Howard braces for Fiji storm

Australian troops in Honiara during outbreaks of violence in April. Picture / Greg Bowker

John Howard will not be expecting an easy time when he steps off the plane in Fiji for next week's Pacific Forum.

The political ground is already trembling underfoot as Fijian Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase tries to bring the military to heel in the coup-prone island state, and as his counterparts in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea rally support against Canberra.

And in a small regional way, Howard arrives as an emerging Pacific Caesar, the biggest and richest player on the block, head of a nation which has increasingly less patience with those not prepared to play by its rules.

Howard's immediate crisis is the row over former Solomons' Attorney-General Julian Moti, an Australian lawyer facing child-sex charges, sheltered by Solomons' Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare and his PNG counterpart Sir Michael Somare.

But beyond this is the much deeper issue of the future of Howard's Pacific policy, the blend of greater regional focus and hands-on diplomacy that in 2003 brought to an abrupt halt Australia's previous complacency.

The catalyst was the violence that overwhelmed the Solomons and the establishment of the 15-nation Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (Ramsi).

Ramsi not only aimed to restore law and order, but to rebuild the tiny country from the bottom up, providing good and honest government, an efficient and corruption-free public service, and good health, education and other essential services.

The annual report issued this week by Ramsi special co-ordinator James Batley lists achievements, ranging from law and order and bureaucratic improvements to a third year of increasing government revenue.

Solomons' Foreign Minister Patterson Oti said his Government would not carry out Sogavare's threat to end Ramsi and expel Australians, while police arrested Immigration Minister Peter Shanel for allowing Moti to enter the islands without travel documents.

But the row over Moti that has seen Canberra slap travel restrictions on Somare and other senior PNG politicians still darkens the forum's sky and also Howard's new Pacific way.

The Solomons intervention was hugely ambitious.

For years Australia had been worried about the Pacific - but never enough to really get involved. The islands' collapse into anarchy in 2003, and the rising sense that the Pacific was threatening to descend into a series of chaotic, failed states, forced Howard's hand.

Faced with the very real prospect of potential regional footholds for transnational crime and terrorism, Canberra's overwhelming emphasis is on good, clean, stable governments. This is reflected in its aid policy, and in Howard's recent statements that Australia has the right to place conditions on its assistance.

There is little dispute about the sense of this. The Forum's Bitekawa Declaration of 2000, and subsequent declarations placed good governance among the highest priorities.

But Howard's policy always straddled a fine line between assistance and neo-colonialism, intervention and ensnarement: East Timor and the Solomons have shown that going in is far easier than getting out.

What has worried many in Canberra is the bellicosity and undisguised impatience at the Pacific's failings that the Moti row has revealed.

"We're putting A$300 million ($340 million) a year into PNG; we spent around A$800 million in the Solomon Islands," Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told Sky TV.

"We provide a lot of aid to other countries in the region, and from the point of view of the taxpayers we should be getting a better return for that investment than we've got."

Critics believe this attitude displays little understanding of the Pacific.

They also fear Canberra has failed to summon the energy and effort required to support its Pacific policy.

Hugh White, professor of strategic studies at the Australian National University, believes the Moti crisis is a sign of the failure of Howard's policy, and fears for the future of Ramsi.

"Some of the blame for this rests with the Australian Government, which has been willing to send money and deploy military, police and civilian experts, but has not been prepared to devote the attention, effort and imagination needed to shape and lead such a complex mission," he wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald.

"After the initial successes in 2003, it has been too tempting for the Government to chalk up Ramsi as a win and leave it to look after itself."

White says Canberra also mismanaged the deployment of police to PNG in 2003. Willing to spend A$3 billion on the programme, it did not invest the time and effort to sell it effectively to Port Moresby and it quickly collapsed.

Yesterday further concerns were aired at a University of New South Wales law conference by ANU Fellow Dr Sinclair Dennen, who warned Howard's Pacific way was arousing resentment in the neighbourhood.

For Canberra the dilemma of intervention remains: damned if you do and damned if you don't.