Bob Sercombe (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Overseas Aid and Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

that Solomon Islanders ‘will “reflect” because they like to come here’. What a patronising, arrogant way to talk about our neighbours. Then he talks about ‘shovelling aid’. He says the last thing the Solomon Islands can afford is to get into an argument with major donors—once again, an arrogant, patronising approach which underpins so much of the difficulty in the relationships in the region. We now have a crisis spreading from the Solomon Islands to Papua New Guinea and, tragically, I think possibly to next week’s forum meeting, which is a critical meeting because of the importance of advancing important regional initiatives. I know that the Fijians, who are the hosts of that forum, are quite concerned about this.

Let us be quite clear. The opposition have always readily acknowledged that there are significant and serious governance issues in some parts of the Pacific. That is why we were so critical of the government’s delay in relation to the Solomon Islands intervention. That is why we supported the Enhanced Cooperation Program with Papua New Guinea, the police component of which the government incompetently allowed to collapse when it had not done its homework in relation to legal and constitutional issues in PNG.

The present issues regarding Julian Moti are matters properly for the law and for the courts and not for politicians, whether Pacific island politicians or Australian politicians. As the minister indicated in his answer to a question earlier, it was in fact a Labor government that introduced the child sex tourism legislation, which we clearly support. But the government’s petulance, particularly over recent days, is not what is needed. It is, frankly, counterproductive. It sets us back from the serious, assiduous, competent work that improved governance in the region requires.

We do not need reinforcement of some of the negative perceptions about Australia’s role in the region—perceptions of arrogance, bullying and contempt. We do not need inflammatory comments, megaphone diplomacy or, frankly, Minister, hissy fits. This is not a recent phenomenon. Back in 2003 the very respected ANU academic on the Pacific, Professor Ron May, wrote:

The Prime Minister is not well attuned to the Pacific and Australia’s interests are not going to be helped by him rampaging around talking about weak states and intervening and getting people off side. What they don’t need is a Prime Minister coming in and making insulting comments.

Regrettably, Professor May’s comments have not been taken note of by the government. We do not need the threats to the aid program that are implied by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Foreign Affairs or references to ‘shovelling’ aid.

As the Canberra Times stated just this morning on this question of aid:

But such plain diplomatic talking can backfire, especially when, as in the case of PNG, there are other governments willing to step in to fill the vacuum created by the withdrawal of Australian funding—governments with fewer scruples or concerns about the long-term viability or economic health of their client states.

I think that illustrates the difficulty we have. If money is wasted, let us remember that the Australian government, through AusAID, is responsible for the program. The government’s agency is directly involved in joint processes of allocating funds for programs and projects. There is no longer any block budget funding. Is the minister therefore admitting his negligence on aid by his implied threats to withdraw it? As I mentioned earlier, we do not need disruption of the forum. It is no joke, but in today’s Australian

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