Islands Business - Interview: GREG URWIN

'Why I want another term'

Samisoni Pareti
It's official. Greg Urwin, the Auatralian diplomat selected to one of the most influential positions in the Pacific region as Secretary-General of the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, likes the job and wants an extension to his current term when it expires in January 2007.

Greg Urwin... Keen on another term

If approved by the leaders, it will be his second and final three-year term at the Suva-based secretariat.
Despite rumours to the contrary, Urwin insisted there was never any undertaking given at the Auckland Pacific Islands Forum meeting in 2003 that he was to serve for only one three-year term.

‘There’s a story going around saying there was some sort of an arrangement reached at the time of my appointment that I would do only one term,” Urwin told ISLANDS BUSINESS in his Suva office recently.

“I am not at liberty to talk about what went on at the leaders’ retreat—only to say there was no such arrangement.

“If there had been, I would not have written that letter to the chair.”

Actually, he meant the outgoing chair of the Forum who was host of last year’s summit, Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare of Papua New Guinea. The letter is in reference to a memorandum Urwin sent Somare about six months ago, informing him of his desire to serve his second and final term.

In that memo, Urwin admitted he likes the job and he would also like to see a few things through.

“We’ve restructured the organisation, the Pacific Plan is going, we’ve now got an institutional review which now may lead to a complete restructure of the technical agencies,” said Urwin.

“To be honest, apart from enjoying the job, I felt some responsibility to keep going with that. The chair circulated my letter to the rest of the leaders. I pointed out that precedent would suggest that it be extended.

“That’s more or less where it stands for me. As far as I am concerned, the leaders will look at that at the Forum.”

No other candidate has openly campaigned for the secretary-general position and as alluded to by Urwin, precedent seems to suggest he will get his second term at the Nadi summit of Forum leaders later this month.

ISLANDS BUSINESS spoke to Urwin on this and on a number of wide ranging issues.

The Forum Secretariat’s recruitment policies, where staff employment is limited to only two three-year term:

“Up to a point, I am not unhappy. I emphasise up to a point. I am not unhappy about the fact that we take good young people, provide them with some training and then they go back to their governments or into the private sector or somewhere else in some high paying UN jobs because viewed in the large sense that’s a good thing for the region. However, it can make running an organisation like this a bit difficult. We are concentrating more and more on trying to hire the services of good young people who are up and coming, who we could add some value and they move on. So we are setting up a young professionals scheme. That’s answering part of the problem. But it is also a fact that this six-year rule can also be quite confining. But at the moment it’s something I have to live with because a couple of years ago leaders said that’s the way it ought to be. I think that happened because there was something of a perception in some corners of the region going back some long way into the history of the organisation that some people have been allowed to stay on for ever and ever. We don’t have by global standards high pay rates. That’s because we are not a rich organisation of rich countries basically.”

So that is what you did for your deputy, Maiava?

“No, in fact I got the approval of the leaders for that one because of his seniority.

So he stays on for another six years?

“No, that’s unclear. I extended him when his last term came to an end for a further 18 months. And we’ll need to work out what happens after that. But he ,of course, has his own views on all of these.”

On labour mobility:

“I must say I am extremely heartened by the extent to which this subject has got on to the regional agenda. Some may say well talk is talk, but we are looking at this matter seriously in a way in the 30 odd years of my experience we never had before. Some very serious work is now been done on it by institutions like the World Bank which you have seen just recently. There’s a Senate committee in Australia taking evidence, the committee to which we made a submission incidentally. But all of it in the direction of seeking particularly from the New Zealand and Australian authorities some kind of consideration of some kind of temporary movement arrangement.

“My view, something I say to islands leaders, is that it’s an issue that needs to continue to be refined. We shouldn’t just be asking Australia and New Zealand to take our people but we ought to be working on a more definite set of proposals. And I think that’s the way to go forward with it. And I think that some of the work done by the World Bank, for example, is not a bad basis for doing that. We would need to work out what the terms and conditions are. This is a point that trade union movements in both countries make. You don’t want to finish up with a group of exploited labourers. It’s got to be something that can be policed, can be guaranteed. On the other side, clearly the New Zealanders and Australians would need some guarantees about people abiding by the terms and conditions.”

