A Rainy Afternoon In September.

“I must say it is refreshing to find a person of your years displaying an interest in this part of the world. After all, as Henry Kissinger so crudely put it: ‘Only a handful of people live there Mr President. Nobody cares what happens to them.’”

GEORGE LIFTED HIS HAND in greeting as Martyn entered the bar. At two o’clock on a rainy afternoon in early September the place was virtually empty.

“I took the liberty of ordering you a bottle of cider, dear boy”, said the retired civil servant as Martyn hung his coat over the back of his chair. “Is that right?”

“Is that in my file, George? ‘Drinks cider’?”

Among other things. Although, I have to confess it’s been a while since I actually laid eyes on it. For all I know you may have abandoned your old tipple and embraced the fad for craft beer.”

“No, no. it’s still cider – so, thanks, and your very good health.”

“Don’t mention it, dear boy. It’s the least I can do for the man who winkled me out of my retirement shell on this inclement afternoon. I have to acknowledge that I was more than a little impressed that you had my number.”

“You’re not the only person with informants, George, or files for that matter.”

“Indeed.” George took a thoughtful sip of his single malt and waited for the younger man to speak.

“I’m told that you were, for many years, ‘Our Man in the Pacific’. And that there’s very little you don’t know about New Zealand’s back-yard – and what has gone on there since the Americans drove the Japanese back into a more manageable set of boundaries.”

“A trifle exaggerated, but essentially correct. I did, indeed, hold the South Pacific Desk for a number of years. I must say it is refreshing to find a person of your years displaying an interest in this part of the world. After all, as Henry Kissinger so crudely put it: ‘Only a handful of people live there Mr President. Nobody cares what happens to them.’ Why do you care, Martyn?”

“I care because the Chinese care. I thought you might have some insights as to why.”

George’s face broke into an avuncular grin. “Ah, yes! Our very, very, very good friends the Chinese. Their mission is not so much to show the peoples of the South Pacific how much they care, as it is to find out how much the United States, Australia and New Zealand care about the Pacific’s ‘handful of people’. That’s the way Chinese diplomacy works: they test; judge the target’s response; then test again. If they encounter strong resistance, the Chinese retreat. If they are met with indifference, they advance. If they are welcomed with open arms, they advance very fast.”

“How far would you say China has advanced in the last decade?”

“Quite a long way, dear boy, quite a long way. Of course her task was made easier by the fact that the West had got itself into such a horrible mess in the Middle East. While the fat American cat has been away, the oriental mice have been playing hard for the hearts and minds of our Pasifika brothers and sisters – and even harder for the wallets of their infinitely corruptible leaders. They have yet to discover that the trick with Pacific politicians is not just to buy them, but to persuade them to stay bought. We have slightly more experience in these matters, but the Chinese are nothing if not fast learners.”

“You don’t sound all that enamoured of the South Pacific political class. What ever happened to the ‘Pacific Way’?”

George took another sip of his whiskey and absently pattered his impressive head of silver hair into place.

“‘The Pacific Way’. Ah yes, that was a durable and extremely useful fiction. We turned a blind eye to the small and large scale corruption that dogged every one of the South Pacific’s post-colonial regimes, and, in return, they kept their people safe from the anti-imperialist virus that laid low so many Third World countries in the 1960s and 70s. Their non-viable economies were kept afloat by US, Australian and New Zealand aid, and by the money remitted from the thousands of Pasifika who had taken jobs in the Palangi’s factories and offices. It was the Cold War, Martyn, and we worked on the principle that although practically all of the Pacific leaders were a corrupt pack of bastards, they were, when all was said and done, our corrupt pack of bastards – and not the Chinese’ of the Soviets’ corrupt pack of bastards.”

Martyn stared at the old man, eyebrows raised, and slowly shook his head.

“But the Cold War is over, George.”

“Indeed it is, Martyn, indeed it is. For a few years, relieved of the need to keep the Russian’s out, we told the Pacific leaders that they would have to adapt to George Bush Senior’s ‘New World Order’ of globalisation, free markets and the sudden recovery of blind eyes. Needless to say, all hell broke loose politically in the South Pacific. The days of corrupt-but-stable governments were replaced by the days of corrupt-but-bloody-mad-and-unstable governments. What every leader was looking for was a diplomatic sugar-daddy – and, of course, as China’s economic strength grew by leaps and bounds, Beijing was only too happy to oblige.”

