Pacific group wants open labour market

New Zealand and Australia risk looking hypocritical by repeating their calls for regionalism in the Pacific while making no moves to free up the labour market in the region, says the Pacific Cooperation Foundation (PCF).

The foundation, a part-Government funded trust, has expressed its concerns in a submission to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade on the draft Pacific Plan being promoted by the Pacific Forum.

The forum, representing 16 Pacific countries including New Zealand and Australia, wants to promote greater regional integration and cooperation.

The working plan is open for submissions and explores areas like trade, transport, tourism, health, environment, sports and human rights.

The Pacific Cooperation Foundation said the movement of labour, while raised in the plan, should be a priority item.

The forum needed to establish a process by which the freer movement of people could be debated and positive steps forward considered.

"PCF considers that the point has been reached that repeated Australia/New Zealand calls for increased regionalism, and also integration, will begin to look hypocritical if the two developed countries show no sign of being prepared to move at least incrementally on an issue regarded as important by a large number of Pacific people."

The foundation said the labour market was one of the more difficult items on the Pacific agenda.

"But if we are making it easier for people to come from Europe to assist with a temporary labour shortage we should be prepared to give equal consideration to the Pacific.

The foundation's executive director Vince McBride told the Herald there was too much focus on previous work schemes where Pacific people had come for temporary scrub-cutting jobs and then overstayed.

Mr McBride said it was not beyond officials to design a scheme with sufficient safeguards to ensure people went back home.

That could include guarantees the Pacific workers could freely return to New Zealand as other work opportunities arose, he said.

A spokesperson for the Prime Minister said the comments about New Zealand were surprising given the open entry for people from the Cook Islands, Niue and Tokelau, the long-standing permanent residence quota for Samoa, and the permanent residents quotas for Fiji, Tonga, Kiribati and Tuvalu.

The New Zealand Government preferred making provision for permanent migration to real jobs rather than having short-term migrant worker schemes, she said.

The foundation raised other concerns, including the need for urgent action on HIV/Aids, a regional approach to airline services, Pacific rugby issues and engagement at a grassroots level.

There also needed to be broad recognition of the extent of corruption in several Pacific countries and until that was "got to grips with" progress would be illusory and donors would remain wary.

In another submission Oxfam New Zealand said the the reduction of poverty should be the over-reaching aim, and the plan should ensure countries were not pressured into inappropriate and damaging agreements for the liberalisation of trade.