globalisation (PANG) because they were outraged that an Australian trade delegation had tried to bully Pacific ministers to fast-track work on a new free trade agreement (FTA), said PANG coordinator Maureen Penjueli, who is based in Fiji.
She said the Australian government tried to secure agreement on which areas would be included under any FTA negotiations, and begin formalizing the negotiating process.
"They know very well that Pacific countries are not ready to start any negotiations," said Penjueli. "We are still negotiating a controversial FTA with the European Union, and a regional trade deal among ourselves. We haven't even begun to prepare our regional negotiating framework, or undertake social impact assessments, or reviews of Pacific legislation that could be affected by a new FTA with Australia and New Zealand."
She said the Australians were attempting to set the terms of negotiations.
Pacific trade ministers reportedly want to establish an office of a Chief Trade Advisor, potentially to be based in Port Vila, Vanuatu, before any PACER-Plus negotiations get under way.
Penjueli said Australia and NZ were not interested in supporting a strong regional negotiating team.
"Negotiations haven't even begun, and the Australians are splitting the region, by refusing to support a regional negotiating office, and by holding out carrots — like new workers' schemes — to gain support from individual Pacific countries," said Penjueli.
"It would be unfortunate if Australia and NZ were to use their position as key aid donor countries for the region, to secure their own trade interests in any FTA negotiations."
Australia and NZ are keen to pursue a FTA with 14 Pacific Island Countries as part of the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). The FTA is being called PACER-Plus.
Both countries stand to gain hundreds of millions of dollars in increased exports, but there are concerns the Pacific nations will be hurt by free trade with their big brother neighbors, she said.
Penjueli said churches, unions and civil society organizations in the Pacific were concerned that pursuing an FTA with Australia and NZ would lead to rising inequality, losses in government revenue, job losses, a reduction in the quality and supply of essential services and the closing off of policy space that governments use to stimulate development.
"We need to use international trade to enhance our development opportunities in the Pacific," said Penjueli. "The Australians are pressuring us to open all our markets to competition and to reduce our ability to stimulate local firms and service suppliers, or to channel foreign investments toward local industry and employment.
"Pressure to liberalize according to timeframes and frameworks promoted by Australia and NZ makes a complete mockery of the calls for good governance in the Pacific."
7/24/08
Symposium: Pacific Islands Migration and Labour Mobility: Issues and Responses
At the Pacific Heads of Governments meeting, in Niue on 19 August 2008, Australia will respond to Pacific Islands' governments request on taking short term labour supply from Pacific countries. There is the view that there is a need for seasonal labour supply to meet unmet demand for labour in certain Australian industries. Some proponents of the idea view this as the right gesture in encouraging concrete trade (labour) as opposed to the overdependence on aid in the Pacific. Others are legitimately concerned that such undertaking need be framed within a human rights framework, protecting the workers involved and help nurture best practices for the Australian industry for sustainable outcomes. The symposium will address key issues and cover responses from key stakeholder groups.
Hon. Duncan Kerr, SC MP Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Islands Affairs, will give the keynote address. This will be followed by a group of panellists, and a session for questions and discussion. The panellists are:
Professor Hurriyet Babacan, Professor of Social and Cultural Development, ICEPA, Victoria University
Mr. Nic Maclellan, International Research Associate, Institute for Research, Swinburne University
Ms Alison Tate, International Officer, Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU)
Dr. Fei' iloakitau Kaho Tevi, Secretary for the Pacific Council of Churches, World Council of Churches Pacific Desk, Suva, Fiji
Mr. Mosese Waqa, Pacific Research & Development Officer, ICEPA, Victoria University
When: 9.15am (seated at 9.30am) - 12.45pm, Wednesday 6th August 2008
Where: Room T142 (Building T, on the first floor), Footscray Nicholson Campus, Victoria University, Corner of Nicholson & Buckley Streets, Footscray (Melways street directory, map ref. 2S E10; enlargement map on Melway map 583) For a detailed map of the campus go to: http://www.vu.edu.au/library/scripts/objectifyMedia.aspx?file=pdf/580/99.pdf&siteID=4&str_title=Footscray%20Nicholson%20campus.pdf
You can also view actual satellite photo of the campus at:
http://www.vu.edu.au/About_VU/Campus_Maps/Footscray_Nicholson/index.aspx
Public Transport: 5-10 minute walk from Footscray station - walk to Irvin St, left into Nicholson St, then to Buckley St. Buses to the campus connecting with suburbs including the City are Routes 220, 223, 409, 411 and 412. For bus timetable go to http://www.metlinkmelbourne.com.au/ and insert the route number on the transport "search options".
RSVP: Morning tea will be provided. Please contact Sue Butterworth by Monday, 4 August at 9919 5478 or sue.butterworth@vu.edu.au
http://www.vu.edu.au/Research/Institutes/ICEPA/Events/Pacific/Labour/indexdl_92559.aspx
3/7/08
Australia's hidden empire
That Canberra runs an imperial network is unmentionable, yet the chain of control stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the South Pacific
When the outside world thinks about Australia, it generally turns to venerable clichés of innocence - cricket, leaping marsupials, endless sunshine, no worries. Australian governments actively encourage this. Witness the recent "G'Day USA" campaign, in which Kylie Minogue and Nicole Kidman sought to persuade Americans that, unlike the empire's problematic outposts, a gormless greeting awaited them Down Under. After all, George W Bush had ordained the previous Australian prime minister, John Howard, "sheriff of Asia".
That Australia runs its own empire is unmentionable; yet it stretches from the Aboriginal slums of Sydney to the ancient hinterlands of the continent and across the Arafura Sea and the South Pacific. When the new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, apologised to the Aboriginal people on 13 February, he was acknowledging this. As for the apology itself, the Sydney Morning Herald accurately described it as a "piece of po litical wreckage" that "the Rudd government has moved quickly to clear away . . . in a way that responds to some of its own supporters' emotional needs, yet changes nothing. It is a shrewd manoeuvre."
