The ABC of Australia’s $60

million aid to the Islands

By John Carter And Malcolm Salmon

Finally committed to the belief that her future is irrevocably bound up with the Island countries of South Pacific, Australia plans over the next three years to spend at least $6O million on an expanded and modified programme of bilateral aid to the Islands.

Nine countries will benefit the Cook Islands, Fiji, the Gilberts.

New Hebrides. Niue, the Solomon Islands. Tonga. Tuvalu and Western Samoa. Already, teams have toured some of the countries to discover local priorities and plan program mes which will improve the econ omies and raise living standards throughout the Islands.

It's not many years ago that some of the Islanders, particularly in countries like Fiji where there is considerable private business in volvement. complained that Australia regarded the Islands as a milch cow to be milked of profits. If it was true then and it was an over-simplification anyway it isn't true today. Australia con tributes the most of all the developed countries to the South Pacific Commission. But she has said that isn't enough, and she plans to increase her aid and to be more closely involved in the South Pacific than ever before.

Now. she's putting her money where her mouth is to the tune of. at least. $6O million. And. in case the cynic says that it wouldn't have happened if the Russians and the Chinese hadn't come knocking on Island doors, the aid plan and the money were already in the pipeline when the communist countries made their overtures.

Papua New Guinea isn't included in the programme. The great aid PNG gets and will get is part of a different set-up.

There's a comparatively new and large department in Canberra, the Australian Development Assistance Bureau (ADAB) which handles all the aid Australia gives to India.

South-east Asia, the South Pacific Islands and others.

Agriculturists, economists,

engineers and other specialists work from ADAB to a programme com piled by Australian officials and of-

Australia is revamping its policy towards the South Pacific. In the years ahead the Island countries of the region will be given higher priority by Canberra in terms of political and diplomatic attitudes, and in terms of economic aid, than has been the case in the re cent past.

PIM, in this issue, takes a close look at the new Australian policy at the point of development it has reached to date, and at its likely directions for the future.

ficials of the country being helped.

Fiji, as the largest country in the South Pacific programme, will get about $21.5 million of the $6O million. The other allocations (all approximate) are; Cooks $700,000; Gilberts $4 million; New Hebrides $5.3 million; Niue $150,000; Solomons 16.55 million. Tonga $7 million; Tuvalu $600,000; Western Samoa $lO.B million. Regional pro jects, which will include support for the University of the South Pacific, will take $3.4 million.

But it’s a rolling programme and $6O million is not the final figure. It may be larger, but not smaller, and there are imponderables in the programme. Some think ADAB is under-staffed and may not be able to handle all the work once the wheels are really turning. Much will de pend on Island officials and experts, of whom there aren’t many around, and individual projects may get bog ged down.

This year, if this doesn't happen. $l3 million will be spent, with $2O million earmarked for 1977/78 and $27 million in 1978/79.

What's more important than the

amount of aid are the new forms of aid in the programme. There’ll be no monuments to Australian generosity, huge schemes the upkeep of which will bleed an Island coun try white, but projects which, in the words of Dr John Baker, head of the Pacific. Asia and Africa Programme Branch of ADAB. “will be more re sponsive to the needs of the South Pacific Islands."

Cash grants will be made to na tional development banks to in crease their equity and lending and there will be projects of technical and educational assistance and food aid.

When the Western world entered the Islands, the people, in many in stances. adopted Western ways with canned meats, one-minute meals and bottled this and that. Surround ed by millions of square miles ot water teeming with fish, the Islan ders still import most of their fish.

Australian aid will aim at creating self-sufficiency which means that, it she never did it before. Australia (and New Zealand, too) will be knocking much of the bottom out ot her Island markets. But not altogether. With a higher living standard. the Islanders will want more of the good things of life which may have to come from overseas.

Added to that. Australia has at tached one string to her aid and she can’t guarantee that the Islanders will pull the string that goods bought outside the Pacific Islands should be bought, mainly, from Australia.

