Australia must stop frequenting Pacific island states

The Albanian government continues the Coalition’s habit of using condescending language to discuss relations with the Pacific Islands, writes Dr Binoy Kampmark.

WHEN WILL THIS nonsense about the family connection between Australia and the Pacific end? In 2018, then Australian Pentecostal Prime Minister Scott Morrison took inspiration from a term that his predecessors did not have. On 8 November of the same year, he announced that Australia’s engagement in the region would be taken to another level, launching a “a new chapter in the relationship with our Pacific family”.

In an address to Asialink before attending the G20 leaders’ summit in Osaka, Morrison was again found talking about the Indo-Pacific:

“It encompasses our Pacific family with whom we have special relationships and duties, our close neighbours, our major trading partners, our alliance partners and the fastest growing economies in the world.”

Such language had all the resonances of white European paternalism, ever watchful of the savage black races who would never advance without the help and management of civilized powers.

It was a sentiment reflected in the views of British explorer and anthropologist William Winwood Reade, who voiced his opinion in his 1872 work The martyrdom of man:

“Children are ruled and schooled by force and it is not an empty metaphor to say that savages are children.”

While he accepted slavery as ‘fortunately extinct’he thought it was wise for a European government “to introduce compulsory labor among the barbarian races who recognize his sovereignty and occupy his land”.

Family language imputes the existence of stern, guiding parents and capricious, mischievous children who might dare to show disobedience. Parents in the “Pacific family” are never assumed to be from any of the Pacific island states, which are seen as just brothers and sisters who bicker and need control.

The invention of the expression by Morrison had the advantage of unmasking a Freudian truth. Pacific island states have long been seen as charity cases and development laggards, useful only as a source of labor for Australian markets or security outposts. Concerns about climate change had barely been acknowledged. Where necessary, Australian police and military forces also intervened to halt any perceived slide into instability.

The term has become even more problematic following independent security decisions made by Pacific island states with China. A central premise of the charity-child relationship between Canberra and its smaller neighbors has been consistent behavior. We give you money and largesse from the aid budget; you remain loyal and consistent with Australian interests.

The security pact between the Solomon Islands and China was particularly concerning, even terrifying, as it had, on the face of it, the potential to facilitate the establishment of a Chinese military base.

During his April visit to Honiara, Senator Zed Seselja, Australia’s former Minister for International Development, was ruthless in reiterating the family script. He told Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare that ‘the pacific family’ would have ‘always meet the security needs of our region’. It would be wise to “consult with the Pacific family in a spirit of regional openness and transparency, consistent with our region’s security frameworks”.

Australian security concerns over Honiara’s willingness to go this far with Beijing prompted an outburst of neo-imperial candor. The parent must take complete control of the situation and launch an abusive and punitive invasion, ostensibly in the name of protecting the sovereignty of another state.

A shaken Solomon Islands prime minister has rebuked such views in parliament, saying “we are treated like kindergarteners walking around with Colt .45s in our hands and therefore need to be supervised”.

The then opposition Australian Labor Party, running for government in the May election, quickly adapted to the language, stretching and bending it as it pleased. In fact, he went so far as to berate the coalition government for sending a junior minister to the Solomon Islands to argue against Honiara signing a security pact with Beijing.

Instead of sending Seselja, Labor campaign spokesman Jason Clare argued that former Foreign Secretary Marise Payne should have been on that plane:

“What happened instead was the foreign minister went to a business meeting and a guy called Zed was sent there.”

So the savages were simply not courted.

Building on the theme of cajoling and pressuring Pacific neighbors to do the right thing for Australia’s security interests, Clare insisted on a more aggressive stance:

“You can’t sit on the deck chair in the Pacific and just assume everything will be fine.”

Black kids, in other words, could play.

Anthony Albanese’s new Labor government has reveled in the same language of paternal condescension, letting Pacific island states know that Canberra is watching for errant behavior while always claiming to respect them.

Just before heading to Samoa and Tonga in early June, Foreign Secretary Penny Wong boasted that she was undertaking her second visit to the Pacific since taking office:

“We want to make a unique Australian contribution to help build a stronger peaceful family – through social and economic opportunities including pandemic recovery, health development and infrastructure support, as well as through our work programs in the Pacific and permanent migration.

Pacific states were also assured that parent Australia had heard their concerns about climate change in a way that the previous parent had not:

“We will stand with our Pacific family to confront the existential threat of climate change.”

The persistent use of the term “Pacific family” has not gone unnoticed among some Australian critics.

The author, Dr Juliet Hunt, is not impressed:

“If someone tries to break into our family or continually tells us that we are part of their family, how would we feel? Isn’t that a bit presumptuous?

The utterance of such family terminology brought with it a range of unpleasant neo-colonial connotations. For Hunt, the term would remain meaningless until “We show by our actions that we understand their points of view and that we respect them. Dare I suggest we wait until they return the feelings and wait until they call us family?

And a long wait that may turn out.