“Or, in the case of Nauru, the Australians.”

George set his glass down on the glass table-top with a loud crack.

“Don’t talk to me about Nauru and the bloody Aussies! That god-forsaken quarry was a condominium in which the Brits, the Aussies and the Kiwis were supposed to have an equal say. Fat chance! Even before their bloody awful ‘Pacific Solution’ came into play, Canberra had decided that Nauru was theirs to do with as they pleased. Something to stash away for a rainy day. Do you know, Martyn, I remember advising Clark, back at the time we signed the FTA with China, to convince our new-found friends that New Zealand could act as the cut-out for a Chinese takeover of Nauruan politics. Remember what I said about Pacific leaders being notorious for not staying bought? We could have left the Aussies high and dry!”

“Imagine the songs they’d be willing to sing for Jacinda if Nauru was a New Zealand-Chinese condominium – instead of an Australian concentration camp!”

“Imagine!”

George rose from his chair and reached out his hand to Martyn.

“That’s enough for one rainy afternoon, dear boy. Plenty to be going on with there.”

“Thanks, George. We must do this again.”

George was already at the door. Wobbling his hand in a farewell salute.

“You’ve got my number.”

This short story was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 7 September 2018.

The Kiwi Doctrine: Upholding and Restoring Human Rights In The South Pacific.

DIY Defence Of Human Rights: Imagine a highly-trained ready-reaction force combining elements of the army, navy and air-force specifically trained and equipped to project New Zealand military power independently across the South Pacific. Such a force would be capable of restoring ousted democratic governments in a matter of days.

WHEN THE LEFT-WING Fijian government of Timoci Bavadra was overthrown in May of 1987, I was outraged. At an executive meeting of the Labour Party’s Otago Regional Council, I asked my MP, Michael Cullen, what he and his government colleagues intended to do about this blatant attack on democracy in the South Pacific – New Zealand’s supposed “backyard”. Cullen was bemused. “What do you think we should do?”, he demanded. “Do our armed forces not have the capacity to intervene?”, I inquired. “What’s this? The ‘Trotter Doctrine’?”, Cullen chortled. The idea that New Zealand could intervene unilaterally in the South Pacific was dismissed as fanciful.

Interestingly, I was not the only member of the Labour Party who considered military intervention in Fiji an appropriate response to Sitiveni Rabuka’s coup d’etat. New Zealand’s prime minister, David Lange, had requested action from the NZ Armed Forces in response to the seizure of an Air New Zealand passenger plane, only to be informed by his departmental advisers that prime ministers lacked the requisite authority to order troops into action unilaterally. It was also made clear to Lange that the NZ Defence Force, as then constituted, would struggle to defeat the Fijian military in a full-on stoush.

That a democratically-elected, multi-ethnic, Labour-led coalition government could be overthrown in the name of reactionary indigeneity, while the Labour governments of New Zealand and Australia sat on their hands, struck a great many democratic socialists in the labour movements of both countries as outrageous. At a more personal level, the revelation that New Zealand’s armed forces could only respond to crises in the South Pacific by becoming an appendage to some much larger military operation struck me as appalling.

The genteel resistance encountered by Lange, coupled with the absurd configuration of New Zealand’s armed forces, confirmed what I had long suspected. This country operates on the assumption that it will not be permitted to act independently of its “friends” – Australia and the United States – and its armed forces have been organised and equipped in accordance with that assumption.

It gets worse. When the Labour-Alliance Government (1999-2002) determined to make New Zealand less dependent on its friends militarily, announced a radical re-configuration of the NZ Defence Force, there followed a series of disastrous equipment purchases which, to a cynical pair of eyes, looked suspiciously like sabotage. As if the “top-brass” were determined to de-rail and/or delay any and every reform which might render New Zealand capable of projecting its military power independently.

