McKinnon’s politics

David Barber

McKinnon’s politics of the islands

Wellington notes

THE decision of New Zealand’s new Minister of External Relations and Trade, Don McKinnon, to drop his visiting card in the South Pacific before travelling anywhere else was a welcome one. With the exception of Russell Marshall, his predecessors have never used their physical presence to pay the region the attention it deserved given the geographical reality of New Zealand’s location.

For years, foreign ministers and other New Zealand politicians showed a marked preference for hot-footing it to London and other European centres a preference that paid only lip service to their oft-repeated claim that New Zealand was a Pacific nation. It may be early days to deduce that this is all about to change, but at least the readiness of McKinnon, who is also Deputy Prime Minister, to give up part of his January holiday to visit four Pacific island states and New Caledonia was a step in the right direction.

The fact that he decided to take Defence Minister Warren Cooper and the Associate Minister of Pacific Island Affairs, Roger McClay, with him was added evidence that New Zealanders may be ready to take the region it often cavalierly refers to as its “backyard” a bit more seriously.

One can only say that it’s about time.

When Fiji’s Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara complained in Malaysia late last year that Pacific Island states were tired of being neglected by New Zealand and Australia, it was clear that he was still rankled by criticism of the military coups. But nevertheless there was more than an element of truth in his accusations of “benign neglect” and advantage-taking by the two developed countries of the region.

Most observers accept that in developing shipping, air services, banking, tourism and what was often one-way trade, New Zealand and Australia had the best of the relationship with the island states. While New Zealand, particularly, did make a major contribution in terms of educating the Pacific island’s elite, it was never a true partnership. The attitude remained avuncular.

The politicians headed for Europe, the island’s governments were often not consulted on major international issues that concerned them as much as anyone else, the diplomats didn’t bother to learn the local language, the traders took but rarely gave and the tourists concentrated in beach resorts that offered the comforts of home, different only in that they were sun-blessed.

None of them made much effort to understand the countries and the people in their own “backyard”. Even when New Zealand s demography changed to the point that one in five of the population was Polynesian, thinking remained centred on the opposite side of the globe.

Things have changed. There is a Maori renaissance (which admittedly still has a long way to go) and the growing Polynesian population is making its presence felt. There has been a revolution in New Zealand schools (which ironically could be set back by McKinnon’s government) and children are learning about Maori and Polynesian culture to a degree

that their parents do not comprehend.

There is a growing consciousness of who New Zealanders are and where they are. New Zealand’s young are more culturally sensitive than their mothers and fathers they have to be, they are in daily contact with Maori and Polynesians to an extent their elders never experienced.

This consciousness has been slow to manifest itself in a number of key areas. The universities have lagged, and despite the long overdue establishment of centres for Pacific Island studies in Auckland and Christchurch, there is still no Pacific Island language faculty in the former, the largest

Polynesian city in the entire region.

The business community has not seen it fit or necessary to make the sort of endowments that established Australia’s Research School of Pacific Studies in Canberra. The media has, with one or two exceptions, failed to encourage the development of Pacific expertise among its reporters and commentators. Meetings of the South Pacific Forum are junkets for Wellington’s Parliamentary Press Gallery rather than one of the year’s outstanding news events.

There is much ambivalence about New Zealand’s South Pacific consciousness, which has been aggravated by events of recent years.

The Fiji coups posed a major problem for New Zealand policymakers, one they have not yet adequately dealt with.

McKinnon made a move to restore relations when he met Ratu Sir Kamisese in Auckland, a meeting followed up by the inclusion of Suva in his Pacific itinerary. But his refusal to restore military assistance, while olfering to resume maritime surveillance flights, reflects the continuing concern of many New Zealanders about the coups and the new constitution.

Similarly, New Caledonia has long posed a dilemma. How far should New Zealand go in supporting the Kanaks, when such a stand could cost it dearly in terms of trade with France and the rest of the European Community?

But it is becoming harder for New Zealand to avoid facing up to these and other issues, especially with a perception in Wellington and the island states that Australia, increasingly seeing itself as a world middle power, has other preoccupations. This gives, the argument goes, New Zealand all the more reason to adopt a positive role in the Pacific if only it can clearly identify what that role should be.

Wellington bureaucrats made it clear, in briefing papers for the new government, that they feared regional stability could still be upset by the economic struggle facing the island states. They warned that overall trade and investment levels had to be enough to head off economic decline into instability such as had been seen in Africa and elsewhere.

McKinnon is aware that New Zealand’s aid to the region has dropped to a pathetic level, but the economic situation at home is so bad he will not get more money to lift this. He will also have to can proposals to open new diplomatic missions in French Polynesia and Hawaii, moves that were seen as vital to maintain New Zealand’s influence and

understanding of developments in the region.

McKinnon may have been unwise to dismiss the former government’s South Pacific Policy Review as lightly as he did, suggesting it should be confined to the archives. Its sweeping and numerous recommendations my have been a bit over the top, but it contains a wealth of information and the way the review team was received by Pacific leaders showed they welcomed the study as evidence that at least one of the major regional powers was prepared to stop, listen and learn. His own ministerial debut tour shows that he has not rejected that course and that has to be good for New Zealand and for the Pacific. □