1:22 PM |
Is Pacific on the Australian government agenda?
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/pacbeat/stories/201007/s2966049.htm
Updated
The Lowy Institute in Sydney is hosting a forum today where Sean Dorney is the moderator debating the question - Is the Pacific region back on the Australian government's agenda?
Australia Network's Pacific correspondent Sean Dorney says "no" - apart from Nauru and for all the wrong reasons.
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Sean Dorney, Australia Network's Pacific correspondent
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DORNEY: Well, that's a question I'll be putting to the three panellists at this meeting today. My own view of that is 'no it is not back on the agenda' and more is the pity. The only part of the Pacific that seems to be back on the agenda is Nauru, and that's not for great Pacific reasons, that's all to do with asylum-seekers. Australia's in a difficult position in the Pacific at the moment. Kevin Rudd made enormous play about hosting the forum last year. It was not Australia's turn, but after he took over as prime minister and went to the forum meeting in Niue he offered to host the foreign meeting saying Australia was going to take a lot more interest in the Pacific and that was fairly warmly greeted by the Pacific islands. So Australia took its out of turn chance to host the forum and Mr Rudd in Cairns last year was talking up how much Australia was engaged with the Pacific. But as chairman of the forum, we didn't actually hear a lot from Kevin Rudd as forum chairman and now he has been replaced and Julia Gillard is not even going to this forum leader's meeting. So Australia is left in a fairly embarrassing position I think as far as the Pacific is concerned.
COUTTS: Well the forum meeting last year did choose to engage the Pacific, but as you say they slid out of sight ever since?
DORNEY: Yes, and that's a great shame for Australia's standing in the Pacific and I think you have just got to look back at what happened last week in Fiji where Commodore Bainimarama managed to get Sir Michael Somare and the prime minister of the Solomons and the prime minister of Tuvalu and the president of Kiribati all to turn up to what is really an alternative to the forum. And they came out with this communique in which they agreed that Fiji's Strategic Framework for Change was allegedly a credible home grown process for positioning Fiji for the future. And that all the Pacific could learn important lessons from Fiji's experience and implementation of this Strategic Framework for Change. I just wander how many people who were excluded from the home grown process who actually think it is a home grown process in Fiji, but that is what Sir Michael and Derek Sikua and those other leaders who were there agreed to that Fiji has a credible homegrown process. That's certainly not the views of the forum and what's going to be really interesting is to see how this is addressed by the forum meeting in Vanuatu next week.
Last year, I was at the Melanesian Spearhead Leaders Group meeting in Vanuatu, that then proceeded the Cairns meeting, and at that stage they all came out supporting Bainimarama too. That support for Bainimarama seemed to have evaporated by the time they got to Cairns. What it is doing I think is just throwing a huge great question mark over the credibility of the forum itself. Is anyone able to be believed for what they now say at these regional meetings?
COUTTS: So are you suggesting there that the MSG, MSG Plus or Engaging Fiji meetings is actually having a serious run at the forum and overcoming it?
DORNEY: No, I don't think it's even that structured. These countries getting together with Fiji, Commodore Bainimarama and his propaganda outfit are suggesting that this is a magnificent victory for Bainimarama and Fiji but what it does is just undermine the forum. So neither is actually, there is no credible alternative to the forum in this Engaging in Fiji meeting, but what it does do is make the forum itself a little bit of a joke.
COUTTS: Now while the delegates who did attend the Engaging Fiji meeting in Natandola last week gave a broad brush approval to the plan that Fiji has for moving Fiji forward. They also suggested that it is taking too long for them to get to elections?
DORNEY: Yes, but all you have got to listen to is what Sir Michael Somare has said to journalists over there that he's given a time line for democratic elections. He is the leader and he has now been recognised the leader for four years and we have to allow him to determine the future of his own people. I mean that's an extraordinary statement that Sir Michael Somare believes that a man who took over Fiji in a military coup simply because he's been there for four years gives him the right to determine the future of his country and elections in 2014. And Bainimarama himself has suggested that if Australia and New Zealand are going to continue to oppose him then 2014 might not be possible.
COUTTS: So what we're left with then, the integrity of the MSG and the forum both questioned?
DORNEY: I think that is simply right.
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