Book Reviews

South Pacific Commission may be in danger of losing its ideals

At the South Pacific Conference in abaul, New Guinea, in 1959, the len Secretary-General of the South acific Commission, Mr T. R. Smith, marked to me that he was glad to e PIM continuing its close interest commission affairs, because he idn’t forgotten that it was PlM’s 'Under, R. W. Robson, who had spared the way for the commission.

R. W. Robson, said Smith, had gued forcibly before the war that Pacific Islands Association of oples in the Pacific should be tablished, which would send legates to an annual conference to held perhaps in Suva, Auckland Sydney, to discuss common prob ns and secure common action.

This information was new to me that time, but on the strength of PlM’s Assistant Editor, Robert ngdon, did some of the research the kind he is now famed for, d turned up statements that >bson had made in PIM as early January 1931, and especially an iboration of the proposal which made in a Fiji radio broadcast July, 1936.

Now Tom Smith has produced a ok, South Pacific Commission: i Analysis After 25 Years, in which records chapter and verse of bson’s campaigning, together with names of those many others who ally got the commission off the >und —names like Dr H. V. Evatt.

Australia, and particularly one of att’s men, W. D. Forsyth. Forsyth s a tireless worker in the vineyard.

Mter 25 years, the history of the ith Pacific Commission needed to written. And here it is—facts, ires, footnotes. A scholarly work de possible by the New Zealand titute of International Affairs. Not olourful nor a dramatic book not n a general good “read”—but a )k that certainly fills a gan quately. rhe real interest, is in the final pter when he discusses the role the commission today and lorrow. Here he has to get away ti pure record and make assump is and predictions on the basis of

what can be learned from the past record, and not everybody will see it his way. If recent South Pacific conferences have shown anything, it is that there are many points of view about where the SPC should go from here.

Smith speaks of the commission as having passed through two stages, and its usefulness in the future will, he thinks, depend on a full attain ment of a third.

In the first stage the people of the Islands were called together by the metropolitan governments to offer advice on matters of common interest, which the governments either ac cepted or rejected. In the second stage, Islanders themselves success fully asserted their own right to decide on an acceptable programme and to allocate a budget for it, which included some of their own money.

The third stage is whether the SPC can become a real forum for discus sion and a clearing house for inter national aid.

On the matter of aid, Smith doesn’t believe that the commission should attempt to do what can be done more effectively by somebody else. But he says it does have the advantages of an intimate knowledge of the needs of the area, and the ability to take a regional approach, which agencies

working directly to separate govern ments find more difficult.

There is need, now, says Smith, for the SPC to decide, with Island leaders, what best can be done for the region with aid from various out side sources, and then to get things moving. The SPC should be a planner, involved with the over-view of the area. It needed to widen its outlook and not be so determinedly utilitarian.

As examples of the planning work he thinks it can do, Smith suggests that the problems of the atoll dwellers, with their need for cheap power, adequate water supplies and soil improvement, can be met with the scientific knowledge that the European powers have now built up.

Solar power, miniature atomic reac tors, soil science, might all be used.

Smith reminds us that most of the metropolitan powers have atoll-type islands and are aware of their dif ficulties, but there appears to be no concerted effort to find solutions.

Conservation is another pressing subject that needs a regional assault.

The rights of Islanders to their assets —to phosphate on Nauru and minerals on Bougainville—are slowly being recognised but not quickly enough. Two centuries ago the large whale populations in the Pacific were a potential reserve of Islands food, which was not needed, but visitors from far places massacred the whales at a time when they might have been useful.

In the last 20 years large quantities of deep sea fish previously unknown to the Polynesians have been found in the same waters, and exploited for the benefit of residents of distant countries. What is the SPC doing about it?

Smith argues there is still room for active intervention to ensure that the interests of Pacific Islanders in the products of their own region are not disregarded, and he adds that the commission should “once more be inspired by the ideals of its founders.”

Stuart Inder.

(South Pacific Commission. By

T. R. Smith. Published by Price Milburn for the New Zealand Institute of Inter national Affairs. Price $A7.50).