Was it difficult for you personally articulating your views given that you are from Australia?

Yes, it was but I have always had a personal view. You got to be careful mixing the personal and professional side in all of these things. But I have always had a personal view that when you think through the nature of New Zealand and Australia relations with Pacific Islands countries, sooner or later you get to this question of people movement. And if it is the case that we are looking for a more integrated region, one where regional cooperation does actually work, you’ve got to base it on freer and different kinds of people movement arrangements. The kind of arrangements that allow people to move around, make the best use of their skills, seek opportunities, that sort of thing. I personally think that’s fundamentally important and we would not have done the job until we get to that point. There’s a number of dimensions to it. I think it implies freer movement around the region as a whole. I think we’ve been inclined to think of it only in terms of people going to New Zealand and Australia. But I think a country like Fiji would need to think about the consequences of that kind of regime for them whether it would imply broader movement in and out of the region from other countries as well. People would need to satisfy themselves about these. But those larger questions should not prevent us from working on the more immediate sets of arrangements with New Zealand and Australia. I know the Australians are going to come to this Forum with quite a substantial skills package which as I understand it is going to be about upgrading skills up to Australian standards, but presumably some implications in that for peoples’ movement possibilities. I think all that is fine but we can’t lose sight of the fact that the first skills needed are here in the region themselves and we should primarily be looking at all of these skills development activities in terms of filling local gaps and there may be other sorts of implications as well. But first of all fill those local gaps because that would be an important contributor to economic growth.”

In retrospect, looking at how the Forum summit handled the issue of labour mobility in Papua New Guinea last year, did it handle it well?

“I think the first thing I would say is that they dealt with it for the first time and much was dictated by that fact. I do think that the debate was held at a very general level. And certainly at a kind of level of generality which didn’t permit specific outcomes at the meeting.”

So it will be on the agenda again this year?

“I think it inevitably will be.”

Pacific Plan and the proposed Super CROP:

“They (Forum leaders) would want to know what progress we have made with the Pacific Plan and what we intend to do next. I think a big issue may well be this whole review that’s taken place into the regional institutional framework. And specifically this proposal to cluster all of the technical delivery organisations into one new organisation. That would be SPC, SPREP, SOPAC, FFA, the Board of Education, so that we will finish up with a two-headed structure with the Forum staying pretty much where it was, although maybe losing some of its functions to that new body. That obviously is a big issue.”

So this so-called super CROP will call for some redundancies?

“Frankly it’s too early to say. What this report recommends is that there will be a two-year transition period and this comes into force on 1st of January 2009. So what would happen if accepted would be that a transition team headed by somebody who knew about the region, who knew about the regional organisations but was not of the regional organisations would have two years to put together the kind of arrangements that you would need and that would be of course overseen by the member countries.”

The leaders will be deciding on that issue?

“Well, we will need to go to the leaders with some proposal that will be considered by the officials committee and the rest of it. But we’d be hoping that we will be able to put to the leaders what’s sufficient for them to give us the direction to go ahead and see where we get to. So there’s that. We’ve also reviewed the Post-Forum Dialogue process and we’ll have some proposal to put to the leaders about that. But again members are developing their own views about that at the moment.”

And the review of the Post-Forum Dialogue proposal will be implemented at this Forum?

“No, first the leaders will have to agree to it and then we will have to discuss it with the dialogue partners. But it’s all in the direction of trying to find better ways of doing business with them. At the moment dialogue takes up about 50 minutes, a panel of three on our side at the ministerial level. To be quite honest with you, by the time you exchange pleasantries, you don’t get a lot of actual work done. The substantial partners we’ve got—the EU, France, Japan, China, the US—are looking for better ways to do business with us. Now I believe the way to go is to set up stand-alone consultative relationships which happen at regular times through the year. And you devote some more time, develop a real agenda and progress things that way. Some of the reforms suggested try to address that kind of situation.”

On whether Niue will host the 2007 Forum Island Summit after Fiji:

“That is still an unresolved question. The position was that Niue had expressed a strong interest in hosting it in 2007. The question of where the 2007 Forum is to be held will be decided at this Forum and we now know of course that Tonga has asked for a deferral to 2007. So at this moment that still needs to be resolved.”