Like the conquest of the Native Americans, the decimation of Aboriginal Australia laid the foundation of Australia's empire. The land was taken and many of its people were removed and impoverished or wiped out. For their descendants, untouched by the tsunami of sentimentality that accompanied Rudd's apology, little has changed. In the Northern Territory's great expanse known as Utopia, people live without sanitation, running water, rubbish collection, decent housing and decent health. This is typical. In the community of Mulga Bore, the water fountains in the Aboriginal school have run dry and the only water left is conta minated.
Throughout Aboriginal Australia, epidemics of gastroenteritis and rheumatic fever are as common as they were in the slums of 19th-century England. Aboriginal health, says the World Health Organisation, lags almost a hundred years behind that of white Australia. This is the only developed nation on a United Nations "shame list" of countries that have not eradicated trachoma, an entirely preventable disease that blinds Aboriginal children. Sri Lanka has beaten the disease, but not rich Australia. On 25 February, a coroner's inquiry into the deaths in outback towns of 22 Aboriginal people, some of whom had hanged themselves, found they were trying to escape their "appalling lives".
Most white Australians rarely see this third world in their own country. What they call here "public intellectuals" prefer to argue over whether the past happened, and to blame its horrors on the present-day victims. Their mantra that Aboriginal infrastructure and welfare spending provide "a black hole for public money" is racist, false and craven. Hundreds of millions of dollars that Australian governments claim they spend are never spent, or end up in projects for white people. It is estimated that the legal action mounted by white interests, including federal and state governments, contesting Aboriginal native title claims alone covers several billion dollars.
Lurid allegations
Smear is commonly deployed as a distraction. In 2006, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's leading current affairs programme, Lateline, broadcast lurid allegations of "sex slavery" among the Mutitjulu Aboriginal people. The source, described as an "anonymous youth worker", was exposed as a planted federal government official, whose "evidence" was discredited by the Northern Territory chief minister and police. Lateline never retracted its allegations. Within a year, Prime Minister John Howard had declared a "national emergency" and sent the army, police and "business managers" into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. A commissioned study on Aboriginal children was cited; and "protecting the children" became the media cry - just as it had more than half a century ago when children were kidnapped by white welfare authorities. One of the authors of the study, Pat Anderson, complained: "There is no relationship between the emergency powers and what's in our report." His research had concentrated on the effects of slum housing on children. Few now listened to him. Kevin Rudd, as opposition leader, supported the "intervention" and has maintained it as prime minister. Welfare payments are "quarantined" and people controlled and patronised in the colonial way. To justify this, the mostly Murdoch-owned capital-city press has published a relentlessly one-dimensional picture of Aboriginal degradation. No one denies that alcoholism and child abuse exist, as they do in white Australia, but no quarantine operates there.
The Northern Territory is where Aboriginal people have had comprehensive land rights longer than anywhere else, granted almost by accident 30 years ago. The Howard government set about clawing them back. The territory contains extraordinary mineral wealth, including huge deposits of uranium on Aboriginal land. The number of companies licensed to explore for uranium has doubled to 80. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of the American giant Halli burton, built the railway from Adelaide to Darwin, which runs adjacent to Olympic Dam, the world's largest low-grade uranium mine. Last year, the Howard government appropriated Aboriginal land near Tennant Creek, where it intends to store the radioactive waste. "The land-grab of Aboriginal tribal land has nothing to do with child sexual abuse," says the internationally acclaimed Australian scientist Helen Caldi cott, "but all to do with open slather uranium mining and converting the Northern Territory to a glo bal nuclear dump."
Indonesian invasion
This "top end" of Australia borders the Arafura and Timor Seas, across from the Indo nesian archipelago. One of the world's great sub marine oil and gas deposits lies off East Timor. In 1975, Australia's then ambassador in Jakarta, Richard Woolcott, who had been tipped off about the coming Indonesian invasion of then Portuguese East Timor, secretly recommen ded to Canberra that Australia turn a blind eye to it, noting that the seabed riches "could be much more readily negotiated with Indo nesia . . . than with [an in dependent] Timor". Gar eth Evans, later foreign minister, described a prize worth "zillions of dollars". He ensured that Australia distinguish itself as one of the few countries to recognise General Suharto's bloody occupation, in which 200,000 East Timorese lost their lives.
When eventually, in 1999, East Timor won its independence, the Howard government set out to manoeuvre the East Timorese out of their proper share of the oil and gas revenue by unilaterally changing the maritime boundary and withdrawing from World Court jurisdiction in maritime disputes. This would have denied desperately needed revenue to the new country, stricken from its years of brutal occupation. However, East Timor's then prime minister, Mari Alkatiri, leader of the majority Fretilin party, proved more than a match for Canberra and especially its bullying foreign minister, Alexander Downer.
Alkatiri demonstrated that he was a genuine nationalist who believed East Timor's resource wealth should be the property of the state, so that the nation did not fall into debt to the World Bank. He also believed that women should have equal opportunity, and that health care and education should be universal. "I am against rich men feasting behind closed doors," he said. For this, he was caricatured as a communist by his opponents, notably the president, Xanana Gusmão, and the then foreign minister, José Ramos-Horta, both close to the Australian political Establishment. When a group of disgruntled soldiers rebelled against Alkatiri's government in 2006, Australia readily accepted an "invitation" to send troops to East Timor. "Australia," wrote Paul Kelly in Murdoch's Australian, "is operating as a regional power or a potential hegemon that shapes security and political outcomes. This language is unpalatable to many. Yet it is the reality. It is new, experimental territory for Australia."
