{"id":36222,"date":"2017-12-11T06:00:55","date_gmt":"2017-12-10T19:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=36222"},"modified":"2017-12-09T12:56:50","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T01:56:50","slug":"australias-agenda-for-integrating-the-south-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australias-agenda-for-integrating-the-south-pacific\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s agenda for integrating the South Pacific"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In offering security and economic integration to the South Pacific, Australia is starting gently with small steps.<\/p>\n

The soft-and-slow approach to integration has the best chance of success, because South Pacific states will embrace the offer incrementally. In last week\u2019s post<\/a>, I discussed the factors driving the new foreign policy white paper\u2019s<\/a> ambition \u2018to integrate Pacific countries into the Australian and New\u00a0Zealand economies and our security institutions\u2019.<\/p>\n

The paper says integration is \u2018vital to the economic prospects of the Pacific. Growth is constrained for most countries because of a combination of remoteness from markets, limited land and resource bases, the dispersal of people over many islands and environmental fragility\u2019.<\/p>\n

To show it\u2019s serious about integration, Australia has to keep chipping at the old no-go issue\u2014Pacific workers getting access to Australian jobs. For many years, the no-go routine was that Pacific leaders would always go to labour mobility as a key issue, while Canberra would quickly go, \u2018No!\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

In the Pacific Plan<\/a> for \u2018regional cooperation and integration\u2019 adopted by the Pacific Islands Forum in 2005, the islands finally got \u2018labour mobility\u2019 onto the official regional agenda, despite Oz screams. Over the last decade, the introduction of islanders to Australia as seasonal\/guest workers on farms has seen this Oz taboo start to crumble<\/a>. The Australian pilot scheme for Pacific workers announced in 2008 (following New Zealand\u2019s lead) was made permanent in 2012. The white paper shows Australia widening its thinking about Pacific workers to serve integration:<\/p>\n