{"id":1674,"date":"2021-02-10T16:13:07","date_gmt":"2021-02-10T05:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scriptorum.imagicity.com\/2021\/02\/10\/in-or-out\/"},"modified":"2021-02-10T16:13:07","modified_gmt":"2021-02-10T05:13:07","slug":"in-or-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/village-explainer.kabisan.com\/index.php\/2021\/02\/10\/in-or-out\/","title":{"rendered":"In or Out?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Back in my university days, I roomed with a lovely couple. Smart, talented, unorthodox\u2014my kind of people. And stable, too. That meant a lot. But about a year in, I felt the tension rising. I\u2019d hear them speaking in terse undertones, then stop suddenly when I entered the room.<\/p>\n

Finally, I had to ask. Is everything okay?<\/p>\n

\u201cNot really. We\u2019re either going to split up or get married.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was nonplussed. How could those be the only options? How could those options exist side by side?<\/p>\n

Now, watching the messy, all-too-avoidable spat between members\u2014and possibly, soon to be ex-members\u2014of the Pacific Islands Forum, I think I finally get it.<\/p>\n

There comes a time in every relationship where you\u2019re either all in or all out. Some people in Australia and New Zealand may think that decision belongs to the Micronesian states alone. And based on that assumption, they\u2019re no doubt working behind the scenes right now, doing their best to chivvy the northern alliance apart. Hoping that if they can induce one state\u2014Nauru most likely\u2014to go back on its promise to leave, lost cohesion will drive the others back into the fold.<\/p>\n

But the catalysing moment here was not Micronesia\u2019s decision to leave. It was the collective drift from consensus to majority rule. It\u2019s unfair to blame the developed members of the Forum for driving that choice. But they can fairly be taken to task for failing to understand the countless subtle reasons why consensus, not plurality, is so important to the Pacific.<\/p>\n

If there was a misjudgment on their part, this was it. They should have known they\u2019d be seen as the deciding\u2014and dividing\u2014votes.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s up to them now to learn this lesson, and to take it to heart. If they\u2019re going to be truly Pacific partners, they need to adopt Pacific ways.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not enough to listen, consult, and weigh what\u2019s best for the organisation if those considerations are only made at a distance, as some sort of benefactor. They\u2019re not there as donors, or development partners. They\u2019re there as members. They should not dominate (and by all accounts, they haven\u2019t here). Neither, though, should they defer.<\/p>\n

The decision to be in or out of the Forum belongs to Australia and New Zealand as much as it does to the bloc of five.<\/p>\n

First, though, let\u2019s get a few things straight. If we\u2019re honest about it, Henry Puna is by all accounts a more qualified candidate than Gerald Zackios. But as Dr Transform Aqorau astutely pointed out<\/a>, if we\u2019re basing the selection only on merit, Jimmy Stevens is the one who stands out. He\u2019s a deft facilitator and talented administrator with decades of experience at the regional level.<\/p>\n

We can conclude that competence was not the sole criterion, but it wasn\u2019t absent either. Certainly, it ranked above the principle of a sub-regional rota.<\/p>\n

Secondly, I\u2019ve seen no evidence to suggest that Mr Puna\u2019s selection was foisted on any individual member. Certainly not by Australia, and probably not by New Zealand.<\/p>\n

If the Micronesians have a complaint\u2014and they assuredly do\u2014it\u2019s with the Forum itself, not with any imagined interloper.<\/p>\n

We can find fault with many of the individual players in this debacle. I mean, we\u2019ve just witnessed our ship\u2019s officers argue their vessel across miles of sunlit open ocean, right into the only reef in a thousand miles. There could not be a stronger argument for a clearer, more detailed and more transparent leadership selection process.<\/p>\n

But new rules can only come once comity is restored. And that\u2019s not something that\u2019s going to happen in Canberra or Wellington. The last election to cause real division was that of Greg Urwin, whose candidacy was driven by John Howard. Many rightly complained about the ham-fisted manner in which it was handled. I was a newcomer to the Pacific at the time, but even I was aware of the ructions, and of the widespread perception that this was an Australian ploy to keep tabs on its Pacific neighbours.<\/p>\n

It was Mr Urwin himself who saved the day. He did it by being one of the best Secretaries General the Forum has seen. He won his second term by acclamation, but was tragically struck down by cancer before he could complete it.<\/p>\n

The current crisis will test Henry Puna\u2019s mettle. It will also be a test, not just of the depth, but of the kind<\/em> of commitment Australia and New Zealand are willing to make to the Forum.<\/p>\n

As happens during any crisis, there\u2019s a lot of pressure on Canberra and Wellington to Do Something. But what can they usefully do? They will almost certainly be cast an interlopers if they try to broker a step-down. Rightly or wrongly, it\u2019s an age-old Pacific tradition to blame the outsider.<\/p>\n

They can\u2019t be just be some sort of benevolent Spirit Guide, either. They can\u2019t pretend to be inert or neutral in this. They\u2019re members just like everyone else.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, they can\u2019t cast this as an external matter. New Zealand knows this already. It has repeatedly reaffirmed its stance as a Pacific nation. And the sooner Australia quits thinking of the Pacific as a frontier, the better.<\/p>\n

To my knowledge, Julie Bishop is the only Australian politician of note who has ever uttered the phrase \u2018Australia is a Pacific nation.\u2019 It\u2019s not bordered by the Pacific. It\u2019s in<\/em> the Pacific.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s neither a passenger nor a benefactor. It\u2019s a member. And the sooner it takes that membership seriously, the better. The sooner it learns to operate as a Pacific nation, surrounded by its Pacific peers, the better.<\/p>\n

The answer here for Australia and New Zealand is not to Do Something, but rather to Be Something. They need to be good members. They need to treat their role as neither a sideshow nor a star turn. That means shouldering the duties and responsibilities, and wearing the results.<\/p>\n

The sooner they accept that they\u2019re in the Pacific, the sooner they\u2019ll be able to do something about it.<\/p>\n

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The Village Explainer is a semi-regular newsletter containing analysis and insight focusing on under-reported aspects of Pacific societies, politics and economics.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in my university days, I roomed with a lovely couple. Smart, talented, unorthodox\u2014my kind of people. And stable, too. That meant a lot. But about a year in, I felt the tension rising. I\u2019d hear them speaking in terse undertones, then stop suddenly when I entered the room. Finally, I had to ask. Is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/village-explainer.kabisan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/village-explainer.kabisan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/village-explainer.kabisan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/village-explainer.kabisan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/village-explainer.kabisan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/village-explainer.kabisan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/village-explainer.kabisan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/village-explainer.kabisan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/village-explainer.kabisan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}