Revolution warning for Pacific as 'youth bulge' keeps growing

The "youth bulge" in the Pacific is reaching levels where historically there have been revolutions, a conference on labour mobility in Wellington has been warned.

Graeme Dobell, Pacific and Asian correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, said that when 20 per cent of a country's population was aged between 15 and 24 years "you got something that looks like it is potentially revolutionary".

He made the observation as keynote speaker at the Pacific Co-operation Foundation conference yesterday which explored the potential of increasing labour mobility within the Pacific region, particularly opening the doors to Australia and New Zealand. The conference had heard how such moves could act as a safety valve for the escalating and underemployed populations of Melanesia, whose dissatisfied and bored youth were a potentially destabilising force.

Mr Dobell said that in Papua New Guinea and the Solomons the youth demographic was already hitting the 20 per cent mark. It averaged 17 per cent for the rest of the Pacific.

By comparison the demographic accounted for about 9 per cent of Australia's population.

Mr Dobell said it had been suggested Polynesia was relatively "quiet" because those countries had historically been able to send workers overseas.

"In Melanesia that is not the case."

In Papua New Guinea there would be nearly 4 million available workers by 2015 but only 6 per cent would find jobs in the formal sector.

Mr Dobell had recently been in the Solomons and witnessed the destruction of Chinatown in Honiara and said it was a "visual shock".

He said Australian politicians and bureaucrats feared what they saw happening in Melanesia.

"In Canberra people are looking at Melanesia and feeling quite terrified."

Mr Dobell said Australia had by default left its Pacific labour policy to New Zealand as many Pacific Island migrants arrived there via New Zealand.

"In fact there are more Polynesians living in Australia than Melanesians."

Australia was now having to look at the labour migration issue because of domestic pressures due to rural labour shortages as well as pressure from Pacific Island countries who could no longer afford to be silent.

Mr Dobell said the island leaders had made significant ground in putting labour mobility on the agenda at last year's Pacific Forum meeting. It would stay on the top of the agenda for some time, he said.

Australian PM John Howard had been forced to engage in the debate, even though he had discounted temporary Pacific work schemes.

Mr Dobell said Pacific countries now had to decide how much they wanted freer labour movements and what they was prepared to give to get it.