Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Acting Deputy President, I appreciate your designation as one with which I would be delighted if it were always the truth. I can say that our relations with the Pacific have been much improved over the last eight months as some of the tensions that were inherent in our dealings with our nearest neighbours have been dealt with effectively. Through both multilateral and bilateral engagements led by our Prime Minister, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, my colleague Bob McMullan and I have really done a lot of work to strengthen the effectiveness of Australia’s engagement with our own region, a region which we are both of and in. We are a country of the Pacific, we are in the Pacific, and the engagements that we are involved in through the partnerships for development, through bilateral arrangements with each of the countries and through multilateral negotiations with the Pacific Island Forum and other regional institutions have seen a very great improvement in our nation-to-nation and nation-to-region relationships.

On this particular motion, generally, the Pacific is a region where democracy has been established and is being consolidated, and that is all to the good. It is not always an easy thing to build national institutions in the Pacific, because for many of the countries the idea of nationhood is a relatively recent invention and one which would probably have been unimaginable to most of the populations of those countries only one or two generations previously. My own experience in Papua New Guinea, for example, reminds me that there were many people who had no knowledge of an external world beyond their valley. They had their own language—there are 700 languages in PNG—and so the creation of a vibrant democracy out of communities that saw their world as encompassing their tribe, their family and little more has been quite an enormous achievement.

Sometimes we are faced by critics who are very dismissive of the difficulties facing Pacific Island countries as they transition from countries which were essentially based around different forms of quite basic technologies to their involvement in a 21st century global environment, with the kinds of challenges and demands that that places upon them. Those critics give those countries far too little credit for the distance that they have achieved. We are working very hard to stabilise and make effective democratic institutions in the Pacific and, of course, there are specific bipartisan initiatives that have been established. The CDI—Centre for Democratic Institutions—is active in the Pacific but, very importantly, on a timescale that looks beyond the immediate next couple of years. We can be quite proud of the fact that we are engaged not only in strengthening the effectiveness of state building in those countries through institution strengthening but also in addressing some of the key critical issues that affect the citizens of those countries to enable them to participate effectively as members of a democracy that is addressing the Millennium Development Goals—extending opportunities for early education and post secondary education, making certain that people have relief from poverty, making certain that health services and education are addressed, designing our interventions in ways that will improve the lives of people and also improving the communications systems and the infrastructure that enable communication through those quite remote and sometimes complex societies so that people can actively take part in vibrant democratic institutions and see the benefit of that participation.

All of the countries of the Pacific are democracies, albeit at the moment Fiji, which is under a military interim government. Members of this House would know that there is bipartisan agreement within the Australian political system that we would wish that circumstance to come to an end as quickly as possible and for a restoration of genuine democracy in Fiji, because the people of Fiji are suffering at the moment. The GDP of that island has been reducing. It always has after coups, and the sooner we can find the political basis of an effective settlement that enables a return to democracy in Fiji the better. The Australian government has indicated on many occasions that it stands ready to assist in that process as best we can.

There were challenges to democracy in the Solomon Islands, a conflict that nearly brought the government of the Solomon Islands to a point of collapse. It was under considerable distress. The initiative that Australia was participating in, and to some extent was the driver of, the Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands, has been very successful. We look forward to a period where the Solomon Islands is restored to the robustness both democratically and economically to which its people are fully entitled.

We are working with all of the islands of the Pacific and Papua New Guinea to make certain that we give reality and flesh to commitments that we have entered into through our commitment first articulated by the Prime Minister in the Port Moresby declaration and then manifested in the rollout of the partnerships for development and through continuing bilateral discussions with those countries. We wish to make certain that we not only support the structural elements of democratic governance in those countries but assist to make it effective in the interests of the people. We encourage through negotiations, for example, on PACER Plus, the integration of the Pacific into a wider free trade environment where people are able to maximise their participation and their chances of economic development as well as their entitlement as citizens to vote and to participate within those democratic governments. Thank you very much. I welcome the initiative of those who have put this measure onto the Notice Paper and commend its consideration to the chamber.

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