The collapse of Australia’s Pacific intervention

After Solomons Attorney General Julian Moti fled PNG for the Solomons, Downer suspended ministerial talks with the PNG Government and was reported to have said Australia “would not continue to prop up corrupt governments” in the region and would “not just shovel aid into neighbouring countries”. Yet behind this insult lies the fact that very little Australian aid reaches Pacific peoples.

PNG is the best example of this. The $10 billion in Australian “aid” over the 30 years since independence may have secured the rights of Australian mining and gas companies in PNG, but it has not helped mass education, nor helped construct a decent health system. Adult literacy and infant mortality rates in PNG are well below the developing country average. Withdrawal of aid to PNG would have a much greater impact on the handful of Australian companies that hold most of the AusAID contracts. Only a handful of PNG companies get the “trickle down”; most people in PNG get nothing.

The most stark political intervention in the region has been the Australian-backed campaign that toppled Timor Leste’s Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri. The new country’s first elected prime minister had driven the most independent policy in the region - securing a better deal over oil and gas royalties and bringing in new development partners. Japan helped East Timorese rice production, when Australia would not. China began talks over help in refining gas, while the Howard Government robbed the country’s oil and gas resources. And Cuba helped Timor Leste build a decent health system. Alkatiri attempted to NOT alienate the big powers, but a partisan Australian intervention changed all that.

Whatever the prior links between the ex-army coup plotters and the Howard Government, Australian forces quickly aligned with the loose coalition of anti-Fretilin elements that clustered around President Xanana Gusmao. The Australian media, in particular Murdoch’s Australian but also the ABC’s Four Corners, played a key role in deposing Alkatiri (still the Fretilin General Secretary) and installing Jose Ramos Horta as interim Prime Minister.

However national and municipal elections show that Fretilin remains overwhelmingly the country’s most popular party. There is no close rival. Ramos Horta, with no party base, is propped up by the continued Australian presence. Yet the Australian presence, hostile to Fretilin, maintains a rallying point for disaffected groups, including those terrorising the many thousands still trapped in displaced person camps. This tense situation is dangerous, undermining “normal” politics and is breeding a new militia, the longer it persists.

Understandings of the fragility and serious consequences of Australia’s Pacific interventions are poor in Australia, with the corporate media (and an intimidated public media) overwhelmingly promoting the Howard Government line. Further, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian Defence Forces have been drawn into this imperial project.

AFP chief Mick Keelty joined the Howard Cabinet chorus that the Moti affair was not at all “political”. (Certainly, if “not political” is measured by the numbers of Cabinet Minister interventions, the Moti affair was very apolitical.) Keelty did not explain just why he had chosen the middle of a political crisis to chase the Solomons Attorney General, over sex charges that had been dismissed several years ago in Vanuatu. But we can remind ourselves that the Solomons and the PNG interventions have meant hundreds of millions of dollars to Keelty’s AFP.

Political rhetoric on all sides can be transitory. However we will be able to measure the collapse of the Howard Government’s Pacific intervention strategy by significant setbacks to its core elements. That is, are our neighbours effectively reclaiming control of their natural resources? Are they developing independent policies that allow them to build public institutions and develop their human resources? And are they effectively diversifying their development partners? It will be to the benefit of their peoples if they do.