Up Front

with the Editor

Even people who should know sometimes get confused at the difference between the South Pacific Commission and the South Pacific Conference. But the distinction is worth observing now more than at any time, because I believe the key to the future of the commission is to be found at the conferences.

The South Pacific Commission was established as an advisory and con sultative body in 1947 by the six metropolitan powers then responsible for the island territories of the Pacific. The commission is a quarter century old in 1972.

The SPC established the South Pacific Conference as an auxiliary body, to convene every three years.

The first conference was held in Suva in 1950, and the latest one, the 10th, was held in September, again in Suva.

In recent years the conferences have been held every year instead of every three.

In more than 20 years it is inevit able that both the commission and the conference should have changed —but the greatest changes have been in the conduct of the conferences.

The commission still represents the powers, and the powers are still entitled to send a commissioner to sit at a table with his fellows at the annual sessions of the commission, normally held in Noumea. Some people have unkindly described the commissioners as being members of an “exclusive club”—even though some of the powers are new powers indeed. They now include indepen dent Nauru and Western Samoa and they’ll probably include independent Fiji before very long.

The South Pacific Conferences, as always, are attended by the common people—ordinary “delegates”, of both sexes, selected in the territories by various rule-of-thumb methods, either by the administrations or the legisla tures.

When the conferences were first established it was not intended by members of “the club” that the delegates should have any say in the matters that club members discussed.

Conference delegates were meant to,

and did, constitute a kind of arranged tableau of native races in colourful garb, to be seen rather than heard.

Even as recently as the fifth con ference in Pago in 1962. the Dutch New Guinea delegates (black, but disappointingly wearing only grey lounge suits) were silenced like cheeky schoolboys when they at tempted to bring up the subject of Soekarno’s military invasion of their island, which was then at its height.

Politics, it was stated firmly by the conference chairman, were not part of the conference.

Officially politics are no more a part of the conference today than they were then, but such have been the changes at the conferences, that in Suva in September politics were discussed after the conference chair man overruled one of the com missioners on the subject. And the commissioner, France’s Mr. Nettre, had no other recourse but to walk out and leave them to it. As one of the delegates commented, the Pacific is a political place, and politics are inclined to get mentioned.

PIM has always attended these conferences—l reported my first one in Rabaul in 1959—and what has been most noticeable has been the increase in awareness of the delegates at each one. And the improvement in their rank.

The Islands territories and the new participating powers have taken attendance at the conferences more seriously than the old powers, and send along an increasingly improved product to do their talking for them.

This is one of the reasons why the conference is now beginning to take over many of the decisions formally reserved by the com missioners for themselves. Why, in fact, the conference is now becoming

the commission—why the tail Li beginning to wag the dog.

This, then, is where we are todayy But is it right that the tail shoulo wag the dog?

I think not. No tail could withf stand the strain for long.

I think the South Pacific Comr mission organisation, conference ano all, has probably had as man! changes as it can stand for the timu being. It must be left to settle downr I have always firmly supporter those Islanders who over the yearn have fought to get a greater say, by the territories in the work of thtj commission. If the Islanders ha« not made their bid I believe th«i SPC would now be dead. It wouU have faded away from anaemias because, by and large, the comr missioners have been an uninspiring lot, with one or two notable excepc tions. Some of them have displayed neither understanding nor interest ii South Pacific problems during theii brief appearances. Left solely in theii hands the commission was indee* doomed.

But, as I have said, the new guarr have taken things far enough.

Politics are dangerous in the SPO if the SPC is to fulfil the role tin Islanders themselves say they wan it to fulfil—that is, to act as i regional clearing house, identifying problems and sorting out priorities for the benefit of all territories, state and powers in the Pacific.

Mr. Nettre is right, in my view when he insists that if the delegate want to discuss politics they shoulJ do it somewhere else. The proposa of Mr. Albert Henry, Premier g the Cooks, which we reported ii these pages last June, suggesting tha a mini-UN be established to rui independently of the SPC, is, I thinU worth looking at, although I cam myself visualise the shape of it.

Politics is a two-edged sword. A very well for New Guinea’s Oaf Oala-Rarua to go full-cry into th attack on Mr. Nettre and the res of the original club members that they are almost has-beens. Bu what happens next year if Fiji attack New Guinea over some real c imagined matter of politics, or th Cook Islands attacks Fiji, or Tong attacks them both?

Is the next step a Nauruan gun boat to keep the peace, and do w all go back to square one?

TN answer to some correspondent) 1 PlM’s Practical Planter pag* have not disappeared. Planters aj predate the series, but we have othe readers too. We have simply mac Practical Planter an occasional sene-

Stuart Inde[?]