More aid is not the way to regain our regional influence

We should welcome the focus during the federal election campaign on the security of our immediate region, and on how we might regain influence in our region, especially in the face of China's increasingly aggressive policy stance in regard to just about all our neighbours.

The broad response during the campaign so far has been for both sides to promise more "aid” to the region, despite the fact that we are today easily the largest provider of aid, or development assistance, to all our key neighbours, led by Papua New Guinea, but including the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji.

Labor has been more specific so far, but even its proposals amount to a modest increase in spending. The government seems to be relying on promoting its role as a leader of the "Pacific family" and promising to develop that (whatever it is in reality) further.

Neither approach will work. Neither will make much, if any, difference.

In my next two articles I intend to outline what I believe to be the best two ways we can begin the long and difficult task of countering China, and rebuilding our "influence" step by step.

The first, and foremost, is to pro-actively and comprehensively work with our neighbours to strengthen their parliamentary democracies, help further entrench the "rule of law" and the independence of their judiciaries and judicial processes. We need to encourage our neighbours to especially strengthen anti-corruption processes.

To that needs to be added real reform to budget management and the functioning of island bureaucracies.

In my next contribution I will address the second course of action we must adopt - and that is massively enhancing our people-to-people engagement with each of our regional neighbours. This is a complex, and potentially hazardous exercise, but it needs to be a priority - in part making up for years of neglect of our people-to-people relationships in most, if not all, our neighbours, and especially Papua New Guinea.

But I return to my first priority - strengthening parliamentary democracy and wider democratic and accountability processes.

Next week, the effective "starting gun" will be fired to begin the 2022 national elections in Papua New Guinea. The elections process has already been delayed by two weeks because of a shortage of resources and funding.

Fiji is scheduled to hold national elections in the second half of 2022, while national elections are scheduled for the Solomon Islands in 2023. There has to be some doubt they will be held on schedule - especially if the current Prime Minister remains in office.

The national elections in PNG are an enormously complex operation. That they are robustly democratic is beyond doubt, but increasingly there are concerns about the very integrity of the whole process.

That is hardly surprising given PNGs serious fiscal problems, capacity constraints within the public sector, the breakdown of law and order and what I would regard as the "fragmentation" of the political party system.

In the forthcoming elections there will be FIFTY-TWO registered parties running! And for close to 120 electorates (provincial seats and district seats) there will be at least SIX THOUSAND candidates!

Just printing and distributing ballot papers alone presents a massive challenge in a nation where there is no national road network, and where upwards of 80 per cent of the people still live in remote communities connected principally by air and by sea.

Then there is the impact of PNGs comparatively low literacy rate - 60 per cent. Educating the people on how to vote, and other electoral process fundamentals, is difficult if not impossible in some areas.

At every national election since Independence in 1975 the Australian Government has provided substantial funding support, as well as logistical support, for PNG’s Electoral Commission. Similar support has been provided to other regional neighbours. This year that has included the printing of ballot papers. But our capacity to assist has been inevitably limited by the fact our own national elections (a massive logistical exercise) are being held at about the same time as PNG’s polls.

But there is one further obstacle to free, fair and transparent elections in PNG today. There has not been a total redistribution of electoral boundaries since the 1977 national elections - the first after independence was achieved in 1975.

The capacity of a very divided national parliament to agree to what is needed - a full redistribution following a total clean-up of the electoral roll is zero.

In the dying weeks of the last parliament legislation was rushed through creating a small number of additional seats principally by dividing existing electorates - a process that rightly raised widespread concerns,

We need to work with the next PNG Government, and Parliament, to have transparent reform of the whole democratic process, of which the national parliament is the key component.

And we need to work with other regional neighbours to address similar, though not of the same magnitude, issues in other regional neighbours.

We also need to fund our national parliament to implement more comprehensive partnership and "twinning" arrangements with regional parliaments.

Strengthening democracy in our region is something China cannot, and would not, do!

We need to have it as a high national policy priority - and one we should proudly promote!

Our regional neighbours that are democratic are under constant challenge. The expansion of China's influence is just a new and more complex and demanding challenge.

If we have robust, transparent and free elections in our region, underpinning modern and representative parliaments, we are contributing positively to a democratic region that when really challenged will reject China's  undemocratic and oppressive approaches to "governance", let alone freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion.   

Our elections process is far from perfect, but it does offer a beacon to our region in its underlying principles.

Promoting regional democracy and accountability ought to be our number strategic priority for our next national government AND Parliament.

And it is equally important what all Australians interested in the security and stability of our region demand both the next government and parliament do so!