Pim Opinion

Bureaucracy and its denizens are probably now essential to the operation of our world, even in the admirably relaxed environs of the Pacific. And yet, one must view their proliferation with regret and, to a certain degree, suspicion. They are the means of social control, of putting people and their affairs into little boxes. While control is vital it must also be applied with understanding, purpose and moderation, and not just for its own sake.

Traditionally the Pacific has worked by consensus and with a minimum of red tape. But things seem to be changing.

For example, it was with regret that we heard of an instruction issued by the director of the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Cooperation (SPEC), that no initiative should be taken by any member of his staff, but that they should restrict themselves to responding to formal requests from member countries for action or advice.

Such an order is perfectly proper and good in a political context but, with great respect to SPEC, we suggest that it is a nonsense in an organisation set up to promote the economic growth of the South Pacific.

If the experts hired to produce commercially-viable ideas for the region are not allowed to rush out from their bureaucratic hidey-holes crying “Eureka!”, and set about to show people how they can improve their economies, then, surely, very little will happen.

Or, more likely, if the experts are made of worthwhile stuff, they will sneak out, clutching their ideas in plain brown wrappers, to find someone who will then formally ask for them. That is not healthy, for it breeds clandestine habits and difficult politics, and could isolate the director of SPEC from the people he most needs ... or should need.

Most of those involved with setting up SPEC in 1972 saw it as a vehicle for producing regional co-operation at the project level ... a nuts-and-bolts, practical, sort of outfit of a type everyone agreed the

Pacific needed. SPEC was bom, but things did not happen in the way intended.

Very rapidly SPEC became a secretariat for the Forum, formalising Island affairs, keeping records, publishing reports, arranging meet ings. It is important work which the politicians of the Forum nations need . . . but it is not a SPEC.

Concurrently, the bureaucracy has grown, become more rigid and much more expensive.

The last Forum meeting in Canberra was monumentally expensive and wrapped around in red tape, security men and all the other trappings of international summits, much more than any previous Forum. In Canberra such was probably inevitable, but was it necessary for the meeting to be held in Canberra? Why not Caims, or somewhere on the Great Barrier Reef? It certainly would have been more in keeping with the Pacific.

But can the Forum return to the old days of informality and genuine

cross-table opinion-swapping? Sadly, probably not.

In former years there was not a lot of vote-taking at the meetings, and there was much more interchange among delegates and staff.

Now it seems to be heading towards formal votes and strict control.

There is even a danger of the veto being introduced, or so it would seem from an incident at the last Forum when one nation refused to agree to the appointment of a man to run a printing machine given under Australian aid.

They continued to refuse even after Australia offered to pay his salary on grounds that, having given the machine, they wanted to see it used. The chairman accepted their refusal and the appointment was not made. It was, in effect, a veto applied for the first time in an organisation which had previously worked on majority decision. It hasn’t happened since, but one never knows . . . and the original ideal of a free-speaking, freely co-operating Pacific region is therefore just a little more dented.