{"id":49558,"date":"2019-08-05T06:00:56","date_gmt":"2019-08-04T20:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=49558"},"modified":"2019-08-04T17:40:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-04T07:40:00","slug":"australia-and-the-south-pacific-family-and-foreign-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/australia-and-the-south-pacific-family-and-foreign-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia and the South Pacific: family and foreign policy"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Australia\u2019s pivot<\/a> to the South Pacific talks up both personal connections and foreign policy interests.<\/p>\n

The pivot pitch tries to meld strategy and Pacific family, bringing together policy and the needs of Pacific people. Such different elements can repel as well as attract.<\/p>\n

The pivot is a manoeuvre with a high degree of difficulty, much ambition and many parts.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks of a new chapter in relations \u2018with our Pacific family<\/a>. One based on respect, equality and openness. A relationship for its own sake, because it\u2019s right. Because it\u2019s who we are.\u2019<\/p>\n

My previous two columns contrasted the genius of Morrison\u2019s \u2018family\u2019 vision<\/a> with the reality that Australia\u2019s big new offer to the South Pacific\u2014economic and security integration\u2014has become the policy that can\u2019t be named<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Family and integration are at the heart of the fresh chapter Canberra wants to write in the South Pacific.<\/p>\n

The family-and-integration pitch must convince Australians as well as the South Pacific. Islanders poking suspiciously at Morrison\u2019s family idea and pushing back at integration need to see that this isn\u2019t just about them. It\u2019s a leader talking to his own voters about what needs to be done to serve Australia\u2019s values, interests and influence.<\/p>\n

Family is at the values end of the spectrum, while economic and security integration lean towards interests and influence. The complex pitch has to work for Australia well as the South Pacific. This is foreign policy with a lot of domestic import.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reporting on Australian policy in the South Pacific since the 1970s and a recurring refrain through the decades is that the South Pacific didn\u2019t get enough attention from Canberra. Over the years, I delivered my share of such jeremiads: see this in 2003 on Oz amnesia<\/a> about its South Pacific roles, or this from 2006 on the then taboo subject of island workers<\/a> coming to Oz.<\/p>\n

The pivot upends those old complaints. Today the islands can\u2019t lament that they\u2019re being ignored. It\u2019s a nice change. Today we\u2019re seen as too eager and coming on strong. Cue clich\u00e9s: careful what you wish for; living in interesting times \u2026<\/p>\n

It\u2019s facile, even simplistic, to say Australia\u2019s pivot is merely responding to the China challenge<\/a>.\u00a0If China reminds Australia of its abiding concerns (interests, influence and values), thanks for the nudge. But this isn\u2019t just about China.<\/p>\n

An argument with equal merit is that Australia is responding properly to the complex and competitive<\/a> region that South Pacific leaders are themselves describing.<\/p>\n

The South Pacific has adopted ASEAN language about not having to choose sides in the big power struggle surging through the Indo-Pacific<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Such a balancing job\u2014not having to choose\u2014will involve getting as much as possible from Australia, as ballast and reinsurance as well as benefit.<\/p>\n

The islands need to hold Australia as close as China and call it harmony. It\u2019s not just Canberra that must worry about the rising degree of difficulty.<\/p>\n

The pivot pre-dates Morrison\u2019s leadership, yet his family idea shows how prime ministers make the weather in Canberra.<\/p>\n

The South Pacific is a region where the Oz foreign affairs minister and the international development minister traditionally run the game most of the time. That\u2019s an anomaly. In the way Canberra has done international affairs over the past 50 years, our system has gone increasingly presidential.<\/p>\n

President ScoMo<\/a> is making his family message vivid by going to the islands. He\u2019s turning up. The meeting is the message. The visit is the vision.<\/p>\n

Family draws on Morrison\u2019s religious beliefs. It matches his experience spending time in the islands<\/a>. There\u2019s a synergy of personal understanding and the policy interest.<\/p>\n

The effort to meld family and strategy was expressed by the prime minister\u2019s decision<\/a> to give his political ally Alex Hawke two jobs: minister for international development and the Pacific, plus assistant defence minister.<\/p>\n

For Oz bureaucrats who do Pacific policy, Morrison\u2019s Pacific family is a wand that can magic-up the Canberra trifecta: win arguments, set policy, get cash.<\/p>\n

Some results are already in. The farmers and the National Party went hard to bring in rural workers from Asia, pushing aside the Pacific Labour Scheme.<\/a> The country types (the wombats) didn\u2019t get all they wanted, and this is a government where the wombats have lots of wins.<\/p>\n

The compromise kept the Pacific Labour Scheme in place and expanded it to take in Papua New Guinea. That\u2019s family values with policy punch. Embrace what the labour scheme could achieve, while seeing its small steps<\/a> so far.<\/p>\n

The language Australia is using about the pivot\u2014officially, it\u2019s \u2018the step-up in engagement with the Pacific\u2019\u2014avoids the word \u2018integration\u2019. Integration is our policy but raises islanders\u2019 hackles about their sovereignty.<\/p>\n

Thus, Australia now goes back to the traditional embrace of \u2018partnership\u2019 and talks increasingly of \u2018community\u2019.<\/p>\n

The pivot speeches are shy about naming integration as the ultimate step at the top of the ladder. By contrast, family can be the ground on which the Pacific step-up ladder rests, and the aim to build a stronger, richer, safer Pacific family can also be the top step of the ladder.<\/p>\n

The Pacific family can be both the frame and the aim of Australia\u2019s Pacific pivot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia\u2019s pivot to the South Pacific talks up both personal connections and foreign policy interests. The pivot pitch tries to meld strategy and Pacific family, bringing together policy and the needs of Pacific people. 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