Up Front

with the Editor

Nauru’s 9,336-ton passenger and cargo vessel, Erma G, justifiably the pride of the growing Nauruan fleet, is deserted in Wellington, its crew of Islanders paid off, its officers found jobs elsewhere. It’s the end of the line in a shipping dispute which has cost the Republic of Nauru more than $170,000, put 51 Islanders out of work and may have strangled at birth a shipping line on which many islands had built their hopes.

It’s a bitter statement of account, but it has one golden aspect. The Government of Nauru has stood firm on a principle, which will precipitate a showdown that will finally dis tinguish friends from enemies for the South Pacific Islands.

For the Enna G story is no simple shipping dispute. It’s the independent nations of the South Pacific versus the metropolitan powers for a place in the sun.

If you are a regular reader of PlM’s shipping columns you’ll see that the Enna G has been tied up in Wellington since early June, when Nauru agreed to a request from the Tongan Government to use the vessel on a joint venture, for a regular service connecting NZ and the Islands.

The Union Steam Ship Company had just withdrawn the Tofua from such a service, leaving the Islands with out regular means of exporting.

The South Pacific Forum, which includes Australian and NZ Govern ment leaders, had already agreed to the principle of an Islands regional shipping service, and here was an opportunity to get it under way, with Islands ships and crews, carrying for the most part Islands cargoes.

The Enna G had operated out of Sydney.

The Australian waterfront unions did not interfere with a well-run ship that was Islands-registered, owned, operated and crewed.

But the NZ Seamen’s Union, good at paying lip service to the needs of its “brothers” in the Islands, decided that if its own men couldn’t get jobs now that the Tofua was off the run, nobody else would, and it declared the Enna G black. Some other Wellington waterfront unions lent their support to the NZ seamen.

Stripped of all the double-talk, ex planations and counter-explanations, the NZ union attitude is as simple as that—naked self-interest.

It has made use of Fijian unionists for its own selfish purposes, and is certainly no friend of the Islanders.

Meanwhile, the New Zealand Govern ment has also showed itself to be little more than a fair-weather friend by failing to intervene on this clear matter of principle.

The principle is: Do the sovereign South Pacific states not have the right to operate their own ships, to employ their own men on their own con ditions, and to service their own islands—or to call anyplace else whose government gives them authority to call?

The Nauruans and the Tongans know that, and so by now do the rest of the Islands governments who have watched with tight-lipped con cern. The NZ Government presumably professes not to know it, because it would be embarrassing to know it and not to have done anything about it. The NZ union leaders involved wouldn’t know anything, and the 23 Fijian seamen who lost their jobs must now be wondering what their union leadership knows.

What next? As the Nauruan Gov ernment said in a full page NZ news paper advertisement: “The Nauru and Tongan shipping lines place their hopes now on results of the forthcoming regional talks proposed by the Prime Minister of New Zealand to attempt rationalisa tion of shipping and trade in the Pacific.

“Until then we suggest that the NZ waterfront unions would do well to follow the example of their national leader—and encourage rather than attempt to destroy the legitimate hopes and aspirations of their Island neighbours.”

The conference is unlikely to take place before October. I think the Nauruan advertisement is nicer to the NZ Prime Minister than he deserves, but meanwhile President Hammer Deßoburt refuses to back down, despite the financial cost. He deserves the thanks of the South Pacific.

Stuart Inder