Leave out the rhetoric and get back to basics

“PM out, good governance now!” is the chant that greets the palms swaying in the gentle morning breeze and the waves lapping the shore of a tropical idyll not too far to our north. The year is 2008 and an angry mob has gathered with the aim of overthrowing the government that has consistently failed to deliver basic services to the majority of its citizens.

Led by a charismatic young man recently returned from Australia where he received his PhD in Economics, many of those involved have also recently completed a course funded by AusAID aimed at strengthening civil society and boosting good governance.

Such a scenario is likely a very tricky proposition for Australia. It is also a very likely scenario in the wake of the “new” approach Australia is pursuing through its aid program.

The recent White Paper on Australian aid is certainly a softening of the hard-nosed interventionist experiment Australia has pursued through its aid program since September 11, 2001. The White Paper rhetoric about economic growth and development is stronger than ever, although the hard evidence to substantiate this position is still lacking. The aid White Paper is also brimming with mentions of women and children, a re-found trend in Australian aid that had fallen off the agenda in the late 1990s. Intermingled with the expected rhetoric of economic growth and incentives (did someone say mutual obligation …) a renewed focus on health and education is a welcome return to the staples of aid delivery.

One of the few “new” approaches in the aid White Paper is a reinvention of the Colombo Plan. The aim of this new leadership training program is to skill up young leaders in our aid-recipient nations so that they can think, act and talk like us. A key problem with this approach, apart from the obvious cultural impact, is what role these new “leaders” will have.

Australia has, over the past two decades spent enormous sums on education scholarships in our aid program, with little apparent impact. In the leadership training program are the new leaders set to go back to their countries and overthrow their elected governments, as the above scenario suggests - thereby becoming the new elites?

If this is the plan, it is interesting the different approach our government has to so-called elites in this country and to the elites in our near neighbours’ countries. But will these newly educated leaders - like so many before them, become part of a brain drain, hopping on to the next flight back to Sydney where so many more opportunities exist? Australia’s plan to colonise the consciousness of the next generation of Pacific leaders, as suggested in the White Paper, lacks any specific detail - but does raise many questions.

The scant detail of the aid White Paper poses many questions and challenges that are set to confront Australia in its continuing expansionist foreign policy focus. The “raging mob of locals, trained in Australia, set on the downfall of their prime minister” scenario, is but one of the potential hazards.

East Timor in the past few weeks has posed a comparable dilemma. Reinado, a charismatic young soldier, is one of the key leaders of the group of military insurrectionists. He has spent a significant amount of time in Australia at the pleasure of the Australian Government, most recently being trained at the Australian Joint Command and Staff College.

How will his government and country view him and his connection with Australia when this present upheaval calms down? Such issues are likely to continue to dog our regional relations in this expanding foreign policy focus.

The Howard Government’s focus on expanding its influence throughout the region can be traced back to East Timor in 1999. Since that successful venture, there have been difficult situations in Afghanistan, Iraq, the troubled Solomons intervention, the failed attempt to intervene in PNG via the Enhanced Cooperation Program, rising tensions with Indonesia over Papua and now back to drama in East Timor.

The Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI), which began as Operation Helpem Fren in July 2003, was a response to the growing civil unrest fuelled by ethnic conflict that had been growing in the Solomons for over a decade.

Previous requests to Australia from the Solomon Islands Government for assistance had been refused. While action at this earlier stage may have averted the crisis coming to a head, to philosophise on what impact an earlier intervention may have had is now a moot point. To Australia’s credit it had a long-term approach from the beginning.

The first phase of removing the weapons was successful but the longer term aim of maintaining the peace has proved more difficult as recent riots illustrate. While the latest election was deemed to be free and fair, the real wrangling began in the rush to be prime minister. Relations now between both governments appear highly strained.

Fresh with the success of the initial stages of RAMSI under our belt, Foreign Minister Downer announced an intervention in PNG via the Enhanced Cooperation Program (ECP). A well-intentioned, though badly thought out strategy, the ECP mirrored the worst kind of “aid” practice.

Designed in Australia, from outside the organisation with the development mandate and by those with little experience of operating in PNG, the ECP was heavily resisted by the PNG Government. Under threat of losing their aid program, and 20 per cent of their budgetary funds, the PNG Government was forced to relent.

Finally the ECP came adrift on the rocky shores of the PNG High Court which found the indemnity clause, that Australian police were demanding if they were going to be working on the beat, was unconstitutional. Hence the police, already deployed and active, were flown home. Tens of millions of Aussie tax payer dollars were wasted and relations between the two governments were heavily strained.

Early in 2006 a boatload of West Papuans landed on one of the few islands to our north that had not been excised from the Australian mainland. It propelled the issue of human rights abuses in West Papua to the front page of the media and garnered much public support. The courageous navigators upended the warm fuzzy boat of bilateral emotions that had been developing between Jakarta and Canberra.

Currently, back in East Timor, the self-appointed “regional sheriff” has again been called to assist. The emerging government of East Timor navigated tricky waters in its relations with Jakarta and between it and Australia. The Australian Government has firmly sided with the popular Xanana but the resilient Alkatiri doesn’t seem keen to shift. If Alkatiri surrenders this position it will place further tensions on our relations.

Do you see a pattern emerging?

Australia’s continual bilateral interventions in the region have made us few friends in the governments of any of these countries. While there are always conflicts in international relations, this current record seems to suggest we are doing something very wrong.

A key failing that Australia has made in its international interventions has been the tacit nature of the multilateral support we have garnered. There were several token countries involved in RAMSI, none were involved in the PNG ECP fiasco, and now there is little real outside support in East Timor. While such an approach is reflective of the increasing preference for unilateral engagement practiced by the US, failing to utilise international frameworks and institutions leaves us highly vulnerable should things go wrong - as we now know they often do.

The new approach promoted by the White Paper into aid does proffer a softer side to our aid recipients but it will not deliver stability in our region. Key tensions remain around promoting economic growth as the main objective. The implicit suggestion that development will flow from economic growth does not have a great track record, particularly in terms of equity. In the same vein, progressing the good governance agenda will continue to create tensions, particularly with those currently in power. These tenets will continue to promote suspicion among aid recipients.

For Australia to truly be a better global citizen and to ensure the long term stability in our immediate region, we need to work harder developing the multilateral relationships that already exist. Prevention is always preferable to reacting to disasters and again the White Paper on aid does little to move Australia onto the front foot in this regard. Our interventions need to be under the auspices of the UN and not prone to the vagaries of international law and political whim as is presently the case.

As Hugh White said at the recent PNG update (pdf file 48KB) “multilateralism is a pain in the arse” but it really is the only sustainable alternative.