Bilney’s challenge
p. 17 · Read in the full issue
WHEN Australia’s prime minis
ter Paul Keating was treasurer, back in the mid-1980s, he brought a storm of controversy down on his head by warning that Australia was set to become a ‘banana republic’.
The reaction to the remark was outrage. While there must have been times when Keating rued the moment he uttered the evocative phrase a decade later Australia has undergone many of the reforms it implied were necessary. For the ruling Labour party, business and unions memories of the painful process of challenging and then relinquishing beliefs and policies which had the status of sacred cows, are now fading. In the lead up to this year’s South Pacific Forum in Brisbane, Aus tralia’s Pacific Islands Affairs Minister Gordon Bilney has issued a similar challenge to island leaders.
In a speech beamed live to eight Pacific capitals Bilney warned leaders urgent action was needed if island nations were not to face the possibility of a truly horrifying future.
He cited World Bank figures which show island economies grew at an average rate of just 0.1 per cent annually over the past 10 years despite generally favourable conditions.
Bilney’s blunt assessment “Whatever policies we’ve been following in the South Pacific and by ‘we’ I mean island countries and donors alike are demonstrably not working and not judged by some alien standard, but by the yardstick of sustainable development we’ve all set ourselves.” Bilney went on “The lack of economic development, when combined by high population growth rates, unsustainable exploitation of natural resources and rapidly rising community expectations, has led to a growing range of social and economic problems, including permanent environmental degradation.”
In explaining what the future might hold Bilney had recourse to the predictions of the Australian National University’s Pacific 2010 Research Project which he said “paints a nightmare vision of mass unemployment, urban slums, unrealisable demands on already stretched govern ment services, growing lawlessness and a degraded environ ment if current high population growth rates remain unchecked”. While Bilney recognised the islands’ special problems he layed the responsibility clearly at governments’ door. What was to have been the first major policy statement since 1988 when Gareth Evans placed Australia island relations on a far more equal footing with his doctrine of “constructive commitment” became a long and carefully worded assessment of the region’s future designed to give Australia a big role in assisting with solutions. Issues on Bilney’s ambitious reform agenda include unsustainable logging and fishing, ecotourism, population control and better management of the islands environmentally sensitive and economically vital coastal zones.
On economic management Bilney treads a predictable path of raising the need for more trade investment and private sector development and goes further to suggest examination of such sacred cows as land tenure and whether
very expensive separate national air lines are still necessary. When pressed on the land issue Bilney stressed sol utions were a matter for island govern ments but highlighted the fact that investors will not invest in tourism facilities, for instance, if their lease on land can be withdrawn just as expensive buildings are completed.
The big risk with Bilney’s approach is that it will be seen as, or will in fact be, just another attempt by Australians to get in and run islanders business for them. It was in an effort to avoid that that Bilney wqs at pains, in the speech, not to propose solutions. In Canberra foreign affairs officials are nervous about how the new approach will be received. Bilney himself is only too aware of the risks. “I do think we could come to be seen, quite easily come to be
seen, if we weren’t careful, as big brother telling people what to do.” But he said “If we did that we’ve lost the plot and we’ve lost the game and I think everyone would be worse off.” There is no doubt that Bilney passionately believes the Pacific is facing a window of opportunity for action but behind his concern is also a more sobering assessment that if the islands fail to meet the challenges of the post-cold war era their problems, in the future, will also be Australia’s problems. With the end of the cold war security issues, which had driven much big power interest in the region, are no longer as relevant and the results of that reduced interest and aid flows from traditional partners such as Britain the US or Europe are already unfolding or foreshadowed.
If the nightmare scenarios come to pass not only will Australia be faced by pockets of human misery on its doorstep but also worrying political instability, calls on Australian resources and even the possibility that it may have to offer safe haven to large numbers of refugees from Pacific difficulties. In the shorter term a perception that Australia’s $400,000,000 Pacific aid programme is failing to deliver benefits for the islands, and the need to find money for the promised fourfold increase in aid to Indochina, could easily lead to the sort of cost cutting that has affected so many other areas of government expenditure. For island leaders Bilney’s reform agenda also holds risks. At this stage it is still a bit waffly and in many ways fails to take account of runs already put on the board by island governments on many of these issues. Quite a few island leaders have trouble enough with the delicately balanced forces which keep them in office without taking action against national sacred cows or vested interests. Here some of Bilney’s resource issues, particularly areas such as fishing royalties and licence fees, might provide an injection of funds which could smooth the path. Island countries currently receive less than half of what many other countries receive for their fish. With half the world’s canning tuna caught in the region a realistic overhaul of the region’s approach may yield tens of millions of dollars of new income.
Bilney has chosen an opportune moment to call for urgent action particularly at a time when the international economic environment thrown up by the post-cold war era is only getting more and more competitive. □