A mendacious campaign against the "corrupt" Alkatiri was mounted in the Australian media, reminiscent of the coup by media that briefly toppled Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Like the US soldiers who ignored looters on the streets of Baghdad, Australian soldiers stood by while armed rioters terrorised people, burned their homes and attacked churches. The rebel leader Alfredo Reinado, a murderous thug trained in Australia, was elevated to folk hero. Under this pressure, the democratically elected Alkatiri was forced from office and East Timor was declared a "failed state" by Australia's legion of security academics and journalistic parrots concerned with the "arc of instability" to the north, an instability they supported as long as the genocidal Suharto was in charge.
Paradoxically, on 11 February, Ramos-Horta and Gusmão came to grief as they tried to do a deal with Reinado in order to subdue him. His rebels turned on them both, leaving Ramos-Horta critically wounded and Reinado himself dead. From Canberra, Prime Minister Rudd announced the despatch of more Australian military "peacemakers". In the same week, the World Food Programme disclosed that the children of resource-rich East Timor were slowly starving, with more than 42 per cent of under-fives seriously underweight - a statistic which corresponds to that of Aboriginal children in "failed" communities that also occupy an abundant natural resource.
Blunt instrument
Australia is engaged in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, where its troops and federal police have dealt with "breakdowns in law and order" that are "depriving Australia of business and investment opportunities". A former senior Australian intelligence officer calls these "wild societies for which intervention represents a blunt, but necessary instrument". Australia is also entrenched in Afghanistan and Iraq. Rudd's electoral promise to withdraw from the "coalition of the willing" does not include almost half of Australia's troops in Iraq.
At last year's conference of the American-Australian Leadership Dialogue - an annual event designed to unite the foreign policies of the two countries, but in reality an opportunity for the Australian elite to express its historic servility to great power - Rudd was in unusually oratorical style. "It is time we sang from the world's rooftops," he said, "[that] despite Iraq, America is an overwhelming force for good in the world . . . I look forward to more than working with the great American democracy, the arsenal of freedom, in bringing about long-term changes to the planet." The new sheriff for Asia had spoken.
www.johnpilger.com
3/4/08
The paramilitary wing of the AFP
Bruce Haigh says that under Mick Keelty (pictured), the AFP has developed a paramilitary capacity.
Terrorism has been a feature of global policing from the mid 1960s, although listening to the Howard government and the Australian Federal Police you could be forgiven for believing that terrorism began on September 11, 2001.
The AFP has made good use of the so-called war on terror and associated hysteria to embark on a program of unprecedented expansion. The AFP of today is a product of the Howard government. In the symbiotic relationship that developed between former Prime Minister John Howard and the Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty, the latter was allowed his head in developing and announcing policy and force structure.
Under the umbrella of the war on terror the AFP increased its powers, budget and numbers. It reaches into major government departments. The AFP has increased its power and influence without change in the level of ministerial control and parliamentary oversight and scrutiny. The ubiquitous war on terror does not require the degree of secrecy and compliance that Keelty claims necessary.
In every posting I served in as an Australian diplomat from 1972 until 1994 there were groups, of one persuasion or another, carrying out acts of terror. All embassies had procedures in place to deal with the aftermath of an attack.
There are now over 6,000 police in the AFP. The budget has gone from $365 million in 2000-2001 to $1.86 billion in 2005-2006.
Under the guise of preventing terrorists cells getting a toe hold the AFP has become active in the region, most notably in the Solomons. This undertaking was entered into with the ADF who were critical of the manner in which the AFP undertook their peace keeping duties. Writing in the Australian Army Journal Lt Col John Hutcheson referred to major failings which he said were an " ... inability to prioritise tasks to achieve a particular outcome and a tendency to take inadequate force protection measures".
International Deployment Group
In early 2006, acknowledging the fact that the AFP was encroaching on Foreign Affairs territory, the head of the department, L'Estrange, admitted that the AFP was operating in "a foreign policy space". It was a theme picked up by Keelty when arguing for more resources for the AFP International Deployment Group (IDG).
The IDG grew out of AFP involvement in the Solomons and East Timor.
In August 2007 IDG numbered 600 officers. AFP documents claim that by August 2008 the force will number about 1,200 or close to two Battalions of Infantry. In recent documents the AFP refers to the IDG as a paramilitary force. In September 2006 Howard announced $500 million for the IDG and in the 2006-2007 Budget the AFP received $219 million "to boost their paramilitary capability". Whether this was in addition to the earlier allocation is unclear.
What is quite clear is that under Keelty, using terrorism, the arc of instability and climate change, the AFP has developed a paramilitary capacity, devouring a quarter of its budget and undertaking military training including in the use of weapons, transport and other logistics. To further the development of this force senior AFP officers attached to the IDG are attending, the ADF Staff College in order "to understand military concepts of command and control ..."
An AFP paper last year, "Policing the neighbourhood and keeping peace in the Pacific" stated that part of the Futures Strategy "was the establishment of an operation planning cell which will work closely with the ADF and exchange best practice concepts". The paper also states that the AFP plans to have "interoperability with ADF command, control and mission orders" and that "Both organisations have agreed to a number of senior officer out postings to key areas within the ADF ..."
The AFP is the only police force in a liberal democracy to have such an organisation. The AFP needs greater accountability. In one of his many headland speeches, used to carve out and defend territory, Keelty claimed accountability through the process of answering to his Minister and Senate Committees.
AFP Minister
There is no Senate Committee which oversees the activities of the AFP. The Senate Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee has given the AFP a glance but this was a one-off. The auditor-general examines the AFP but only from the perspective of administrative procedures not policy.
The AFP needs to be taken in hand. It needs to return to policing duties. Forays into Foreign Affairs should be taken off its agenda.
The AFP has the staff and budget of a major federal government department. It requires a Minister, preferably a strong one, and a dedicated Senate Committee to oversee its activities.