The election of the John Key-led National Government in 2008 locked-in the ill-effects of this military incapacity by starving the NZ Defence Force of the funding necessary to raise it above “appendage” status. When required, New Zealand can offer a very limited menu of services to the armed forces of Australia and the United States – but practically nothing else. In foreign affairs and defence terms, this leaves New Zealanders absolutely dependent upon the kindness of, if not strangers, then, at least, a couple of often quite disreputable “friends”.

Nowhere is that disreputability more in evidence than on the tiny island of Nauru. The Australians have deliberately subverted Nauruan democracy in order to facilitate their appalling “Pacific Solution” to the “problem” of seaborne refugees seeking asylum in the Lucky Country. New Zealand has had no option but to stand by helplessly while these friendless men, women and children have been subjected to treatment which is in clear breach of international law and Australia’s own undertakings. The New Zealand Government has repeatedly offered to take at least 150 of the refugees marooned on Nauru. The Australians have brushed aside all such offers with sneering contempt. After all, what can the Kiwis do about it?

What can the Kiwis do about it? Nothing. What could the Kiwis do about it with a radically re-configured and re-equipped NZDF? Plenty.

Imagine a highly-trained ready-reaction force combining elements of the army, navy and air-force and specifically trained and equipped to project New Zealand power both tactically and strategically. Such a force would be capable of securing airfields and harbours anywhere in the South Pacific. Deploying a combination of special forces and regular infantry units, the likes of Sitiveni Rabuka could be stopped in their tracks and ousted democratic governments restored to power in a matter of days.

In the case of Nauru, the ready-reaction force would be able to place the authoritarian regime under house arrest, disarm and detain its police force and Aussie jailers (just like Barbara Dreaver) and take the desperate refugees on board the air-force’s new C-130J Hercules transports. The detainees would be safe in New Zealand before the Aussies could even rub the sleep out of their eyes and demand to know “What the hell is going on!”

Wellington’s insouciant answer to Canberra would be that New Zealand was merely fulfilling its moral obligation to uphold international law. Over howls of Aussie rage, the government would then go on to quietly explain that this was the first – but hopefully not the last –demonstration of “The Kiwi Doctrine”.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 6 September 2018.

Poisoning Nauru: How Australia Is Destroying A Pacific Neighbour’s Democracy, While New Zealand’s Government Looks On.

Silencing All Opposition: Matthew Batsiua, one of five opposition MPs expelled from the Nauruan Parliament for challenging the increasingly dictatorial regime of President Baron Waqa, is arrested for leading a protest demonstration against its latest crackdown on free speech and the Internet. While Australia, in the name of its brutal "Pacific Solution", is poisoning Nauru's democratic institutions, New Zealand looks on in silence.

 

CORRUPTION IS LIKE POISON. Once inside your system it immediately starts attacking your defences. Eventually, if nothing is done to counteract its effects, it kills you. The tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru, situated approximately 4,000 kilometres north of Auckland, has been corrupted by Australia. Slowly but surely, its democratic institutions are being poisoned.

 

Some would argue that it all began a hundred years ago when the Australians turfed out the Germans at the beginning of the First World War. At the war’s end, Nauru was declared a League of Nations “mandate” under the joint control of the British, Australian and New Zealand governments. In reality, however, Nauru has always been an Aussie-run operation.

 

No one would have cared (other than the Nauruans, who weren’t consulted) had it not been for the fact that this tiny dot (just 21 square kilometres!) on the equator had, over thousands of years, accumulated hundreds-of-thousands of tons of top-quality bird shit.

 

Nauru’s phosphate deposits were among the purest in the world, a fact which conferred upon the hapless island territory the dangerous status of “strategic possession”. Ruthlessly extracted for use as fertiliser, Nauru’s phosphate deposits would, between 1920 and 1980, transform New Zealand’s farms into some of the most productive agricultural units on earth.

 

The Nauruans were not permitted to get their hands on this crucial resource until the late 1960s. For a few fat years the newly independent republic of Nauru waxed affluent on its rapidly dwindling guano deposits. Briefly, its citizens enjoyed one of the highest per capita incomes on earth. And then, suddenly, it was gone. Leaving Nauru as little more than, in David Lange’s memorable phrase: “a clapped-out quarry”.

