For all the nonsense written in Australia about Fiji, there has always been an oasis of reason and common sense at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the independent think tank set up by John Howard’s government to provide fresh ideas on the country’s defence and strategic policy options. ASPI has again fulfilled its brief with an article in The Australian that urges Canberra to go much further than the restoration of full diplomatic ties announced this week. It’s by the Institute’s two leading commentators on Pacific affairs – its Director of Research Programs, Dr Anthony Bergin and Professor Richard Herr, the constitutional and governance expert who is well known in Fiji as Director of the Centre for International and Regional Affairs at the University of Fiji.
Among other things, they’re even advocating that Australia resume defence contacts and the training of Fijian military personnel in Australia. We’re reprinting the article below in unformatted text because of The Australian’s pay wall.
FIJI VITAL TO ANY EFFECTIVE REGIONAL SYSTEM
BY: RICHARD HERR AND ANTHONY BERGIN From: The Australian August 03, 2012 12:00AM
FOREIGN Minister Bob Carr’s announcement this week that Australia and Fiji are to restore full diplomatic relations and that travel restrictions on Suva will be eased has engendered some passionate debate. Some analysts explained that Australia’s turn around on its policy settings on Fiji was to preserve our leadership role in the neighbourhood. Others dismissed any suggestion that Carr’s move was a cave-in to Suva that might risk our regional hegemony.
Fiji’s move away from its traditional friends isn’t much different from the rest of world adjusting to China’s rise in the Asian Century. But that didn’t stop some arguing that Canberra’s shift from it’s hard line stance on Fiji was driven by urgent pleas from Washington that Australia re-engage to stop Fiji’s slide away from Western influence, especially in the direction of China.
Our trade unions and other groups have long supported a strong exile and expatriate lobby in demanding that Australia not have any truck with an illegitimate and “interim” government in Suva. But now that Australia has decided to reattach the high commissioner’s brass plate to the chancery in Suva, serious thought ought to be given to how to use the more elevated relationship.
The Fiji government hasn’t deviated one jot from its roadmap for elections in 2014 since Prime Minister Bainimarama announced it in July 2009. Keeping travel sanctions won’t assist restoring parliamentary democracy to Fiji: they have simply resulted in capable Fijians being deterred from contributing to good governance in their own country and been partly responsible for Suva looking beyond its traditional friends to keep the country afloat. Life goes on in Fiji with or without sanctions. But while they are there, they are perceived by Suva as a calculated insult against the Fiji government that ensures that Suva looks to other partners.
Following Foreign Minister Carr’s very positive announcement this week we should move to restore relations between our military and Fiji’s armed forces. We need to build trust with Fiji’s military, who will continue be somewhere between the background and the foreground depending on the constitution. We should open Duntroon, the Defence Academy and Staff Colleges to Fijian Defence force members. After all, we built on military connections with Jakarta when Indonesia was in transition to democracy.
We need to re-engage with Fiji not out of fear of Suva’s Asian connections but to ensure balance in these new relationships. This balance is especially important for our regional relationships with the Pacific Islands. Fiji is vital to any effective regional system. Using the Pacific Islands Forum against Fiji was tantamount to cutting off our nose to spite our public face in the Pacific Islands. The Pacific Islands Forum is in serious difficulties due to having been sidelined by the imbroglio over Fiji. The regional torch is being carried by other arrangements, such as the Melanesian Spearhead Group, where our voice isn’t present or welcome. If the Forum is to prosper then Fiji should be brought back into a leadership role.
Richard Herr and Anthony Bergin are the co-authors of Our Near Abroad:Australia and Pacific islands regionalism, Australian Strategic Policy Institute
For sure regional cohesion and the Pacific Island Forum has been damaged by ANZ behaviour, backed of course by their lapdog in the Pacific, Tuilaepa of Samoa.
The problem now is that the Forum needs Fiji, more than Fiji needs the Forum.
There are urgings on the streets of Suva for Frank to kick the Forum out of Fiji…and as they sail out over the horizon the people of Fiji will all gather at the Nasese foreshore and sing ‘Isa Lei’ as they sail eastwards to that backwater in the Pacific, Apia,
Fiji has now devoted all its energies to the MSG, and the MSG is going from strength to strength under Fiji’s leadership, while the Forum slowly sinks into irrelevance in Fiji’s books.
What will the Australian military achieve in Fiji? It had tried to invade Fiji, used gunboat diplomacy which resulted in theim losing a helicopter and two good man off Kadavu.
ANZ sabre-rattling and gunboat diplomacy against Fiji did not work. The TRUST between the Australian military and the Fijian military has been irrevocably broken. FINITO!
Even the office of the Australian Defence Advisor was refused entry into Suva and now sits isolated in his office in Vanuatu, cut off from the important diplomatic and defence contacts in Suva.
All for what?
Fiji is buying its military equipment from South Korea, China and Indonesia.
Wananavu Graham Davies u the true Kaiviti…
Pious,
Agree with your comment that the PIF is pretty much redundant, but then I have always thought (rightly or wrongly) that the PIF was nothing more than an instrument by which A&NZ could dictate to the other pacific nations on how things should be.
I also agree that the MSG is more relevant to Fiji and to those nations that are part of it and provides a better forum for exchange of ideas, programs and the development of policy attuned to the needs of those nations.
I am hopeful that in due course there will be a realisation by both Australia and New Zealand that the smaller island nations in the Pacific (particularly in the Melanesian Group) will take umbrage at being threatened (with sanctions for example) or dictated to in matters of regional concern and that a different mindset and approach is needed to deal with the smaller pacific island nations as the latter shape their own destiny with greater assurance. The abject failure of their approach to Fiji should hopefully be a constant reminder in Canberra and Wellington of the shortcomings of knee jerk reactions to complex issues in the Pacific and hopefully will hasten a policy rethink about their approach to the pacific region as a whole.
But methinks that much waiting will be required for that to happen.