OPINION: Greg Sheridan, The Australian, August 08, 2002
AUSTRALIA faces a profound, multi-dimensional crisis throughout the Melanesian world, that group of nations nearest to our borders and for which we have the greatest responsibility.
John Howard will fly to Port Moresby next week, ostensibly to congratulate Papua New Guinea's new Prime Minister, Michael Somare.
But the real purpose of Howard's trip is to make sure Somare understands the depth of the crisis PNG faces. The defeat of the former PM, Mekere Morauta, probably the best leader PNG has had in its short, sad history, is a symbol of the broader Melanesian malaise.
The dimensions of the crisis are staggering. In the late 1990s PNG had a per capita income of $1408. By 2001 it was $1074. PNG is entering its fourth year of recession.
There are no new significant mining projects coming on stream in PNG. Existing projects are winding down. Mining income will decline by 6 per cent a year, and petroleum income 11 per cent a year, over the next five years. Overall government revenue will likely slide by 5 per cent every year, despite population increase.
Speaking of population, PNG has one of the highest rates of population growth, 3.2 per cent a year, in the world. It is estimated its population of 5 million will double by 2025, unless its high HIV-AIDS rate stems growth. PNG has infection rates comparable with Africa's 10 years ago.
New foreign investment is nowhere to be seen and impossible to attract while the law and order situation is so hopeless.
What about its political leadership? Somare is by no means the worst possible leader. But unlike Morauta, he is no technocrat. Apart from his first stint as PM, he has been ineffective in program delivery and political manoeuvre in the portfolios he has held. If he has any ideological proclivities, they are old-fashioned social democratic.
PNG is not the limit of the problem. It is but the biggest case of a culture-wide Melanesian crisis. The Solomon Islands has a population of about 500,000, also young and growing fast. It is effectively a failed state. Most government workers have not been paid for weeks, if not months. It cannot deliver basic services. It used to export logs, fish, gold, copra, and palm oil, among other things. The ethnic civil war has destroyed all that; only logging and fishing continue in any meaningful sense. The civil war has abated but both sides have degenerated into gangsterism and almost war lordism.
In Vanuatu, population nearly 200,000, dissident police last week threw its police commissioner and his backers into jail, where they joined former PM Barak Sope.
It is still virtually paradise compared with PNG or the Solomons, but it has the same set of risk factors – a dead flat economy, urban drift, large numbers of young men leaving high school with nothing to do, lots of Melanesian chiefly structures and ethnic divisions. It does not yet have an AIDS crisis but again the risk factors are there as it has high rates of sexually transmitted disease, lots of promiscuity and poor sex education. Once AIDS gets into the population, it will spread quickly.
Fiji, with a population of 800,000, is for the moment calm but it is a deeply uneasy calm. The electorate is bitterly polarised between resentful Indian leadership and uncompromising, chauvinist Fijian leadership. The moderate middle has disappeared.
The Fijian sugar industry is rapidly losing its historic European Union subsidies. Its garment industry, which is not very efficient, used to benefit hugely from duty-free access to Australia, but with Australia having lowered its tariffs to the outside world generally, the benefit is no longer so great. And tourism, which has come back well, is one gunshot from disaster again.
The only part of Melanesia doing well is New Caledonia, and that is essentially because of massive French subsidies.
Where does all this leave Australia? The Melanesian crisis affects us in a variety of ways. First and most important is the sheer humanitarian tragedy unfolding on our doorstep.
SECOND is the economic cost. We give $300 million a year in direct aid to PNG. But during the past three years we have also given $400 million in special structural adjustment assistance, a sign of Canberra's high regard for the Morauta government. There are other hidden subsidies through pensions for former employees of Australia and similar items.
Our aid to the Solomons has trebled in recent years.
We have provided peacekeepers in Bougainville (almost PNG's only success story in recent years).
There is also a huge economic opportunity cost. The Melanesian universe is perhaps 7 million strong, a little more than one-third the size of Australia's population. If it were registering even modest economic growth, it would use its increased income overwhelmingly to buy goods and services from Australia.
There will also be consequences in terms of health and crime. If the AIDS epidemic spreads throughout Melanesia, it will not be possible to isolate this entirely from Australia. Similarly, so far international crime has not been a big Melanesian export but while these states are so chaotic, and while so many guns are rolling around, there will be a growing risk.
There is no getting away from our responsibilities. We are not primarily responsible for Melanesia's difficulties, but the Melanesians are our neighbours and our friends. Aid levels alone are not the key. Many of our own institutions, from the media to the universities, need to re-engage with Melanesia. It's not an easy task or a good news story. But it's a national responsibility.
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