Jobs for men real answer in Solomons

Comment by HELEN HUGHES*

The decision to restore civil order can only be the first step toward recovery in the Solomons. Unless underlying economic problems are tackled, there is a danger that Australian and New Zealand troops will be in the Solomons forever.

Violence has been escalating because the population has been growing at 3.9 per cent while economic growth has been negligible, and as a result, income for each person has declined.

Women work hard to supply food for the growing population, but in the traditional economy chainsaws have taken over from stone axes to make gardens. There is almost no work for men.

After three or four years of poor schooling, boys loaf around villages without jobs or income.

A wasted male generation has grown up without working. In Honiara, male unemployment is officially 50 per cent. In fact, including villagers who drift in and out of town, it is 80 per cent.

Without work and income, tribal differences have blown up into warlordism. The police and Army are deeply implicated in daily violence through Guadalcanal and Malaita clan relationships. Their armouries have become low-cost arms supermarkets.

The Solomon Islands have not always been short of income. Timber exports paid for the colonial administration until the mid-1970s. Since 1978 timber has earned NZ$2.1 billion (in 1998 dollars).

Fishing rights have been sold. Since 1978, the Solomons have received $1.8 billion (in 1998 dollars) of aid. But most of the 450,000 to 500,000 people in the Solomons have not had one cent of this inflow of more than $4.1 billion.

Public servants have not been paid regularly for years. The only bricks and mortar to show for these vast sums are a few extravagant Government buildings. Parliament does not sit because the Government claims it cannot afford the electricity costs.

The Solomon Islands are rich in agricultural land that could support labour-intensive exports. The rapid development of world trade has provided access to markets worldwide.

The Solomons also benefit from privileged low tariff access to European and North American markets and from zero tariffs in Australia and New Zealand.

Unlike Fiji, Samoa and Tonga, the Solomons have been unable to take advantage of global markets because they cannot produce anything to sell except a little palm oil and the timber they tear out without replanting.

The Solomon Islands are beautiful. With security they could develop a tourist industry. On top of labour-intensive agriculture and tourism, gold, properly managed timber (reforestation is labour-intensive) and fishing rights could underpin rapid income growth for most of the population.

Communal land ownership is the crux of the Solomons' troubles. The profits from denuding the forests have been shared between village big men and central Government politicians and their bureaucrat and business cronies in an orgy of waste and corruption.

While teachers, medical workers and police have gone without pay, expatriate carpetbagger advisers have helped to siphon off huge private fortunes abroad.

Australia and New Zealand have not imposed effective conditions on the use of their taxpayer dollars in the Solomons (or the rest of the Pacific).

They have permitted their aid to be treated as part of the Solomons national budget, spent on recurrent wages and salaries and goods and services that are subject to large kickbacks to the swollen democratically elected central Government.

Lending by international financial institutions has enabled the Solomons to borrow abroad from public and private sources. These funds have also been spent on recurrent expenditures, thus creating $253 million (55 per cent of GNP) of unsustainable debt by 2000. Inflation is running at 240 per cent a year. Banking has broken down. The IMF-created central bank clearly does not have the economies of scale to operate effectively.

The Solomon Islands desperately needs productive employment, particularly for men. The Australian and New Zealand aid agencies have neglected this basic requirement. Influenced by multilateral non-Government organisations (such as Oxfam and World Vision), they have focused, unsuccessfully, on social amelioration rather than productive jobs.

Large sums for capacity-building and improved governance have not been able to affect this fundamentally flawed economy. In some instances they have merely enabled corrupt politicians to extort money from the public purse more effectively. Australian and New Zealand consultants have been the beneficiaries of such boomerang aid.

A high proportion of the many compassionate and well-meaning United Nations and NGO advisers who have crowded the Solomons over the years were committed to socialism. They have encouraged local leaders to adopt socialist strategies, without informing them how these have fared in such countries as Tanzania and Ethiopia.

Communal land ownership has become a key obstacle to development in the Solomons. It underlies tribal warfare in Africa. It has not led to growth and development anywhere in the world.

Australian and New Zealand aid could transform the Solomons by bearing the costs of breaking up communal land into individually owned plots for those villagers who want to move in this direction. They would receive materials for new infrastructure (roads, landing jetties, mini-hydros, schools and health centres), but would have to organise labour for their construction.

The central Government would have to be a partner, undertaking to pay for police, teachers and medical staff. Suitable tourist components could be added. Such aid would be based on local choices, bringing into effect the principle of mutual obligation between Solomon Islanders and Australian and New Zealand taxpayers.

It will not, however, be welcomed by those benefiting from present systemic corruption, who will cry that this is recolonisation.

Without a radical shift in aid to employment creation, the restoration of civil order cannot have widespread or lasting effects. Australia and New Zealand will be increasingly drawn into the Pacific, and will become hated as policemen, despite providing the security that Pacific Islanders crave.

* Helen Hughes is an emeritus professor of the Australian National University and a senior fellow of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. Her paper, Aid Has Failed the Pacific, provoked comment on both sides of the Tasman last month.