The AFP is currently pushing for a greater role in Afghanistan, no doubt to try and help secure funding of the IDG. It is the wrong cause to push. Few analysts believe the war can be one. Topography, geography and history will dictate the course of events in Afghanistan.
Keelty has encroached into the public service under what, until now has been the unchallengeable mantra of terrorism. When faced with deciding a course of action following the boarding of a Japanese whaling vessel by two activists, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Stephen Smith, said the AFP were providing him with advice on the legalities of their action and the procedures to be followed.
This is not the role of the AFP. The AFP is there to uphold the law, not interpret the law. Foreign Affairs and the Attorney-General's department have well qualified lawyers to provide advice on issues involving The Law of the Sea. The trigger for the involvement of the AFP was the incomprehensible claim that the actions of the activists might constitute an act of terror.
It is with this mechanism that the AFP have been able to clear the arena, allowing inroads into the Departments of Immigration, Foreign Affairs, Defence, AusAid and Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Terrorism has been the vehicle for unrestrained empire building by Keelty and the AFP with minimum accountability and an apparent desire to avoid it.
Bruce Haigh is a retired Australian diplomat with 35 years' experience in foreign policy and security analysis. He served twice in Pakistan and Afghanistan and also in Iran and Saudi Arabia. This piece was previously published by Online Opinion.
12/14/07
Solomon Islands government ousted through parliamentary vote
By Patrick O’Connor
14 December 2007
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/dec2007/soga-d14.shtmlThe Solomon Islands government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare was ousted yesterday after a no-confidence motion won the backing of 25 parliamentarians, against 22 on the government side. Sogavare remains caretaker prime minister pending a parliamentary vote, which is expected next week, to elect his successor. Opposition leader Fred Fono is one of several candidates vying for the job. Two former government ministers who were among those who defected to the opposition last month, Derek Sikua and Gordon Darcy Lilo, are also expected to nominate.
Sogavare’s removal from power marks the culmination of a protracted destabilisation campaign, orchestrated in Canberra, aimed at installing a more pliant administration. Soon after he came to power in May last year, Sogavare was identified by the previous Australian government of Prime Minister John Howard as a threat to the ongoing occupation by the Australian-dominated Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI). Sogavare’s 20-month term in office was dominated by a succession of provocations mounted by RAMSI and the Australian government.
The RAMSI operation in July 2003 involved the dispatch of more than 2,000 soldiers, police and officials to take control over the Solomons’ state apparatus, including police, prisons, judiciary, public service, treasury and central bank. While launched under the pretext of a humanitarian intervention, the neo-colonial operation was driven by a concern to protect Australian corporate and strategic interests. Developments in the South Pacific, which Howard characterised as Australia’s “special patch”, have become increasingly bound up with escalating great power rivalries. RAMSI marked a shift within the Canberra foreign policy establishment toward the more open use of military force to maintain Australian regional hegemony. The operation was hailed as a forerunner for potential interventions in other Pacific states, most notably the resource-rich former Australian colony, Papua New Guinea.
The ferocity with which Canberra responded to Sogavare’s limited moves to reduce RAMSI’s control over public finance and economic policy can only be understood within this context. The Howard government’s campaign was one of two regional “regime change” operations initiated in 2006. More than a thousand Australian troops were deployed to East Timor in May last year as part of a concerted campaign to oust the elected Fretilin administration of Mari Alkatiri. Fretilin fell foul of the Howard government after resisting its demands for most of the multi-billion oil and gas reserves in the Timor Sea, as well as for cultivating relations with Australia’s rivals, particularly Portugal and China.
There a number of significant differences between East Timor and Solomon Islands; the Solomons, for example, formally recognises Taiwan and has no diplomatic ties with Beijing. Canberra’s drive against both the Sogavare government and the Fretilin administration, however, were driven by the same imperative—namely the exclusion of rival powers from its declared sphere of influence.
Sogavare’s ousting demonstrates that this central strategy remains unchanged under the new Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. The Labor Party fully endorsed the RAMSI intervention when it was first announced in 2003. Rudd and his colleagues similarly backed the Howard government throughout its campaign against Sogavare. Following Labor’s election win, however, Rudd and his parliamentary secretary for the Pacific, Duncan Kerr, made noises about establishing better relations with Pacific governments by dealing with them in a less abrasive fashion.
The Labor government nevertheless gave the green light for the Solomons’ opposition and RAMSI authorities to continue their campaign against Sogavare. A clear signal was its refusal to respond to the Solomons’ prime minister’s public invitation for Rudd and Kerr to visit Honiara. It was not an accidental omission. Earlier this week, Rudd’s office refused to return calls from the World Socialist Web Site enquiring about his attitude, while a spokesman for Kerr said he had not received a formal notification from the Solomons’ government and insisted that it would be “inappropriate” to respond to Sogavare’s public invitation.
While the full extent of the Australian authorities’ behind-the-scenes involvement in the manoeuvres against Sogavare in the lead-up to the no-confidence motion is not known, there is no doubt that RAMSI played a central role.
Three former RAMSI leaders—Ben McDevitt, Nick Warner, and James Batley—were instrumental in ensuring that former prime minister Allen Kemakeza avoided being stripped of his parliamentary seat and sent to jail, despite being convicted on December 6 of serious charges, including intimidation and larceny. After receiving character statements from the three, the Australian magistrate adjudicating the case sentenced Kemakeza to just two months jail and granted bail pending an appeal. Kemakeza had refused to commit to either the government or opposition side. After declaring himself to be happy with the court’s “fair judgment”, the former prime minister cast his vote against Sogavare in yesterday’s no-confidence vote.