Some grants will be used to enable the “locals" or governments to buy shares in Australian firms operating in the Islands. Papua New Guineans know how well that sort ot aid is working.

There will be increased invest ment. a transfer of technology, more

employment opportunities,

manufacturing and processing in

dustries, tourist development and better transport and com munications.

Much of past aid from developed countries to the Islands has been swallowed up in experts’ salaries and the local costs of projects, as the aided country had to foot the bill for all these. That’s all changed. In this new programme up to 100% of such bills will be met by Australia.

How many times has come the complaint from the aided country, “You gave us so much, but most of it has gone in paying the salaries and expenses of the people sent to launch the projects”.

Not so long ago, Australia met a bill for $300,000 as an accountable grant to the Gilberts to pay for two airfields being built in the outer is lands.

There have been much smaller payments $16,000 for houses for agricultural extension officers in some Western Samoa villages, and $12,000 for a courthouse at Mua village in Tonga.

When decisions are to be made on which projects are to be funded in a particular country, the programme branch sends a team, usually headed by the branch head. Dr Baker, to that country. The office has a collec tion of development plans from various countries. These are studied so that the team has a good idea, before setting out. what it will look for.

"Our basic guideline,” Dr Baker told us.” is to follow the priorities established by the recipient country.

We are really interested to see that the project proposed for assistance is included in that country’s

development plan.

“We examine the whole thing to see if it is going to increase employ ment. raise living standards, reduce the country’s dependence on outside support and assistance, increase ex ports and. by the same token, avoid encouraging that kind of develop ment which is going to increase the country’s dependence on outside aid.

“‘The main aim of the whole aid programme is to help to strengthen the countries of the region, both economically and socially.

“ Another aim is to avoid sup porting projects which are going to contribute to an excessive increase in government expenditure.

“The projects should be designed, as far as possible, to encourage self-

sufficiency and avoid developing an attitude of dependence. The main means of achieving this are by pro viding support for grass-roots development and assistance to non government organisations.

“ Projects should not contribute to the development of either the social or economic infrastructure whose upkeep a country paddling its own canoe can’t afford.

“The basic thing is that we are try ing to follow their'priorities and re cent missions have, with very few exceptions, completely identified the programme of assistance with the proposals put to the missions by the governments concerned.

“Problems can arise where a re quest would result in our aid being spent on one very large project to

the exclusion of almost all other projects in that particular country. ‘Frequently, these very large pro jects are more suitable for funding by one of the international agencies such as the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank.”

The ADAB, Dr Baker pointed out. had its favourites among pro jects. agriculture and rural develop ment for example.

“However, the problem there.”

Dr Baker said, “is that, whereas it is fairly easy for a country to identify major infrastructure projects such as roads, airports or telecommunica tion facilities, it is very much harder for us to develop similar scale agricultural and rural projects because of the tremendous social and cultural ramifications of such projects.”

The programming missions have almost a fixed method of approach to the aid countries. An average mission spends four to five working days in each country, following a fairly standard approach. The first day is spent in introducing the team and holding working discussions with the government’s planning office to review projects inviting Australian support.

The following two or three days are filled with detailed investigation and documentation of individual projects, with the various experts in the team working in their respective fields of specialisation.

There is a “wrap-up” session on the final day with the planning office and other senior officials when the future shape and composition of the programme is reviewed and tenta tive agreement to the list of requests is given by both sides.

Then the team goes home and out from Australia goes a feasibility team. Specialist advisers are engag ed and approvals are sought before the plant and equipment is obtained for the particular project in view.

And that is when, sometimes, there is a hitch. A date for the start of the work is agreed on. Something happens somewhere a strike, maybe, a hurricane, or some equip ment is out of stock and the tools for the job don’t arrive.

The project is held up, the money earmarked for it doesn’t get spent, and the Australian politicians start asking questions because aid to the Islands has become a political foot ball.

