Pacific Islands Monthly

Confrontation Looms

At Guam Conference

THE 13th South Pacific Conference opens at Guam on September 11th —under the mushroom cloud of the French nuclear tests and with a few prickly propositions on the agenda which could create a massive split in the organisation which is already creaking at its foundations.

The way France blackmailed the conference last year over the con tributions increase hasn’t been forgotten by the Australians who promised—in the corridors at Apia and not publicly at the conference — that they wouldn’t tolerate an encore from the French at the 1973 con ference.

And it looks as if they and their Labour comrades across the Tasman have thrown down the gauntlet to the French by promising to add $250,000 each to their contribution this year for certain specified projects.

It’s safe to say the French don’t like the move and may, perhaps, oppose it at Guam. If they do, there’s no telling what the Australian reaction will be.

There’s a change of government in both Australia and New Zealand and that change has brought a more militant spirit to the two teams going to Guam. They both believe that the SPC needs a much greater injection of both money and imagina tion and they’re hardly likely to tolerate any Gallic stonewalling, especially as both Australia and New Zealand, not to mention the Island governments, are spoiling for a fight over the nuclear tests.

Leading the Australian team will be Senator Donald Robert Willesee, the Special Minister of State, who’s not one to mince words. He isn’t likely to start the ball rolling but, if some one else does, he’ll join in. His speech, which is one of several usually given by the metropolitans, could be the hottest ever heard at a Conference.

France is hardly likely to applaud the extra money which the ANZ group has promised to give the SPC because France has always been suspicious of Australia’s role in the South Pacific. She will see this generous gesture as an attempt to “buy” influence and popularity in the Islands and so increase the strength of its presence.

Another proposition to be put by the Australians, and already favour ably received by the Islanders, is likely to be opposed by the French and, to a lesser extent, by the UK and US contingents. The proposition is to change some of the SPC’s features because, say the Australians in a paper which will be tabled at Guam, “Australia has for some time been concerned about the influence and effectiveness of the South Pacific Commission”.

It lists six “difficulties” affecting the commission’s work including inadequate financial resources, an antiquated constitution and organisa tional structure and a work pro gramme with too few projects having an important regional value.

Added to those present difficulties are some which are pending— duplication of the work of the SP Forum and the Bureau for Economic Co-operation, the weakening of Aus tralia’s membership basis when PNG becomes independent, leaving only Norfolk Island, and the necessity to rebuild the SPC headquarters within the next five to seven years.

The paper gives three alternatives which, it said, the SPC was faced with in the next five to 10 years—to wither away through a combination of neglect and indifference; it could be drastically restructured, which would include formal amendments of the Canberra Agreement to remove individual governments’ veto power and a merger of the commission and conference sessions, or a midway course could be devised which would attempt, by convention, to change certain features until its future and that of the Forum are clearer.

Australia favoured the last alterna tive, warning that the SPC would decline rapidly if it continued on its present course.

“There appears to be slackening of Island interest and doubts about the SPC’s future have been expressed by conference delegates,” the paper said.

The second alternative was prefer able in the sense that it could result in a rewriting of the Canberra Agreement but Australia did not think that course was acceptable to all members.

It proposed, therefore: • That the SPC as from 1975 be financed on a part-voluntary basis, and • That, from 1975 onwards there should be a de facto merger of the commission and conference sessions.

Australia also proposed that the commission’s administrative services should be financed on the present basis of fixed percentage shares among commission governments but that the work programme and services should be financed on a voluntary basis.

A merger of conference and com mission would cut down the “unduly long time now given the session and conference sitting separately” and would involve all members more fully in the operation of the whole organisation, increasing their interest and feeling of participation. It would also reduce any resentment of con ference members at having their re commendations subject to the ap proval of a body largely comprised of the metropolitan powers.

Australia will lay the paper on the table and ask that members con sider it over the next year and then deal with it at the 1974 Conference.

New Zealand is expected to back Australia on this but the United Kingdom and the United States are definitely lukewarm. France would almost certainly oppose it because it would take the veto and final con trol out of the hands of the metro politan powers.

Australia, however, is ready and willing for all members of the SPC, metropolitan and Island territories, to be equal members, believing that Island interests should be paramount.

What the Islands want, Australia is prepared to go along with.