The court’s decision proved crucial, as Kemakeza ended up holding the balance of power. Had he supported the government, Sogavare may have been able to claim 24 parliamentary votes against 24 for the opposition, thereby blocking the no-confidence motion. (The final vote of 25 to 22 reflected the absence of one government member who failed to attend parliament due to health reasons and has since died.)
After securing Kemakeza’s support, RAMSI officials launched an extraordinary police and military operation in Honiara. Scores of heavily-armed Australian and New Zealand soldiers, along with Australian Federal Police officers, were deployed around Honiara on Tuesday. Australian troops in full camouflage gear remained on guard outside the Honiara Hotel, where opposition parliamentarians had gathered. While supposedly a security operation aimed at preventing violence, the show of force was clearly aimed at bolstering the opposition and stifling any protest. Government MPs, who received no similar protection, accused Australian forces of helping to isolate opposition parliamentarians so they would not have a chance to cross over to the government’s side.
“Such a display of arms rather openly to members of the public is uncalled for and questions the very issue of RAMSI’s independence and impartiality in dealing with law and order in this country,” a government statement issued just before the no-confidence vote declared. “Now it is becoming very clear that RAMSI is working in tandem with Asian loggers who are alleged to have been providing financial support to the opposition in a conspiracy to oust the [Sogavare] government.”
Rudd responded to the no-confidence vote by stressing his determination to see the Solomon Islands’ attorney-general Julian Moti extradited to Australia. “This individual is the subject of criminal charges,” he declared. “We have activated our extradition arrangements with the government of the Solomon Islands. Nothing has changed on that score.”
Moti, a respected legal academic and practitioner specialising in constitutional and international law, became the subject of a vicious witchhunt orchestrated by the former Howard government. Moti was instrumental in establishing the Commission of Inquiry into the April 2006 riots in Honiara, which threatened to expose RAMSI’s complicity in the violence. He further assisted a parliamentary review that threatened to strip RAMSI personnel of their blanket legal immunity from Solomons’ law. Moti also threatened to challenge the legality of the entire RAMSI intervention before the International Court of Justice. In response to this threat, the Howard government mounted a bogus campaign for his extradition, based on trumped-up statutory rape allegations that had been thrown out of a Vanuatu court in 1998. The central aim was to undermine Moti through constant vilification in the Australian and Pacific press as a “child sex” perpetrator.
For Rudd to again solidarise himself with this vile campaign—even after Sogavare has lost power—speaks volumes about Labor’s fundamental agreement with the former Howard government’s agenda in the Solomons. What happens next with Moti remains unclear, although Fred Fono has declared that the “first act” of the next government will be to have him arrested and extradited to Australia.
Yesterday’s no-confidence vote effectively subverts the outcome of the April 2006 national elections. The elections were a massive repudiation of the Kemakeza government, which had been in power since 2001 and presided over the entry of RAMSI forces in 2003. Popular hostility toward the entrenched corruption of the prime minister and his colleagues combined with growing dissatisfaction and outright opposition toward RAMSI. Half of all parliamentarians lost their seats, including 9 of Kemakeza’s 20 ministers.
Despite the result, horse-trading between the different factions and politicians saw all 11 surviving government ministers stay in power as part of a coalition government headed by Snyder Rini, Kemakeza’s former deputy. The announcement of Rini’s government sparked widespread outrage, which culminated in a two-day riot that was sparked by a clash outside the parliament between RAMSI police and demonstrators. Sogavare came to power soon after Rini was forced to resign.
The old guard of the former Kemakeza government is now back in the saddle. Kemakeza and Rini are likely to take up prominent positions in the new government, as is Laurie Chan. Chan’s father, Tommy Chan, is a Honiara businessman who was alleged to have been involved in vote-buying deals that are widely believed to have been behind Rini’s installation as prime minister in April 2006.
The defeat of the Sogavare government has not seen any protests or violence, though authorities remain on alert and RAMSI soldiers and police continue to patrol Honiara. Whatever the immediate outcome of the political crisis, the return of the old Kemakeza government forces will exacerbate tensions throughout the Solomon Islands.
The new government inherits a social crisis, marked by escalating poverty and social inequality throughout the country, for which it has no solution. The RAMSI intervention has involved the investment of considerable sums into the Pacific country’s state apparatus, especially the prison system, police and judiciary, while a negligible amount has spent on health, education and other basic social services. The influx of hundreds of highly-paid foreign personnel working with RAMSI has led to a boom in the provision of luxury and high-cost products and services but has delivered nothing for ordinary Honiara residents except sharply rising prices, particularly for food and housing. Thousands of people, particularly frustrated young men, remain without work or decent housing in squalid squatter camps in the capital.
The situation will only worsen if the new government in Honiara delivers on its pledges to advance the “free market” economic reform agenda promoted by Canberra.
See Also:
Solomon Islands government in crisis after parliamentarians join opposition
[12 December 2007]
Labor, Liberal and the revival of colonialism in the South Pacific
[21 November 2007]
Solomon Islands’ foreign minister condemns Australian occupation at UN General Assembly
[11 October 2007]
Solomon Islands government rebuts Canberra’s child sex allegations against attorney-general
[14 August 2007]
Copyright 1998-2007
World Socialist Web Site
12/12/07
Solomon Islands government in crisis after parliamentarians join opposition
By Patrick O’Connor
12 December 2007
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The Solomon Islands government of Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has been thrown into crisis by the defection of 12 parliamentarians to the opposition last month. Among them were nine ministers, including Deputy Prime Minister Toswell Kaua and Finance Minister Gordon Darcy Lilo, who triggered the political turmoil by quitting the government after he was demoted to the justice ministry on November 8. Sogavare has since accused Lilo of corruption and mismanagement of public funds.
