2008 LAFIA Pacific Programme
Canberra, 4 September 2008
Introduction
Mr Cotton, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for inviting me to join you for this evening's dinner and for the opportunity to make a few remarks on Australia's relations with the countries of our Pacific neighbourhood.
I would especially like to thank LAFIA's Pacific Program Directors, Professor Andrew MacIntyre and Bob Cotton, for the significant contribution LAFIA makes to improving understanding of the Pacific region throughout Government.
Participants in this year's LAFIA Pacific Programme will be visiting the region at a time of considerable re-engagement by the Australian Government.
Your introductory sessions in Canberra, and your two week study tour to Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands, will equip you with a detailed understanding of the region and the challenges it faces.
And I am sure the programme will also bring home to you Australia's strong interest in being a constructive partner in meeting those challenges.
This Government is changing the way Australia conducts its relations with the Pacific. We are developing respectful relationships with our neighbours because we understand that we must work collaboratively to realise shared economic and social aspirations.
Mature and respectful international relationships require proper insights and knowledge on the part of governments: we must, in other words, strive to understand better the societies and cultures with which we engage.
This is exactly where LAFIA's Pacific Programme is of such value to Australia's engagement with the Pacific.
A new approach to the Pacific
Comprehensive engagement with the Asia-Pacific region is one of three pillars of foreign policy this Government has set out to guide Australia's relations with the international community.
It stands alongside our commitment to the US alliance and our re-engagement with the United Nations and the multilateral system as a pillar of our determination to make a difference as a good international citizen.
This Government has said from the start that we will embark on a foreign policy shaped by, and reflecting, our democratic values, our respect for the rule of law both domestic and international, our tolerance and our deep-seated belief in others getting a fair go.
In this spirit, we have pursued an ambitious and co-operative new approach to our Pacific neighbours.
The Prime Minister set out this approach in his landmark Port Moresby Declaration in March this year, committing the Government to ‘a new era of cooperation with the island nations of the Pacific'.
It's my privilege, as Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, to be closely involved in the framing and delivery of our new policy approach.
It is an approach based on mutual respect, mutual responsibility and mutual commitment to building a better future for the Pacific.
We recognise that nations are ultimately responsible for their own development, and we respect our Pacific neighbours and their national leadership responsibilities in this regard.
So we aren't prescriptive about defining their issues and priorities for them.
Our policy framework goes beyond treating every Pacific nation the same. Instead, we need to pay close attention to each country's political, social and economic conditions and tailor our engagement accordingly.
Pacific Partnerships
This approach is what underpins our Pacific Partnerships for Development, which were at the heart of the Prime Minister's Port Moresby Declaration.
We want to establish a series of these Partnerships to support our neighbours meeting their Millennium Development Goals by 2015.
Pacific Partnerships will assist these nations to strengthen the economic performance and governance frameworks they need to achieve this.
We'll commit jointly to improvements across the spectrum of priority areas: public infrastructure, governance, economic growth, education, health and public sector and public institutions capacity building.
And through the Pacific Partnerships, Australia will make available increased development assistance to assist partners with shared ambitions for development.
In implementing this strategy, we aim to build on individual countries' own development strategies and their own commitments to progress and reform. This is essential in promoting higher growth and more effective delivery of basic services.
The Prime Minister signed our first two Pacific Partnerships with the leaders of Papua New Guinea and Samoa in Niue last month.
I'm confident we'll soon see equally good outcomes in our talks with other neighbours, commencing with talks over coming months with Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Nauru and Tonga.
Beyond Traditional Assistance
Australia's engagement with the Pacific needs to go beyond traditional modes of development assistance.
For example, our development assistance to the Pacific (just under $1 billion for 2008-09) is supporting the drivers of growth – in promoting the skills, infrastructure and trade, regulatory and investment policies to support sustainable growth.
We have also widened our discussions in the region to include trade and economic cooperation, as well as policy and political dialogue to strengthen a shared sense of mutual responsibility and obligation.
In all of this we bring a collaborative approach, coordinating closely with our friends across the Tasman, but also cooperating with Japan, the United States, the European Union, and with leading international financial institutions such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.
In recent years, we have witnessed encouraging economic growth in some parts of the region, including Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. But the record is patchy.
