The Australian budget wont focus significantly on our role in PNG and the South Pacific - that will take time

Anyone with expectations the Australian budget next Tuesday will see a radical change in our relations with Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific is bound to be disappointed.

I sense the Albanese Government is taking a more considered approach to any changes it might make in our policy approach to the region, including development assistance.

I welcome that. The knee jerk approach that seems to have characterised all too often the approach of the Turnbull and Morrison Governments led to failed exercises such as the infamous "Pacific Step Up" policy and the discredited Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility (AIFFP) which must surely have the proponents of China's "Belt and Road" agenda laughing in disbelief.

What I hope is that the foreign minister will consult widely in developing the government's policy approach to development assistance, and wider engagement with our immediate neighbourhood.

It needs to actively consult the Australian business community, the churches, civil society, and charities doing really good work in our region.

The "aid lobby" will have to be consulted, but warned the government wants to see less of our generous assistance delivered via "boomerang aid" and more delivered "in country" via partnership deals.

In the meantime, the federal budget might allocate some modest funding to short-term but long overdue people-to-people projects that can enhance our relationship with our region.

As an example, we could provide some funding to enable our business sector via entities such as the Australia-Pacific and Australia-Papua New Guinea business councils.

The government might also provide some financial support for outlets that promote relations between Australian and Pacific business sectors such as Business Advantage.

When the annual Australia-PNG ministerial forum takes place in November there could be greater involvement by business leaders from both countries in dialogue with ministers. It might also involve the mainstream churches in this dialogue and look at more regular dialogue with Australian business and business groups in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, in particular.

One of the hallmarks of the last Government's approach was to largely ignore business and churches other than via window dressing.

Another short-term measure the government might fund in the meantime is an urgent review of visa arrangements for respected businesspeople wanting to travel Australia for business and family reunions. It is a particular and long term issue between Papua New Guinea and Australia but it impacts on a number of island nations.

Our diplomats and foreign affairs officials deny that our approach to visa approvals is racist. It might not be racist but it is certainly discriminatory.

I had a personal experience of this some years ago when a respected church in Townsville sought my advice on the difficulties it was having getting women from PNG to attend a weeklong family life workshop in Townsville.

At the time only about 20 of the women who were selected to attend could get visas to travel to Australia.

On investigation it became clear that only women who identified themselves as being in employment were given visas.

The majority who described themselves as "housewives or having home duties only" were not given visas!

This attitude does nothing for our standing in PNG and the region.

It also flies in the face of clear evidence - Papua New Guineans who visit Australia don't breach visa rules by overstaying.

Some years ago I asked the then Consul General for PNG in Brisbane, Paul Nerau, to ascertain how many Papua New Guineans had overstayed visa conditions in the previous year. The number was fewer than 50.

On the other hand visitors from a number of European and Asian countries who broke visa conditions were in the thousands!

The government might productively help strengthen our people-to-people relations with our closest neighbour by introducing streamlined visa approval processes at our high commission in Port Moresby and our consulate in Lae.

We can reasonably request a streamlined visa approval process for Australians wanting to visit PNG as part of an enhanced people to people engagement.

This would also reflect a genuine maturing of the relationship between our countries and peoples.....something we should be encouraging as PNG celebrates independence in just under three years.

The only figure I will be looking for in the budget documents is the total provisions for PNG and individual South Pacific countries.

If in a tough fiscal environment there is a modest increase in development assistance and other funding we should be satisfied.

The government deserves time to reassess what we fund in our region.