While opposition leader Fred Fono claimed he had the numbers to force a vote of no-confidence and form a new government, some of the 12 MPs have since switched back to Sogavare, along with other opposition members who have accepted government positions. The prime minister now says he has a 25-23 majority in the 48-member parliament, though Fono disputes this. It remains unclear when the parliament will next meet. The governor-general has ruled that it is to be convened tomorrow while Sogavare has insisted that government members will not attend until December 24.
Australian police and heavily-armed soldiers were deployed yesterday and today to strategic locations around Honiara. The authorities claimed that this was for security reasons but there is little doubt that the show of force is intended to strengthen the opposition. Australian troops wearing camouflage gear are currently guarding the gated entrance to Honiara Hotel, where opposition parliamentarians have based themselves. Government MPs earlier accused opposition leaders of locking away their supporters to prevent them switching over to the government side.
The Solomons’ government has been the target of a long-running “regime change” campaign orchestrated in Canberra. The former Howard government first targeted Sogavare for removal in mid-2006 after he was identified as an obstacle to Australia’s ongoing military-police occupation of the impoverished Pacific country.
In July 2003, more than 2,000 soldiers and federal police were dispatched under the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI), along with scores of bureaucrats, legal officials, and financial “advisors” who took effective control of the country’s state apparatus, including its police force, prisons, courts, public service, central bank and treasury. The neo-colonial takeover was driven by Canberra’s concern to safeguard Australian corporate interests and maintain its regional domination amid intensifying great power rivalries that have been stoked by China’s growing economic and diplomatic influence in the South Pacific. RAMSI was hailed as a model for future interventions in neighbouring countries such as Papua New Guinea.
Sogavare came to power in May 2006 and moved to wind back certain aspects of RAMSI’s control, especially over public spending and economic reform. The Howard government responded by orchestrating a series of filthy operations—involving lies, dirty tricks and provocations—against the prime minister and senior government members.
Attorney-general Julian Moti was targeted on the basis of a trumped up extradition order relating to statutory rape charges that were thrown out of a Vanuatu court years earlier. Moti had been centrally involved in establishing the still ongoing Commission of Inquiry into the April 2006 Honiara riots. Australian officials adamantly opposed the inquiry, fearing any examination of RAMSI’s responsibility for the disturbances. Significant evidence indicates that RAMSI police and soldiers were deliberately stood down to allow the destruction to proceed. (See “The Howard government, RAMSI, and the April 2006 Solomon Islands’ riots”) Moti also played an important role in establishing a pending parliamentary review, which threatens to strip RAMSI personnel of their blanket immunity from Solomons’ law.
Opposition leader Fono has aligned himself with Canberra and pledged to satisfy RAMSI’s demands, including the extradition of Moti. Two opposition attempts to unseat the government through no-confidence motions, in October 2006 and August this year, failed, despite enjoying the support of the Howard government and RAMSI authorities.
Government minister Charles Dausabea has claimed that RAMSI is directly backing the opposition in its third no-confidence attempt. “They want to topple the government led by Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare,” he said on December 3. “I appeal to RAMSI to stay out of politics and let the leaders of the country solve this issue. We are the people ... mandated by the people to run this country and not RAMSI.”
Dausabea said he had lodged a formal complaint to police after two officers, one a Solomon Islander and the other a New Zealand national working with RAMSI, followed him as he was driving around Honiara on government business. “They said that they received information from their special unit that I was planning another riot,” he told a press conference. “This is just unbelievable. I told them straight that they have no solid evidence to justify their allegations.” Dausabea alleged that the police national intelligence unit told the prime minister’s office he was planning to stage a riot if the government were removed.
Dausabea, who has opposed RAMSI, was arrested by Australian police immediately after the April 2006 riots and charged with incitement and related offences. The parliamentarian was repeatedly refused bail by Australian judges working in the Solomons’ court system and held in prison for eight months, before being acquitted of the central charges last August. If it is true that RAMSI personnel are now spreading rumours that senior government figures are preparing violence, this represents another provocative intervention by Australian authorities.
The full extent of Australian involvement in behind-the-scenes manoeuvring against the Sogavare government cannot yet be determined. There is no doubt, however, that the RAMSI leadership wants a more compliant administration. In a revealing episode, senior RAMSI personnel directly intervened in the trial of former prime minister Allen Kemakeza to ensure he evaded imprisonment despite being found guilty on December 6 on charges of demanding money with menace, intimidation, and larceny.
Kemakeza was prime minister in 2003 and played a critical role in facilitating Canberra’s takeover. His government acceded to Howard’s demands that the Australian-led forces be formally invited to intervene and also approved the Facilitation Act, which granted RAMSI legal immunity and is now under parliamentary review. The Kemakeza government functioned as little more than a fig-leaf for Canberra’s control. While RAMSI authorities arrested and charged a series of senior Solomons’ politicians for alleged corruption and complicity with rival Guadalcanal and Malaitan militias, Kemakeza was never investigated despite being widely suspected of involvement in criminal conduct. The quid pro quo was obvious—Kemakeza did RAMSI’s bidding in return for avoiding imprisonment.
National elections in April 2006 saw the Kemakeza government thrown out of office amid overwhelming opposition to his government’s corrupt record, as well as growing dissatisfaction with RAMSI’s presence. Kemakeza subsequently joined the anti-Sogavare opposition after he retained his seat. Last month, however, the government claimed that the former prime minister had switched sides and accepted a government post. Opposition leader Fono has denied this and insists Kemakeza remains on board. According to some calculations, government and opposition MPs are evenly divided, with Kemakeza holding the deciding vote. The Solomon Star reported that the former prime minister earlier declared himself neutral, pending the outcome of his court case.
