Pim Says

The outcome of the Australian Senate inquiry into ‘Australia and the South Pacific’ was fairly predictable. In fact, so predict able, that, according to one Foreign Affairs officer, ‘by the time the report came ouf we had all its recommendations in hand anyway’. A smug, self-congratulatory statement, we think, though true in most respects. This kind of statement only helps to confirm the suspicion that Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs has no more imagination than the Senators who came up with such a bland report.

Whether Australia likes it or not, and despite its exceptional financial generosity to the Islands in comparison with the offer ings of other ex-colonials, its stocks are not high in the South Pacific. If they had been, would Fiji have gone out of its way to humiliate Australia at last October’s South Pacific Conference in Noumea?

The Australian Government should accept this report for what it is a ‘first’. And. like every ‘first’, it has obvious flaws, many of which are pointed out in the accompanying article.

Equally obvious, such a serious subject will have to be tackled again sooner rather than later.

Some lessons for the next time round are already appar ent: • The absurd regulation which prevented the committee from doing any work on the spot in the Pacific Islands must not pre vail. • The number of Islander witnesses must be dramatically in creased. The excuse used by the committee at one point in its

report that Islanders written to did not reply to its letters is just

not good enough.

• The philosophy of the inquiry must be much more clearly thought out. That is, its political and moral terms of reference must be made much clearer than they were this time. (The com mittee’s original terms were The need for an increased Aus tralian commitment toward development in the South 'Pacific’.

But the Senate later backed off even this mildly affirmative for mulation and opted for the completely neutral ‘Australia and the South Pacific’.) Perhaps the central moral dilemma is spelt out by the com mittee itself when it says: There has been a considerable amount of criticism that Aus tralians in general have tended to be paternalistic in their deal ings with Islanders. The committee recognises these sentiments but throughout our hearings this inquiry has had stressed to it that Australians have now generally learnt to guard against appearing paternalistic and, more importantly, that their actions are in no way intended to be paternalistic. Only the sincerity of Australia’s present and future dealings in the region can allay these sentiments.’ (Our emphasis.) Some progress has probably been made by the Australians concerned in the first respect guarding against appearing paternalisitic. But anyone who believes that much progress has been made with the second is simply not looking straight at the problem tough, complex, historically developed problem that it is. Too much of Australia’s performance is paternalistic.

Only the glib and the irresponsible would pretend that this problem can be easily or quickly solved.