Australian Engagement with the Pacific Islands 1988-2007
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Overseeing and Overlooking: Australian engagement with the Pacific islands 1988-2007 Jonathan Schultz Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy October 2012 School of Political and Social Sciences The University of Melbourne Abstract Since Europeans first settled in the region, Australian policy-makers have understood that Australia has security, commercial and humanitarian interests in the Pacific islands. Despite this stable set of interests, Australian engagement has fluctuated greatly; its underlying approach has changed regularly while Australian governments have found it difficult to achieve their objectives. Explanations for this paradox largely rest on the relative weakness of Australian interests and their consequent inability to drive policy in a sustained fashion. However accurate these analyses, their focus on factors that are lacking posits Australian policy as an aberration from policy norms and provides little explanation for the policies that have been adopted in the absence of strong driving interests. This thesis seeks to fill this gap through a historical narrative that traces the formation and implementation of Australian policies to the actions of key policy-makers from 1988 until 2007. Building on theories of foreign policy and public policy-making, it develops a model that links the observed fluctuations in Australian engagement and changes in its approach to the Pacific islands with events in the Pacific islands, the advocacy of ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and the personality and predilections of the Foreign Minister. Its sources were qualitative and interpretative elite interviews with participants in the making and implementation of Australian policy, newspaper articles, governmental speeches and official reports. The key findings of this thesis are that Australian interests in the Pacific islands have weak institutional representation, rendering Australian engagement particularly dependent on ministerial attention. Policy entrepreneurs have played a critical role in attracting this attention through invoking some crisis in Australia’s relationships with the Pacific islands and, crucially, presenting a ready policy response. Between such events, Australian engagement has tended to stagnate as relationships with the Pacific islands are neglected. This pattern has been aggravated, firstly, by the social and political upheaval that has regularly occurred in the Pacific islands, and secondly, by the tendency of Australian officials to incite resistance through insensitive expressions of Australian power. The primary implication of these conclusions is that only strengthened institutional commitment to Australia’s relationships with the Pacific islands is likely to moderate their volatility. Declaration This is to certify that i. the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD; ii. due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used; iii. the thesis is fewer than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. Jonathan Schultz Date Preface On the morning of 24 July 2003, I was woken from my sleep on the old wooden yacht, Wendy Ann, anchored in Honiara, by the unfamiliar sound of a helicopter flying overhead. Stepping onto the deck I could see the Australian navy vessel HMAS Manoora further out to sea. I was witnessing the launch of a radical new and muscular form of Australian engagement with its Pacific island neighbours that would in the course of time become the subject of my doctoral research project. I first arrived in Solomon Islands in January 2003 on a visit to my sister, a doctor working in Kirakira, an overnight ferry trip from Honiara. One of my first experiences was being asked by Australians whom I encountered on what aid project I was working and receiving bemused reactions to my reply that I was merely a tourist. Locals in Kirakira and around the island of Makira were more understanding once they learned that I was the doctor’s brother. Over the next six months I travelled by foot, tractor, dinghy, ferry and yacht around Makira and parts of Central and Western Province. I learned of the troubles that had struck Solomon Islands since 1999 from reading and talking to people. I followed the evolution of Australia’s policy response by listening to Radio Australia on short-wave radio and accessing the Internet where I could. I came to understand the pre-eminent role that Australia plays in Solomon Islands and to feel the frustration of Pacific islanders at Australian insensitivity and ineffectiveness in fulfilling that role. In choosing to make Australian engagement in the Pacific islands the subject of my doctoral research I imagined that I would discover Australian duplicity and callousness. I soon found that these characteristics, while certainly present, capture only a part of the story of Australia’s approach to the Pacific islands. In writing this thesis, I have sought to tell the story of Australian policy-making from the perspective of those who were involved in the process. I leave the reader to decide the normative implications of this research project. i Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the patience and invaluable contributions and assistance in the long process of producing this thesis of my supervisors Ann Capling and Derek McDougall. I am particularly grateful to the many individuals who agreed to be interviewed and the many others who offered me their insights along the way. I thank the staff and fellow students at the University of Melbourne and the University of the South Pacific who helped me in so many ways with my research. For proof- reading drafts of this thesis, my mother Elizabeth Schultz and partner Serendipity Rose deserve special thanks. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to my loyal friends and family who never doubted that I would complete this work and thus helped to ensure that I did. ii Table of contents Preface...................................................................................................................................i Acknowledgements...........................................................................................................ii Table of contents..............................................................................................................iii Acronyms............................................................................................................................vi Map of Australia and the Pacific islands region.......................................................ix Introduction........................................................................................................................1 Existing interpretations...............................................................................................................4 Weaving the threads together: a model of foreign policy-making................................10 Research design and methodology.........................................................................................11 Key findings: weak institutionalisation and engagement cycles....................................15 Chapter outline............................................................................................................................16 1 – Accounting for changing foreign policy.............................................................18 The determinants of foreign policy........................................................................................19 International setting.............................................................................................................20 Australia, the Pacific islands and the world...................................................................22 Geography.........................................................................................................................22 Economics..........................................................................................................................24 Us and them: The ANZUS alliance and other countries........................................25 International organisations...........................................................................................27 Conflicting tendencies: ‘middle power’ or regional leader...................................28 Australian power and Pacific island resistance........................................................30 Pacific regionalism...........................................................................................................32 Domestic setting....................................................................................................................33 Australian societal influences.............................................................................................36 Governmental setting...........................................................................................................39 Pacific policy-making in Australia....................................................................................41 Threats, opportunities and responsibilities: enduring Australian ideas..................44 Explaining continuity and change: the policy process......................................................47 Conclusions..................................................................................................................................48 2 – The Pacific islands.....................................................................................................50