It’s likely that the $l3 million

Dr John Baker

budgeted for this year will not be spent in the defined period. Mr Whitlam has been asking why, not that he’s terribly worried if it isn’t, but a political point can be made.

Similarly. Mr Andrew Peacock.

Australia’s Foreign Minister and a good friend of the Islands, partic ularly PNG, pointed out, when he first announced at Suva last Oc tober that Australia was giving $6O million in aid. that this amount was four times bigger that what had been given in the preceding three years. That was when the Whitlam government was in power. To that government’s credit is the newer, warmer, more embracing approach that Australia is now making to the Islands.

To the Fraser government goes the credit for the greater aid and the more realistic way in which that aid will be disbursed.

So that, when the Islanders hear, or read, that there’s a row in the Australian Parliament over aid to the Islands, it means little to the re cipients of that aid. It’s only a family row about who should get the credit.

All parties believe in more aid for the Islands, and for other under

developed countries.

Some of the projects being tackled this year are a mechanical and plant workshop, road rehabilitation and inter-island ferry for Western Samoa, landing barges and cattle trucks for the Solomons: a fisheries centre and hospital in Tonga’s Vavau group, together with a grant of $680.000 towards a major telephone system in the kingdom: finance for feasibilty studies into a beef cattle scheme and a hydro

electricity scheme, pipes for a sewerage scheme and the im plementation of irrigation and land surveying projects in Fiji: road plant, a pilot launch and the im plementation of a rural water supply scheme in the New Hebrides.

The Solomons is also benefiting this year from technical assistance in developing the beef cattle industry there.

But. when all this aid starts the wheels rolling in the Islands.

Australia and others will have to plan to help the Islands to create markets for their exports.

It’s no use an Island country hav ing a massive output of some com modity if there’s no market for it.

The strong bias of the new policy towards economic, rather than defence, aid was clearly expressed at May hearings of the Senate Stand ing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defence.

Defence Department spokesman.

Mr Robert Hamilton, told the com mittee his department’s programmes in South Pacific countries were “es sentially supplementary” to econ omic aid programmes.

He said his department was not going out into the South Pacific "looking for jobs”, but countries at times sought assistance from Australia.

This was the case with Fiji (re quests for equipment for the rural development unit of Fijian armed forces, and for secondment of Australian naval officers to its maritime units). Tonga (request for a carpenter-trainer for its armed forces), and the Gilbert Islands (training of personnel in Australia

for its. as-yet, embryonic armed forces).

Mr Gordon Jockel. director of the Joint Intelligence Organisation, told the committee that it would be hard to identify any serious external influence that could disrupt the security of the region.

The Islanders had their own deep-rooted traditions and wanted to retain them. They did not want external influences spilling into their area.

Their tendency was to look for solutions to problems within the region and not attract the com plications of larger power involve ment.

" This is why they will look to Australia and New Zealand." Mr Jockel said.

Additional colour was lent to Australia’s new policy line by visits to Australia in the early months of 1977 by Island government leaders such as the Western Samoa Prime Minister Tupuloa Efi. and the Prime Minister of Tonga. Prince Fatafehi

Tu’ipelehake.

Both expressed themselves happy with their visits, which included meetings with Prime Minister Fraser.

The new Australian policy towards the South Pacific has been greeted editorially by the Sydney Morning Herald as "especially welcome, sensible and overdue".

The editorial described the South Pacific as "that most consistently neglected and overlooked area ot Australian interest”.

It quotes with approval Mr Peacock’s statement that the area deserves serious attention "in terms of considerable problems its coun tries face, in terms of the importance of the area for Australia, and in terms of the impact which even a quite limited intrusion by outside powers can have on the smaller countries”.

The editorial comments: “Of course it does, and of course it has for all the many years that Australian Governments have spared it not even half an eye. This is a region, as the Herald has long emphasised, where Australia has both a special responsibility and a special opportunity. In terms of dis charging the one and grasping the other this is the eleventh hour for Australia.”