{"id":17301,"date":"2014-12-08T06:00:50","date_gmt":"2014-12-07T19:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=17301"},"modified":"2014-12-09T09:37:32","modified_gmt":"2014-12-08T22:37:32","slug":"pacific-future-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/pacific-future-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Pacific future politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Inadvertently, Fiji has done Australia a favour in the diplomatic duel over what the South Pacific future should look like. Granted, you have to work hard to find positives in the arid argument that has reverberated around the region for eight years. The silver lining is that the contest Fiji has launched with the status-quo power, Australia, isn\u2019t going to ebb away. It might be politer, but the debate lives. The destructive phase has finished. Time for some creation. That\u2019s good for the Islands\u2014and can be good for Australia. Canberra is going to have to pay attention and think new thoughts.<\/p>\n

The status-quo power needs to work harder for its top-dog status, to deliver what the Islands need. Fiji will make it difficult for Australia to lapse into another period of comfortable South Pacific amnesia\u2014set policy to cruise control and turn to Asia.<\/p>\n

Fiji has injected politics into the Pacific. Politics is ever messy, and Fiji has delivered a lot of mess. Pity about the coup, the destruction of the Fiji polity, the desecration of key Fiji institutions and the derailing of much that regionalism should be delivering. As mentioned, you have to look hard to find the positives, but this is the look-on-the-bright-side moment. Canberra and Suva have agreed to talk Pacific politics.<\/p>\n

Even if Suva\u2019s Pacific arguments are flawed, Australia can\u2019t rest on its usual status-quo assets\u2014aid, the magnetic and nourishing effects of the huge Oz economy, the central role of the Forum and the traditional conservatism of Island leaders. New times invite new moves.<\/p>\n

The South Pacific has no shortage of technocrats and regional institutions. Big changes and visionary leaps, however, don\u2019t get served up by technocrats, no matter how they title the vision papers. Big politics needs politicians willing to grapple with political necessity. Fiji has delivered the necessity. The detente between Suva and Canberra opens the game. Australia and its status-quo partner New Zealand must respond.<\/p>\n

This series of columns has covered the political dynamic in the shift from duel to dance<\/a> unfolding in the \u2018new era of partnership and prosperity<\/a>\u2019 proclaimed by Fiji and Australia; the conversation Fiji and Australia have launched on regional architecture<\/a>; and Australia\u2019s rethinking of economic possibilities<\/a> in the Pacific after five fruitless years of PACER Plus negotiations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

PACER is the ultimate battle of the technocrats. The previous column<\/a> pleaded for politicians to redefine the terms and scale of regional integration\u2014to mix some real politics into the trade.\u00a0Consider the political as well as economic aspirations in that PACER title: Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations. The key is the CER part, reflecting 30 years of Closer Economic Relations between Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n

Despite the layers loaded on CER by the econocrats and technocrats, CER was a political agreement between Australia and New Zealand as much as an economic deal. In the same way, the free-trade deals Australia has secured this year with South Korea, Japan and China are expressions of political agreement crowning the myriad and minutely-detailed give-and-take of trade talks (endless trench warfare waged at a table).<\/p>\n

CER has delivered so much for Australia and New Zealand it takes an effort of imagination to recall that long ago it was a tough tussle in the trenches, with a big potential to fail or fall short. What would have happened to Australia\u2013New Zealand relations if the politicians had wimped out and given in to sectional interests and parochial partisanship?<\/p>\n

As the CER talks swerved toward failure, a senior Australian diplomat Rob Laurie sent a submission<\/a> to the Foreign Minister in October, 1982, considering what a fiasco would do to the future. Read Laurie\u2019s key thought, substituting the South Pacific for New Zealand:<\/p>\n

We would nevertheless be concerned about the wider implications for relations with New Zealand if the CER process were to collapse. Without a new agreement the trading relationship would become complex and disputatious. Many New Zealanders (including the Government) would seek to blame Australia\u00a0for their economic difficulties and for the failure of the CER effort. A New Zealand feeling that Australia had pressed for too much could in turn and in time have negative consequences for co-operation in other important areas such as ANZUS and the South Pacific.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When New Zealand crashed out of ANZUS a few years later, the economic linkages of CER were important ballast. Such history informs the argument that Australia and New Zealand must not allow PACER Plus to stagnate or collapse. Time for a political push\u2014even a dash of vision\u2014on what regionalism and economic integration can deliver for the South Pacific.<\/p>\n

Graeme Dobell is the ASPI journalist fellow.\u00a0Image courtesy of Flickr user\u00a0Marina del Castell<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inadvertently, Fiji has done Australia a favour in the diplomatic duel over what the South Pacific future should look like. 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