We believe that the more the Pacific nations are integrated with the wider global community, and the freer the flow of goods, services and investments within the Pacific, the better the prospect of genuine, stable and long-term economic growth in the region.
Economic growth has picked up recently in the Pacific, but it remains mixed and the region still lags well behind others such as sub-Saharan Africa and the Caribbean.
Progress would be substantially boosted by taking forward negotiations for a regional free trade agreement – the so-called ‘PACER Plus' arrangement, as envisaged by Pacific Island Forum leaders.
Our mutual interests lie in ensuring the Pacific islands adapt to the challenges of an increasingly globalised economy and are well positioned to benefit from trade liberalisation and closer economic integration with the economies of Australia and New Zealand.
To achieve this wider regional goal of a PACER Plus community, we will work with interested countries on a generous package of trade capacity and trade development assistance, aimed at securing new opportunities for island countries.
I am pleased to note that the recent Forum Leaders' meeting in Niue provided momentum to this process by requiring officials to formulate a detailed road map on PACER Plus with a view to commencement of negotiations next year.
Our recently announced three-year Pacific Seasonal Worker Pilot Scheme is another program through which we hope to encourage economic growth.
This will be a demand-driven scheme – we are not in the business of artificially creating work – under which up to 2500 visas will be granted over three years.
Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu (along with Kiribati and Tonga) will work with us on the pilot, and I'm sure you will encounter plenty of interest in the scheme as you meet leaders and officials in these countries.
The pilot scheme is a great example of Australia pursuing mutual interests with our Pacific neighbours.
It will assess the benefits for Australian employers and the Australian economy. But it will also test whether a program of this sort can aid the development of island states through employment experience, earnings and training opportunities for their unemployed youth.
Constructive Regionalism
I mentioned that our Pacific Partnerships recognise the need to tailor our engagement according to the unique political, social and economic conditions of individual Pacific nations.
Equally, there are many regional issues in the Pacific that are best addressed through a region-wide approach. We are therefore committed to close, strong relationships with the Pacific Islands Forum and other regional institutions.
The recent Forum Leaders' meeting in Niue fostered important discussion on regional approaches to climate change, trade and infrastructure.
There was also an exceptionally strong outcome on Fiji. Forum leaders displayed a unity of purpose and strength by urging a return to democracy, and by indicating they would consider measures to suspend Fiji from the Forum.
The Forum also welcomed Australia's pilot seasonal workers scheme and gave strong and unanimous support for our 2013-2014 United Nations Security Council bid.
And, perhaps most encouragingly, Forum leaders committed to redouble their efforts to make faster progress towards the Millennium Development Goals, making particular note of Australia's support through the Pacific Partnerships programme.
Solomon Islands
Let me now make a few more specific comments about the three Pacific nations you will visit over the two week programme.
I visited Solomon Islands myself for the nation's 30th anniversary of independence in July.
While there were clear signs that life has begun to change for the better, I am sure you will agree after your visit that much work remains to achieve the aspirations of the Solomon Islands Government for its people.
The Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) has made considerable gains, particularly in the restoration of civil order.
RAMSI is now focused on the longer-term issues of capacity building, governance, economic reform, rebuilding the police force, and strengthening judicial and correctional institutions.
RAMSI has proven itself as a model for a regional response to a critical security and governance challenge. Australia's total financial commitment to RAMSI since 2003 has been over $1.3 billion dollars and we will continue our support as the focus shifts to long-term capacity building.
The work of RAMSI complements Australia's bilateral assistance program in Solomon Islands.
This program focuses on improving access to critical health services, rural livelihoods, peacebuilding and the management of natural resources in the land and forestry sectors. Rural development and infrastructure are also areas of particular focus for the bilateral assistance program.
Papua New Guinea
This Government has rejuvenated relations with Papua New Guinea (PNG) through an intense series of high-level visits and practical agreements to improve cooperation across a range of issues.
I accompanied the Prime Minister on his ground-breaking first trip to PNG this year and was part of the first Australia - PNG Ministerial Forum to be held for three years. The Forum featured 6 Ministers, 3 Parliamentary Secretaries and 2 Prime Ministerial Envoys on our side and 17 PNG Ministers on theirs.