Kemakeza was found guilty of ordering members of the Malaita Eagle Force (MEF) militia to destroy and steal equipment from Australian-run law firm Sol Law in May 2002. He reportedly told the militants that the firm had too much influence over the country’s financial institutions. While four members of the MEF pleaded guilty and received prison sentences of up to 30 months, Kemakeza, who denied the charges, was sentenced to two months jail, with another three months suspended and a fine of $SI7,500 ($US1,100). Under Solomons’ legislation, parliamentarians lose their seats only if sentenced to six months imprisonment or more—leaving Kemakeza free to continue as a MP. In addition, the court granted bail pending an appeal, allowing him to participate in upcoming parliamentary sessions.
According to an AAP report, Australian magistrate Chris Vass “said he was lenient in his sentencing and took into account referees’ accounts of Kemakeza’s service to the nation... He particularly cited Kemakeza’s role in helping restore peace to the Solomons after years of ethnic unrest and his role in inviting in the Australian-led regional assistance mission.”
Among the “referees’ accounts” were those from Australian Federal Police officer Ben McDevitt, who headed RAMSI’s policing component when the intervention was first launched, and former RAMSI chiefs Nick Warner and James Batley. “The improvements that have taken place in security and economic well-being is due to the work of RAMSI members from Pacific countries in partnership with many Solomon Islanders,” Warner and McDevitt declared in a joint statement to the court. “But without Sir Allan Kemakeza’s vision and support, it is likely there would not have been a RAMSI.”
As well as again demonstrating the hypocrisy of Canberra’s claim to be advancing the rule of law in the Solomons, the political character of Kemakeza’s sentencing suggests that a deal may have been done whereby Australian authorities ensure that the former prime minister stays out of jail in return for his political support against Sogavare.
The Solomon Islands prime minister has responded to the latest political ructions by redoubling his efforts to reach an accommodation with Canberra. For all his anti-colonial rhetoric, Sogavare has no principled opposition to RAMSI and Australian imperialism. He represents a layer of the Solomons’ ruling elite which has grown dissatisfied with aspects of the Australian intervention, hopes to recast RAMSI on a new basis more favourable to its commercial and political interests and is looking to other powers for support.
Throughout the period when the Howard government was seeking to destabilise and overthrow his administration, Sogavare repeatedly pleaded for negotiations. Howard, however, had too much at stake politically to compromise. His government’s entire strategic orientation in the South Pacific was tied up with RAMSI’s fortunes; it was feared that any concession to Sogavare would weaken Canberra’s position by emboldening other regional leaders, such as PNG’s Michael Somare, who were similarly looking for more room to manoeuvre with other powers.
Last month’s defeat of Howard has raised hopes in Honiara for an end to hostilities. Sogavare quickly extended his congratulations to new Prime Minister Kevin Rudd after the November 24 vote and has since said he intends to invite both Rudd and Duncan Kerr, Labor’s parliamentary secretary for the Pacific, to visit the Solomons. “I would like to see all the issues clouding our relationship to be dealt with as quickly as possible so we can move on with our lives and get on with the business of development,” Sogavare declared.
The Rudd government will be no less ruthless than its predecessor in prosecuting Australian interests in the South Pacific. The Labor Party fully supported all the Howard government’s manoeuvres in the region, including its military-led interventions in East Timor in 1999 and 2006 and in the Solomons in 2003. It encouraged the Howard government to move toward a “Pacific Union” that would systematically integrate the region’s economy and administrative apparatuses under Canberra’s domination. More recently, however, Labor criticised the former government for an over-reliance on military force and a failure to utilise diplomatic, aid and other instruments to advance Australian corporate interests. These tactical criticisms reflected concerns within the foreign policy establishment that the Howard government’s approach was generating too much opposition from both ordinary people and the political elites of the South Pacific countries.
Kerr, who was dean of law at the University of Papua New Guinea before entering the Australian parliament in 1987, said he hoped to establish better relations with PNG and the Solomon Islands. “We are not big brother,” he declared the day after being appointed parliamentary secretary. “We can’t demand outcomes that are always in accordance with Australia’s view of the world, but we can do everything possible to get us outcomes that are consistent with the national aspirations... I think there is no doubt that at least some of the leaders of our neighbours have seen Australia as somewhat too ready to use instruction rather than a partnership relationship.”
Such remarks may foreshadow the negotiation of a new arrangement between Canberra and the Solomons’ government. Whatever adjustments may be made to RAMSI, however, there is no doubt that the Rudd government will insist that Canberra retains control over the indefinite intervention.
For his part, Sogavare has again stressed that his attempts to reduce RAMSI’s influence and review its operations are not intended to force the Australian personnel out. A number of the recent parliamentarians’ defections, both to and from the government, may strengthen calls from within Sogavare’s ranks for a complete capitulation to Canberra’s demands. Significantly, Peter Boyers is among those opposition parliamentarians who have recently joined the government. Boyers was finance minister under the previous government and has now been appointed to the same post by Sogavare. He has been among the most vociferous pro-RAMSI parliamentarians. A leaked email written by a RAMSI finance official in April 2006 described Boyers as RAMSI’s “effective voice in cabinet”.
Boyers only left the opposition after the prime minister gave him a written guarantee that the government would “uphold the existing arrangements” with RAMSI.
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World Socialist Web Site
All rights reserved
10/3/07
Solomon Islands FM blasts Australia for continued occupation
Otti also called on the United Nations to assume a greater role in the mission, saying the Solomon Islands' experience with Australian-designed "cooperative intervention" proved that the world body must retain a leading role in international peacekeeping.
The 2,200-strong Australian-led international security contingent known as the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) has been in the country in 2003, when it arrived to help quell communal strife in which hundreds died.
But relations between Australia and the Solomons plunged since Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare took office in May 2006 following parliamentary elections.
Sogavare has criticized the mission over the past year, threatening to expel Australian personnel from the mission and to strip the troops of their immunity from prosecution. He accused the mission of representing too much of Canberra's interests and of failing to focus on its mandate to restore law and order in the South Pacific nation.
Sogavare has called for a RAMSI "exit strategy."
