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Australia—an equitable host? 2007 PINA convention
Australia—an equitable host?
Professor Helen Hughes is being a tad disingenuous if she would have readers believe that Australian migration programmes are equitable.
Let’s not waste our time arguing about the skilled migration programme, which, one could argue, is biased in favour of those countries with high literacy and education standards and where the average worker can pass an IELTS test.
Instead, let’s look at the options available for someone who wants to come to Australia for a year or so and pick fruit, tend a bar, or work as a cleaner.
If you are from Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) of the People’s Republic of China, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malta, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Taiwan and the United Kingdom, and are between the ages of 18 and 32, you are eligible for a working holiday visa.
Under the conditions of that visa, you may enter Australia and work for up to six months with any one employer for a total period of one year.
If you work in seasonal labour, such as fruit picking, you can apply for an extension of a further 12 months. So a young citizen of these countries can come to Australia for two years and pick fruit for at least four different employers, as long as they are under 32. Sounds a little like a seasonal worker programme to me.
The most enthusiastic users of this visa are from the United Kingdom, whose citizens, incidentally, also comprise the largest number of visa overstayers. It doesn’t take a PhD to see there aren’t any developing countries on the list above—it is wealthy Hong Kong and Taiwan whose citizens are allowed to come to Australia and work, not those from mainland China.
So what is so special about the people who live in these countries that they can pick fruit in Australia, while those from the Pacific cannot?
I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
—Dr Chakriya Bowman
Australian National University
AUSTRALIA
2007 PINA Convention
We write to respond to your November article commenting on PINA’s conference and reorganisation activity.
We see your article as misleading, badly researched and offensive.
No one spoke with me before the article was published. It seems to me that if your work is to have any credibility at all, at least you could have undertaken that fundamental step.
Let me deal with the issues one at a time:
• MASI announced that they would have the conference in May 2007. What you do not say is that the announcement was made with absolutely no reference to PINA, on whose behalf the conference is to be held. Not only was this counter-productive, it was insulting and unacceptable. If it is to be a PINA conference, it is only common sense and courtesy to include PINA in the discussion and planning. If PINA is to be well governed and transparent than PINA needs to know what is going on.
• “All was on track until Clark intervened”, you say—yet nothing was on track with PINA since PINA was not yet involved in its own convention
• Clark wanted the PINA executive to complete it chores—sure we do, is anything wrong with that? We have taken on an important role and would like to complete it effectively. Yet it is equally important that PINA members have the opportunity to elect, and preferably support, the leadership of its own organisation—they would do that at the conference to be held in May.
• Your article implies that a funder would control or affect the activities of PINA...Such a suggestion is outrageous and irresponsible. PINA will accept no funding which comes with strings attached and funders are aware of this.
No donor would have involvement in or influence on the policies of PINA—for you to suggest otherwise is reprehensible and malicious. There is and will be no change at the secretariat—it is and will be responsible to members only.
• You suggest that somehow the reputation of the publisher of the Solomon Star and the attitude of PINA are somehow related. Again, nothing could be further from the truth. PINA respects the contributions of many stalwart media people and organisations across the Pacific, including the Lamani family.
Our point of view has nothing to do with personalities but with good governance and transparency among our stakeholders.
• The Solomons have the backing of certain territories, you say. Territories do not back the Solomons, PINA members do—and none of this was, or is about taking sides, but about making responsible decisions based on solid communication and planning.
• Donor dependence—use of the phrase is again a frightfully thoughtless accusation. PINA is in a very strong financial nick. It will on the way through to continuing prosperity require some basic underpinning, for you to imply that there is evil in this is entirely unacceptable, misleading and again that word—malicious.
• While I am proud of my personal heritage, I find it inexcusable that there is continual reference to my Canadian background, as though this has something to do with the decision-making process here in the Pacific. We’ve been through this as an industry—we don’t for instance, say “Asian criminals” any more unless there is a real indication that the ethnic origin of the people in the story has some bearing on that story itself. Bad practice Islands Business.
I’m pleased to be able to say that the PINA conference will be held in May, in Honiara, with the involvement and support of PINA and its board.
This is because in recent days the conference organisers have finally decided they will consult with PINA and play the role they should have been playing from the beginning.
—Ken Clark
President, Pacific Island News Association
FIJI
Editor’s Note: Letter from Suva is commentary, or interpretative reporting. It is clearly published each month as such. PINA president Ken Clark is also entitled to his own interpretation of the controversy surrounding the PINA conference in Honiara. We are happy to publish his views in full. We also welcome any other views on this issue.
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