Your visit will build on these and our close historical and people-to-people links and is appropriate given PNG's leadership role in the region.
I am sure you will encounter much interest not only in our pilot seasonal worker scheme but also in our Partnership for Development, signed by Prime Ministers Rudd and Somare in Niue on 20 August.
Our Partnership clearly reflects the mutual commitment principle – increased Australian aid is matched by Papua New Guinea's commitment to improve governance, infrastructure, health and education.
The Partnership has been jointly developed and is based on priority sectors identified in PNG's national development plan. It will support better access to markets and services, universal basic education, improved health outcomes and a more efficient public service.
While poverty data is somewhat sparse and unreliable in the Pacific, it is estimated that at least three million people live in extreme poverty. The overwhelming majority are Papua New Guinean.
It is therefore crucial that our efforts remain focused on this relationship and that we work hard together towards achieving Millennium Development Goals.
Vanuatu
In Vanuatu, you will experience first hand a transition period in a vibrant Pacific democracy. Politics in Vanuatu are marked by a multitude of parties with a recent history of coalition alliances collectively forming governments.
General elections were held on Tuesday and the new parliament will elect a Prime Minister in coming weeks.
I'll leave it to DFAT's geographic specialists addressing you tomorrow to provide a read-out on recent events, but would like to make a couple of remarks on the bigger picture issues.
Vanuatu's economy is something of a recent success story in the region, with strong economic growth, averaging 5.6 per cent since 2003. But overall, the country is characterised by high levels of poverty, poor human development outcomes and a GDP-per-person of less than US$2000 per year.
And the economy is heavily dependent on tourism (services make up 72 per cent of GDP) while much of the population remains engaged in subsistence agriculture.
The Government will discuss Vanuatu's approach to these significant developmental challenges with its leaders and officials over coming months as we move towards a Partnership agreement.
Education will be one priority area for Vanuatu - a recent literacy survey found 27 per cent of Year 6 students could not write a simple dictated sentence. This has clear flow-on effects for secondary school enrolment (which is currently around 30 per cent) and for higher technical and professional education opportunities.
Governance is another key issue and Australia has been collaborating very closely with Vanuatu in the law and justice sector through cross-government activity involving the AFP and other agencies working with their Vanuatu counterparts.
The Governance for Growth program is another feature of our development assistance to Vanuatu. Through this program we are working jointly to identify and overcome governance obstacles to broad-based growth. Already this has led to a negotiated end to the government monopoly in the telecommunications sector.
The subsequent decrease in costs and improvements in coverage is a significant developmental achievement in this small nation of remote islands.
Conclusion
Australia has always had a role in the Pacific, whether as a 19th century destination for 60,000 Pacific Islanders who worked Queensland's fields of sugar cane, or fighting in the mud of Kokoda, or administering Papua New Guinea as a Territory until 1975, when it was granted independence.
But we haven't always considered ourselves part of the Pacific, and while flows of aid have been steady, deeper ties of human engagement have diminished over recent decades.
To illustrate this, when I first entered the national parliament in 1987, I was one of more than ten Members of Parliament who had close personal experience with Papua New Guinea. Today, I suspect I may be the only one.
As Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs, I believe Australia has an enduring responsibility to, and in, the Pacific. Nation building and renewal are an ongoing prerogative and process of all democratic governments including Australia. Long-term public institution building, a freeing up of the private sector, protecting and encouraging a robust and open civil society alongside innovative ideas on how to move nations forward are all part of this worthwhile public policy pursuit.
In the Pacific, improving performance on the Millennium Development Goals are, I believe, not a separate development exercise, but directly tied to nation building, renewal and related public policies. It is in this spirit and with these ideals that we have entered into the Pacific Partnerships approach, and to my mind this is the most effective way to achieve long-lasting outcomes and change.
The LAFIA Pacific program and your travel to Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu provide an opportunity for you to be part of our deepening links in the region and to broaden your understanding of its cultures and societies.
With this Government's commitment to re-establish Australia as a regional partner for Pacific nations, this could not be happening at a more appropriate time.
Thank you.
Media inquiries: Mr Kerr's office - 02 6277 4991
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