Mutually beneficial councils
p. 38 · Read in the full issue
MANY experienced business people have learnt the hard way that attending international busi ness meetings is not always pro ductive, or worth the expense and the time they put into them. They wonder if they might not have achieved more useful results by sitting on the end of their phone or fax machine. Some people have resolved any further doubts by making a point of refusing to attend any of them or to join any business organisation at all.
That’s a decision anybody can sympathise with who has got himself bogged down in some turgid seminar or lightweight con ference a long way from home, and wondered why. My advice to colleagues has alway been base
your decision to attend a business conference on regular business principles are their definite benefits, or are you hoping to have a junket?
As I write this in early June I am clearing my desk to fly to Fiji for the annual joint meeting of the Fiji-Australia Business Council, but I have no doubts about the benefits to be gained from it. 1 believe the business councils we have in the Pacific have been so effective there should be more of them. Fiji and New Zealand have a council, and so too have Papua New Guinea and Australia. And in the past few days has come news that Papua New Guinea is also to set up a business council with Israel. But that’s about it.
Business councils are set up and sponsored by business people, usually the larger or more prominent business houses to begin with. But their mutual concerns are such that inevitably the councils develop good working relationships with governments and industrial bodies, and it is this extra dimension that makes the work of the councils so effective. For it becomes a partnership of people who want to resolve problems by discussing them constructively, and head off potential new difficulties by recognising them in plenty of time.
The agenda for this three-day Fiji meeting provides an example of the kind of constructive fare that is typical.
Included are addresses by Fiji and Australian political figures, including Fiji’s Prime Minister, Sitiveni Rabuka, and Gordon Bilney, Australia’s Minister of Development Co-operation and Pacific Island Affairs (which is a new portfolio). There are presentations by bankers, miners and other business leaders on such subjects as investment incentives, the effect of Australia’s economic downturn on Fiji business, and the cost of natural disasters. The public discussions that follow always raise many questions that
might not otherwise get an
airing.
I see the existence of business councils like these as vital to the welfare of island economies as the South Pacific Forum itself.
The councils are in existence because business has one of the same needs the island countries had when they decided to set up the Forum in 1971. That is, the need to talk freely about trade problems, no matter who
politically sensitive they might
be.
Before the advent of the Forum, the island leaders and Australia and New Zealand had no structure that enabled them to do this, because the
rules of the South Pacific Commission meetings, where they did get together fairly regularly, excluded political discussion. This was unsatisfactory because economic decisions everywhere, of course, are closely involved with political considerations. Governments make decisions that affect business, and when business falters, the economy of the country will suffer. The private sector is the engine of
economic development.
Business councils help keep the lines of communication with government open. In the recent past, this was an important function following the 1987 coups in Fiji. The close contact between the Fiji and Australian and Fiji and New Zealand councils were valuable links which enabled people at both ends of the chains to check reactions at first hand, and to sort out the positive from the negative The facts were not always what many almost invariable negative media stories were claiming. Thus these direct lines of communication gave reassurance, particularly to the business community to keep going while the need is there.
Business councils have another role, of being able to distinguish, through their own exchange of ideas, the less important demands of their business members from the major issues that need to be addressed, and allocate priorities. They can then put forward the important issues with one voice.
Equally, governments can make clear to the councils just what they are, and are not, prepared to do over an issue, and resolve the situation quickly. A government decision disseminated through a business council has a better chance of being accepted by business than if it was announced baldly in the media, for it can provide the council with detailed reasons for the decision.