Time for Pacific Union?

A speech: time for Pacific Union?

Wellington

22 July 2008

When I got the invitation to speak here I was in Mumbai where – at about the same time - a retired Indian civil servant had stopped me to find out my origin.

Told – he replied – “just four million people”.

Each day on the Maiden seven million people passed by he said.

His tone, albeit polite, suggested that it was hard to take seriously a nation so small.

We play the same game with the South Pacific.

The combined populations of six of our neighbouring nations and territories could fit into Auckland’s Eden Park.

When the new grandstand goes in, Nauru can join the crowd mix too - while Tuvalu will not even fill the ASB Stand.

None of this is meant to demean our Pacific neighbours, but given the increasingly desperate yet unnoticed plight of the region, the numbers raise questions about the kind of political and diplomatic relations we have.

We need to move away from the Pacific’s bizarre world of small fiefdoms, each complete with an army of politicians, civil servants and diplomats accredited to all global talkfests.

It should be replaced with a Polynesian Pacific union – if not exactly like the European Union then something that takes us away the world of failing micro-states.

I’ve long been a doubter over political union but what has changed – and I saw in Tokelau recently - is the digital age.

Growing penetration of fibre optic cables might finally be the magic bullet that ends the vast isolation, tremendous distances and fierce-some costs that blights South Pacific economic development.

It’s a time of radical new opportunities in the South Pacific.

In any political style union, we must have open borders for the flow of people – and not just tradeable goods from Australia and New Zealand.

It’s a legacy of Robert Muldoon that many New Zealanders believe the sole ambition of Pacific Islanders is to move to Otara or Porirua and exploit the welfare state.

It was not true then and is not now; given the choice and real possibilities of being able to use their talents properly, most people like staying close to home.

IT – and relaxed border rules – will make this possible for many.

This Seven by Seven theme requires a reality check today – and a look out twenty years ahead.

For today I’ve gone back 20 years - to 1988.

Its strangely relevant.

In 1988 Fiji was one year into a military coup backed government.

Not much has changed there then – a few new names and whereas the Lange Government thought about sending the SAS into Suva – today we just try to keep the Fiji plotters off our front door step.

In 1988 Samoa’s population was around 180,000 – and it is around the same today – despite an annual crude birth rate of 25 percent.

The Pacific Community estimates that by 2030 Samoa’s population will be – yes, almost exactly the same.

Emigration controls the population.

In 1988 one Francis Ona was establishing his Bougainville Revolutionary Army – and signalling the start of a decade long civil war which claimed 15 to 20,000 lives.

The region’s toothless premier political institution, the Pacific Forum – for much of the bloody decade – would not even mention Bougainville in is annual communiqué.

Twenty years ago we were worried at the emerging HIV-AIDS epidemic; we are now even more worried and the diabetes epidemic promises to cripple the already fragile economies of most Pacific states.

In places like Tonga today public health choices are made in favour of politically connected older and diabetic affected people over that of the good health of women and children.

Today’s Pacific reality is that the quality of people’s lives has notably worsened.

The millions of dollars in aid and such glorious bureaucratic treasures as The Pacific Plan have made Australian and New Zealand advisers and consultants rich.

Tokelau is a useful metaphor for a new Pacific although at the moment it is pretty well locked up by some archaic Cold War and End of Empire.

Tokelau is a little known part of New Zealand – north of Samoa. We did not invade it; Britain passed it over to us. London had taken on Tokelau not out of grand colonial ambition – but to stop Peruvian slave traders kidnapping Tokelauans.

Yet the United Nations – with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs endorsement here – see the entire relationship as some dark capitalist evil and twice in the last three years has insisted the 1200 people of Tokelau make an act of self determination.

The fact that they said they would like to stay with New Zealand has been an embarrassment, but efforts are underway, as I speak, to ensure that these people will go their own way.

Even if they have no airport, no capital and no harbour.

Amusingly though between the two referendums something radical happened on Tokelau; broadband internet, Bebo and Sky TV.

Pio Tuia, the genial Catholic revolutionary leader of Tokelau – for this year at least – confessed that Sky had somewhat muted their drive for de-colonisation – watching CNN each night showed them they were pretty well off.

With Tokelau, Niue and the Cooks we could form the basis of a unique new kind of international union – based on our shared traditions from Westminster, the marae and our shared passion for our ocean home.

Tokelauans – rather than be forced to sell fishing rights to desperate Spanish vessels – could declare themselves a World Heritage site – and under their own care and management, could show off a Polynesian treasure to the world.

As it is, today the institutions and models are blatantly failing the people of the Pacific.

Radical surgery – greater than the bureaucratic structures offered by strategy documents in Pacific summits – is urgently needed; we in New Zealand can lead the way with the creation of a better Pacific Union.