Islands Business - Letter from Suva: WHO IS HOWARD REALLY HELPING?

If there were any opposition to the Howard charge from our islands leaders it was muted, or not strong enough to create ripples.

Laisa Taga

What's Australia upto? You can't really help but get the feeling that the Pacific is about to become Australia's 9th state after the way John Howard again bulldozed his way through the Port Moresby Pacific Islands Forum.

First, he sank millions of dollars into hands-on Australian involvement in the region. Then he brushed aside the hopes of islands leaders to send some of their young people to Australia as seasonal workers.

The leaders connection... Maatia Toafa of Tuvalu, Ludwig Scotty of Nauru and Kiribati's Anote Tong at the Port Moresby Pacific Islands Forum meeting. Photo: PIFS Media

If there were any opposition to the Howard charge from our islands leaders it was muted, or not strong enough to create ripples.

Because what we saw on our TV screens at home were images of “Big Man” Howard and New Zealand's Iron Lady Helen Clark, jostling for supremacy and appearing as if they were the only leaders at the Forum.

Howard, in particular, was highly visible, caught-of course-by the TV cameras for all to see, splashing more aid money upon his Pacific “subjects”-perhaps to keep them quiet.

Definitely to have even more Australian consultants, management contractors and the like employed across the Pacific and more Australian influence on the way things are in the islands.

And perhaps, too, to have more direct say in regional matters-a criticism highlighted by consultant Tony Hughes in his report titled Strengthening Regional Management: A Review of the Architecture for Regional Co-operation in the Pacific.

British-born and now a respected island watcher from his home in Gizo, Hughes said there was a readily stirred suspicion in the islands that Australia, as one of the biggest funders, uses this position to call the shots or exert influence on regional affairs.

Certainly Australia does this at far more levels than such other major regional development funders as the Europeans and Japanese.

Talking about influence, now Howard is proposing an Australian Technical, Vocational and Trades College for the Pacific-another of his big announcements at the Port Moresby Forum.

The college will be set up in one of the Pacific countries with other campuses located around the region-a similar setup to that of the University of the South Pacific.

According to a press release posted on his website: www.pm.gov.au, the new college will deliver “Australian-standard qualifications” and of course “with maximum involvement of the Australian educational sector and relevant Australian business interests in order to ensure that Pacific islanders received targeted training to meet real needs in the employment market”.

That means, of course, more Australians working in the islands to deliver these “Australian-standard qualifications”.

Is Australia really genuine in training these islanders for the islands, or is it preparing them for the Australian market?

If a recent World Bank report titled International Migration, Remittances and Brain Drain, is anything to go by, then the islands might as well say goodbye to their newly skilled workforce.

The World Bank has accused Australia of being the worst culprit in terms of the brain drain from neighbouring Pacific Islands nations.

It said that more than 75 percent of all graduates from Tonga and Samoa and 62.2 percent of graduates from Fiji had emigrated, mostly to Australia and New Zealand.

What drives islanders to migrate is the lack of opportunity in their own countries.

So what happens after workers get Australian qualifications from the Australian Technical, Vocational and Trades College? No prizes for answering that one.

They'll head to Australia, allowed in under a migration policy that gives preference to some of the same skills Howard has said this college will promote.

You have to wonder just how much the Pacific Islands are really gaining from all this Australian “aid”. You also have to wonder what some Pacific Islands leaders are doing when they go to the Forum.