SYDNEY: Australia’s tough stance towards its tiny South Pacific island neighbours will likely be replaced by a softer line if prime minister John Howard loses this week’s elections, analysts say.
Labor Party leader Kevin Rudd, a former diplomat tipped in the opinion polls to win the vote, is also expected to take a more hands-on approach than Howard, who has largely left the running of
foreign policy to his foreign minister.
But the substance of Australian policy towards the impoverished island nations may not be that different, with military interventions in troubled states still on the cards, the analysts said.
“In that there would be a distinction, it would be one of style,” Damien Kingsbury, of Deakin University, said. “Perhaps a Labor government would be a little more conciliatory and perhaps not as bombastic.”
Howard’s 11 years in office have been marked by an interventionist policy in the region which has annoyed some of Australia’s neighbours even though most of the measures have had widespread international backing.
Under what became known as the “Howard doctrine”, Canberra has dispatched soldiers in recent years to Timor Leste, Tonga and the Solomon Islands as they were rocked by political unrest.
Australia has also attempted to make aid recipients more accountable for the money they receive and to have a direct input into issues such as domestic policing in Papua New Guinea.
The more active approach was driven by the fear that failed states in Australia’s backyard could become havens for terrorists or international gangsters.
But Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer’s high-handed approach has ruffled the feathers of Pacific leaders on more than one occasion, Kingsbury said.
“The way he acts towards some of the smaller regional governments is in direct contrast to the way he behaves in respect to larger countries.
“He has literally shouted down regional leaders in meetings. The negotiations with Timor Leste over the Timor Gap division was a case in point,” he said, referring to the lucrative oil and gas field in the Timor Sea.
Downer has also had awkward relations with national leaders in PNG, Fiji and the Solomon Islands, Kingsbury said.
Jon Fraenkel of the Australian National University said the spats had been “diplomatically very unwise”, especially with the Solomon Islands and PNG.
“It has come to a point where anti-Australian sentiment is used in domestic politics of those two countries to label the opposition as Australian puppets,” he said.
One thing that might change is a higher profile for Australia’s aid programme, on which many Pacific states are dependent.
In a speech to the Lowy Institute, a political think-tank, Rudd recently outlined this as one of his priorities for the Pacific.
Malcolm Cook of the Lowy Institute said Rudd had called for a deeper engagement including a three-year audit of all existing programmes in a region where corruption is endemic.
There was also the possibility that a separate minister for international development would be appointed, he said.
Despite their significance in the region, Australia’s relations with its neighbours have little impact in the election.
“Nobody would switch their vote one way or the other on the issue of relations with the South Pacific,” veteran political commentator Malcolm Mackerras said.
The islands were, however, raised in an election debate between Downer and Labor’s shadow foreign minister Robert McClelland, who indicated that Labor would indeed take a less confrontational approach.
“Something is going wrong,” McClelland said of Australia’s policy in the South Pacific. “I think the answer is to not focus on a reactive approach, where we’ve seen a revolving door in some instances of military deployments.”
Instead, Labor would “develop programmes in partnership with our neighbours to work on those development issues where we can assist,” he said. – PNS