Canberra responded by accusing the Solomons' leader of poor governance. Australian peacekeepers also raided Sogvare's office, saying they were searching for evidence in a child sex criminal case.
Otti said it was the Solomons' "sovereign right to determine the terms on which the government of the Solomon Islands will permit our continued occupation by the visiting contingent."
"My (government) remains unmoved by Australian resistance to our attempts to reclaim our sovereignty and independence," he said.
Otti noted that after the government had criticized Australia's military role in the Solomons, he too had been denied a visa to visit Canberra.
"One would have to admit that this is an incredible justification for excluding democratically elected leaders of neighboring countries unknown for breeding terrorists," he said.
9/27/07
SOLOMON IS: Bartlett lashes out at AFP
the very people who were supposed to uphold justice and truth went about establishing a false case against an innocent person, that's what I'm saying that this whole thing was fabricated and it was totally wrong in terms of law and investigation as far as professional conduct is concerned.
- 07/08/2007
A former spokesman for the Solomon Islands militant group, the Malaita Eagle Force, who has been acquitted of conspiracy says the charges against him were absurd. The High Court dismissed four charges against Alex Bartlett of murder, arson and riot in relation to last year's riots in Honiara.Presenter - Sam Seke Speaker - Alex Bartlett, former cabinet minister & Malaita Eagle Force spokesman
listen windows media >BARTLETT: I feel that my innocence had been vindicated and of course justice and truth prevailed, and I am indeed most grateful.
SEKE: Mr Bartlett the presiding judge, Justice David Cameron in dismissing the charges against you said that the evidence against you was not credible and that no reasonable tribunal could rely on such distorted evidence. Were you expecting him to say something to that effect?
BARTLETT: I don't think the judge per se had said anything in favour of me, but other than interpreting the law was expressing his professional finding on the charges that were brought against me by RAMSI. But as I said all along I had maintained my innocence, and the fact that the judge had gave that ruling revealed very seriously the absurdity of the conspiracy case and other charges that were brought against me.
SEKE: So did you feel that you have been victimised?
BARTLETT: Well if charges were brought against you for which you knew full well you didn't commit or were not involved in such incidents or activity, of course you would feel that you had been victimised, which indeed this case was. And I think it bares very negatively on the investigators and the perpetrators of this case, because as the judge ruled I mean there was just no such meeting, no such activity and for someone to come up and just make up or fabricate or find a case or statement against you is totally absurd.
SEKE: Now Mr Bartlett you have singled out Australian Federal Police officers involved in the investigations, they conducted their investigations in a very unprofessional manner, why did you say that?
BARTLETT: I mean our code of ethics as far as investigation under the British system which Solomon Islands is used to, you bring about a charge against someone when you had adequate information or evidence that that person was involved in a crime. In this case there was no such thing.
SEKE: You have accused the original assistance mission to Solomon Islands, that's RAMSI as the perpetrators, now surely they did not tell the crowd to go down to Chinatown and burn the place and loot it. Why did you say that?
BARTLETT: What I'm saying is that the way they brought about this case against me, the charges against me were totally wrong, totally illegal, and the very people who were supposed to uphold justice and truth went about establishing a false case against an innocent person, that's what I'm saying that this whole thing was fabricated and it was totally wrong in terms of law and investigation as far as professional conduct is concerned.
SEKE: Are you seeking any sort of compensation from anybody for that matter?
BARTLETT: This is a very serious case and we're looking into all possible and exploring all possible avenues to seek remedies because our lives for the last two years have been completely devastated by the actions that were taken by the Australian Federal Police, and they've distorted our lives for very wrong reasons.
9/26/07
Climate change biggest security risk, says Australia's top cop
What kind of bald head palagi kaka is this, looks more like calculated political opportunism to me. Hungry and thirsty Pacific Islanders & Asians will be swarming into Australia so we gotta stop the invasion so thats why were are armed to the max and have become a paramilitary police force. If you clowns were listening, Pacific political leaders 10 years ago, and Pacific activists 20-30 years ago where telling ya what we needed to ensure the survival of our people, lands, culture & environment,Then as now you are racist, self interested, imperial slaves to corporate masters.
Hare Atu Poaka-Get Out Of The Pacific
Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty. The big bacon
SYDNEY (AFP) — Climate change poses this century's biggest security threat, possibly forcing the migration of millions of people from countries such as China, Australia's top policeman has warned.Water and food shortages could send waves of migrants across oceans and borders in the Asia-Pacific region, causing social disruption and unrest, said Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty.
Prime Minister John Howard Tuesday refused to comment on Keelty's unexpected foray into the politics of global warming delivered in a speech in Adelaide on Monday night.
The police chief's comments were seen as diplomatically-sensitive by some local media, with a reference to the possibility of China being unable to feed its population viewed as particularly provocative.
"For China to feed its predicted 2030 population, it needs to increase its food production by about 50 percent above today's levels," Keelty said.
"How does it achieve this, if its available land is dramatically shrinking and millions of people are on the move because of land and water.
"In their millions, people could begin to look for new land and they'll cross oceans and borders to do it."
The mass displacement of people "particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, could create a great deal of social uncertainty and unrest in the region," Keelty said.
"The potential security issues are enormous and should not be underestimated."
Even if only some of the predictions of catastrophic change wrought by global warming materialised, "climate change is going to be the security issue of the 21st century," Keelty said.
His remarks drew immediate criticism from refugee rights activists, who said the prospect of millions of displaced people trying to reach Australia was a humanitarian problem not a matter of border security.
"The issue of displaced people and Australia's obligations to those who need our help has always been a humanitarian issue, invoking our international obligations rather than engaging the issue of border security," said Project SafeCom spokesman Jack Smit.
Australia and the United States are the only two developed countries in the world to have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the main international treaty on fighting climate change
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