‘As things stand, New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific is at a crucial juncture. There is no doubt the events of the past few years have taken some sheen off ’s long-standing image as the islands’ best friend. This has to some extent served to undermine the Pacific islands region’s strategic and commercial importance to New Zealand’

 

 

The past year has seen the winds of major political changes blow around the Pacific Rim. This sweeping wave of change began with a new Kevin Rudd-led Labor government in Australia late last year, followed by the historic election of the Democrat Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States and the ousting of the nine-year old Helen Clark-led Labour government in New Zealand by the National Party, led by John Key, in the closing months of the year.

Unlike past elections in all these countries, the verdicts this time around have been crystal clear and unambiguous and have emphatically put forth the majority’s earnest wish for change even in a climate of extreme uncertainty in the midst of the worldwide financial crisis.

 

The change of regimes in Australia and New Zealand are the ones that are of most concern to us here in the Pacific Islands.

When the Kevin Rudd-led Labor Party won the elections in Australia at the end of last year, there was a high sense of anticipation in the Pacific islands leaders’ camp.

In the run-up to the elections, Labor had made several policy announcements on how its approach to the Pacific islands would differ from the previous administration’s. Also, most Pacific leaders were only too pleased to see the back of arrogant John Howard and Alexander Downer’s abrasive stewardship of the foreign affairs portfolio—particularly in the Pacific islands region. But that sense of anticipation among Pacific leaders seemed to be missing as the new National Government took shape in Wellington last month.

 

One reason may be because unlike Labor in Australia, National in New Zealand had been short on spelling out policy specifics about what its Pacific approach would be if it came to power.

However, just as the Pacific leaders were pleased to see the departure of the Howard-Downer administration, many of them were looking forward to an approach fresh and different from that of the Labour Party’s in the John Key government. In any case, towards the end of Labour’s third term, its Pacific policy seemed to be dictated by its obsession with the Fiji situation.

At least since 2006, the Fiji situation has dominated New Zealand’s Pacific relationships. While the Labour government’s tough approach was widely welcomed by Pacific leaders initially, its increasingly belligerent and isolationist tack was seen as being carried on for too long.

 

Many senior Pacific leaders have said that New Zealand might well have lost a window of opportunity to use its considerable goodwill in the islands region to take a shot at turning things around in Fiji by engaging with the interim administration early on—while it was yet to entrench itself and get used to the trappings of power. 

That do-nothing, isolationist approach led to an avoidable deterioration in the people to people relationship between New Zealand and Fiji with severe restrictions on Fiji citizens travelling to New Zealand. Fiji Indian leaders in New Zealand have said that this contributed in a big way to the rapid erosion of Labour’s support base in the sizeable Fiji Indian community, especially in Auckland.

Then in August this year, the Labour government denied visas to Fijian leaders for the post-Forum dialogue following the leaders annual meet in Niue. This gave an excuse to the Fijian leadership to stay out of the Forum but New Zealand’s stand—and Helen Clark comparing Fiji with Zimbabwe—was seen as unreasonable and was openly criticised by several islands leaders.

 

As things stand, New Zealand’s relationship with the Pacific is at a crucial juncture. There is no doubt the events of the past few years have taken some sheen off New Zealand’s long-standing image as the islands’ best friend. This has to some extent served to undermine the Pacific islands region’s strategic and commercial importance to New Zealand. In what was perhaps the National Party’s only pre-election interaction with the islands media, Murray McCully, in anticipation of his role as the new foreign minister underscored the need to strengthen commercial relationships with the islands. “We’ve got to lift the intensity of our efforts in the Pacific,” McCully told this magazine last month. Collectively, the islands are among New Zealand’s largest trading partners but there exists a trade imbalance approaching $1 billion. The trade figures are not figures that should give us any pride whatsoever. If you don’t provide a basis for a substantial improvement in self-sufficiency and a vehicle for increased trade back to New Zealand, then I think we’re not working towards a long-term, sustainable solution,” McCully said.

If taken seriously and followed up by specific measures, this strategy could go a long way in desirably shifting the emphasis of co-operation, however slowly, from aid to trade. Which, indeed, is at the core of the National Party’s philosophy.

McCully also indicated the new government would support and scale up the seasonal worker programme that was set up by the Labour administration and the success of which went some way in assuaging the disappointment among Pacific leaders on Labour’s other policies. The new government’s foreign affairs department has its work cut out for the islands region and will have to focus on several issues that have long gone unattended and fresh ones that are emerging, not least because of the worldwide financial crisis.

 

Among these would be re-engaging with Fiji beginning with the extraordinary forum meet to be hosted by Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare, in Port Moresby, early January.

The new government would also have to urgently address the problem caused by the withdrawal of Air New Zealand’s transpacific flights connecting Auckland, Tonga, Samoa and the United States. This has caused widespread disappointment in the leaderships of Tonga and Samoa, as it would gravely hurt marine exports to the United States. For the medium to long-term, it is crucial that it forges relationships with the islands leveraging goodwill to pave the way for New Zealand businesses to participate in the impending boom in seafloor mining in the islands’ soon-to-be-expanded exclusive economic zones (there is competition already from Australia, Asia and North American nations besides others). It would also need to start negotiations for PACER (Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations) early next year as well as reciprocal free trade talks which have now been brought forward from 2011 after the islands nations negotiated an economic participation agreement with the EU.

 

And very importantly, it must fine-tune its many aid programmes to account for the effects of the worldwide financial crisis that will have a fallout on the islands’ main avenues of revenue—remittances and tourism.