Australia, NZ, begin to

Business and Development

Australia, NZ, begin to understand the Islands

By a staff reporter

Premier of the Cook Islands, Mr Albert Henry, summed up the pro blem in Sydney in early November in only a few words —which is unusual for him. Infiltration by Aust ralian and New Zealand unions is com plicating industrial relations in the South Pacific Islands, he said, and will continue to do so until the unions understand Island conditions better. The unions have to realise that what is good for Australia might not be good for Samoa and the Cook Islands, he pointed out.

Mr Henry might well have added to the list Fiji, Tonga, Nauru. New Guinea, Micronesia and the rest of the Pacific Islands represented at the three-day conference of South Paci fic Labour Ministers, which was held in Sydney that week under the spon sorship of the Australian Department of Labour. The conference sessions were open to the press, who were thus able to see for themselves that union activity in the Pacific Islands can generate a lot of heat even among leaders sympathetic to the union movement, such as Premier Henry himself. Mr Henry was active in the NZ Labour Party after the war and his rise to power in the Cooks was from the base of in dustrial unionism.

But it was Mr Henry’s complaints, with those of Fiji’s Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, made at a conference in Western Samoa in April, that set the stage for the Syd ney meeting. Ratu Mara told the South Pacific Forum in Apia, which was attended by Mr Whitlam and Mr Kirk, that New Zealand unions were interfering with Fiji sover eignty in their opposition to industrial relations legislation which was then going through the Fiji parliament.

Australian unions were also interfering in industrial aspects of Fiji, he said.

The forum agreed to support the Sydney conference to discuss the various problems.

Since then there had been other complaints of union interference in Island affairs by President Deßoburt

of Nauru, who attended the Sydney conference, and Mr Michael Somare, of New Guinea —Nauru having gone to the trouble of inserting full-page advertisements in the New Zealand newspapers in an effort to put its point of view over the blackballing in Wellington of one of its ships, the Enna G.

The Enna G affair caused anger in important quarters in the South Paci fic, because it was no simple shipping dispute. It was the independent powers of the South Pacific versus the metropolitan powers for the right to operate their own businesses their own way. (see p 25, 77).

It’s a matter of irritation, and anger, to Islanders to feel the con descension of the average Australian or New Zealander towards the Islands.

This sort of thing: “Fiji is a great place for a holiday, what with all that duty free grog and stuff, but you couldn’t expect them to know how to run the place fair and square, now could you?”

Also, “Australia is actually giving self-government to New Guinea, where it’ll be another 50 years before some of them are out of the trees!’* the insinuation being that those lucky enough to be out of the trees wouldn’t be capable of making an intelligent decision anyway.

It doesn’t occur to the ignoramuses who go on with this type of nonsense that Islanders might understand their own needs best, or might come to terms with their own environment de spite the disruption caused by an im posed colonial experience, from which most of them have emerged in better temper than the rest of the world had a right to expect.

But, conferences such as the Labour Ministers Conference are not now convened because Australia is magn animous; they’re occurring with in creasing frequency because the South Pacific nations have something im portant to say, and they will make their points with growing insistence until the metropolitan powers under stand them. One of the items on the

countries. Therefore, solutions can’t be conference agenda for instance dealt with employment in the South Pacific and an important facet of the discus sion centred on employment possibi lities for Islanders in Australia and New Zealand.

Fiji’s ministers in particular, es pecially Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, have been very vocal over this. So has the Cook’s Albert Henry but Island views are changing.

A few years ago they wanted their nationals to be given jobs in the de veloped countries. Now, they’re not so sure, It often means a brain drain, so the emphasis has been shifted to a request for the creation of new industries in the Islands by the de veloped countries.

The conference got around to this view, recognising, as the communique said, “that employment opportunities could be fostered by creating indus tries, by removing barriers to the ex port of goods and commodities they produce and by enabling industries adapted to the needs and resources of the region, such as the maritime industry, to be developed.”

Which brought the conference to the need for skilled technicians and tradesmen. The ministers agreed to pool information about existing and proposed training facilities and courses to enable them to be used as widely as possible inside the region.

Both Australia and New Zealand expressed willingness to fill part of this gap, but the Island representatives made it clear that they’d prefer the training experts to be sent to the Islands rather than the trainees go ing to the developed countries. They argued that training was most ef fective in the trainee’s own environ ment. Behind that view was the situ ation so often experienced by the Is land leaders of finding that their nationals, after training abroad, were reluctant to leave the fleshpots and more comfortable ways of life found in the developed countries. It’s likely, therefore, that training will be carried out in the Islands.

Another view was that the admis sion of Islanders to Australia and New Zealand to work on a short-term basis—it’s been going on for years in New Zealand —“did not provide a real solution to unemployment.”

Not much was said about one of the Islands’ main grievances—inter ference by overseas trade unions. It was anticipated that Nauru, Tonga and Fiji would “have a go” over past examples of this, but there were mainly oblique references and the conference was content to record that “there was an urgent need to create greater awareness among international

trade union organisations (in particu lar the International Transport Workers Federation) and among trade union officials in the region, of the real problems and circumstances of the Island communities in order to obtain their co-operation in working towards fair and reasonable condi tions for those employed in the mari time services which will be consistent with the economic and social position of the peoples of the region.” The Waitangi (NZ) shipping conference (p 77) said much the same thing.

Australian Labour Minister Clyde Cameron promised to get his govern ment to foot part of the bill for a proposed seminar for government, employer, trade union representatives and academics to study labour pro blems.

There was much play over the deve loped countries helping the Islands with labour relations but about that there was an air of the blind leading the blind. Wildcat strikes and bad labour relations are facts of life in Australia and New Zealand!

All in all, the delegates were satisfied with the conference. Australia, origi nator of it, certainly improved its image among the Islanders, who went home convinced that what Ratu Mara, when the conference was first proposed by Mr Whitlam in Apia last April, suspected was a red her ring, turned out to be a much more fruitful product.

Fiji Labour Minister Mr Jonati Mavoa told PIM, “There seems to be a real shift in the thinking of Australia and New Zealand towards the Island countries. The conference has made them realise that the pro blems we have are not exactly the same as those in the more sophisticated

reached by using conventional meth ods, and new solutions must be found.”

There were no hard and fast de cisions made but the main points agreed by all were: © The need to develop employ ment opportunities and make im mediate efforts to create those op

portunities;

9 The provision of training faci lities and co-ordinating educational and labour market policies; 9 A review of training require ments and facilities should be made by the South Pacific Commission in collaboration with the International Labour Office before the SPC’s pro posed conference on Manpower Plan ning next year; ® The strengthening of vocational guidance and counselling services to school children; © Compliance by the participating countries as far as circumstances permit, with internationally-accepted minimum standards in the labour field, but with the right to adopt own legislation and practices according to local needs: ® A seminar to discuss labour pro blems and a training course for trade union officials and others in industrial relations, usine instructors from Aust ralia and NZ and other suitable countries; ® The collecting of labour stati stics and the exchange of information on legislative changes and develop ments in the labour field: © The training of labour admini stration staff, and @ A request to the ILO to devote more resources to the South Pacific region and set up an office there.