 

What was Nauru to do? In 1991 it had $1.5 billion in its Nauru Phosphate Royalties Trust – a not insignificant capital base for 10,000 citizens looking for a fresh start. Tragically, by 2001, corruption and mismanagement had reduced the Trust’s resources to barely $100 million. With its levels of expenditure now well in excess of its income, Nauru was broke.

 

And then along came the Tampa and its hundreds of rescued asylum seekers. Little Johnny Howard responded by unconscionably exploiting Australia’s most visceral racist impulses. That created an urgent political need to get the whole festering problem off Australian soil. What Howard and his Liberal Party were looking for was a nation state that was not only willing to “accommodate” Australia’s unwanted asylum-seekers, but to also put a dampener on the enthusiasm of interfering human-rights lawyers, UN rapporteurs, and investigative journalists. Thus was born the “Pacific Solution”.

 

The detention of the Tampa refugees was arranged with indecent haste, but the transformation of Nauru into an hermetically-sealed island of unaccountable state power was bound to take a little longer. Nauru had a perfectly serviceable democratic constitution. It belonged to the Commonwealth and was a member of the Pacific Forum. It had a respectable and responsible judiciary made up of (mostly) Australian judges. Its small, Australian-trained, police force was reasonably competent and honest. On the debit side, the country was broke, and just about everybody lucky enough to have a job worked for the Nauruan government. Politics and public administration was the country’s Achilles’ Heel. To corrupt Nauru, all Howard (or any other Australian prime minister) needed was a fistful of aid dollars – and 10 of its 19 MPs.

 

It has taken 14 years, off and on, but the poison is clearly working. Nauru’s decision to host Australia’s concentration camps for asylum seekers has eroded every constitutional check and balance essential to the survival of democratic institutions.

 

The first casualty was the Nauruan judiciary. In January 2014 the Chief Justice of Nauru, Geoffrey Eames, was expelled from the country, along with the Australian magistrate, Peter Law. With them went the rule of law in the tiny republic. The administration of justice is now in the hands of persons answerable only to the politicians. Opponents of the Government can no longer rely on the courts for protection.

 

The police force, too, has fallen under political control. Its inevitable involvement in the oppression of the asylum seekers has fatally compromised its personnel as impartial enforcers of the law. The Nauruan Police have abandoned their role as the the citizens’ protectors to become the Government’s enforcers. In collusion with the private security personnel responsible for keeping “order” at the refugee detention centres, police officers are increasingly regarded as people to be feared; thugs who can break the law with impunity.

 

The reason so little news of these derelictions filters out of Nauru is due to the ruthless censorship applied by the state-owned and operated television and radio stations. Attempting to report such matters would instantly cost any local journalist his or her job. It’s no easier for foreign journalists. President Baron Waqa and his Cabinet have imposed a mandatory, non-refundable $8,000 “bond” on every journalist attempting to enter the country. If that doesn’t dampen their enthusiasm, the Nauruan immigration authorities can always arrange for them to be put on the next plane to Sydney or Auckland. Oh, and just in case young Nauruans might feel tempted to organise and communicate through social media, the Government has shut down Facebook.

 

Not surprisingly, with the Judiciary subverted, the Police corrupted and the news media gagged, Baron Waqa and his allies decided in June of last year that it was time to put the finishing touches to their 21 square kilometre dictatorship. This involved the suspension of all those members of the Nauruan parliament who refused to go along with Waqa’s increasingly lawless regime.

 

Last week, several hundred Nauruans, led by one of the suspended MPs, Matthew Batsiua, attempted to protest the Waqa Government’s ever more draconian attempts to shut down free speech and the Internet. As they approached Parliament House, the Nauruan Police (aided by security officers from the camps) waded into the crowd and a number of protesters were hurt. Batsiua, along with the opposition MPs Sprent Dabwido (a former President of Nauru) and Squire Jeremiah were later arrested and remain in custody. Another opposition MP, Roland Kun, was physically hauled off a plane due to depart for Wellington and has had his passport cancelled. The Waqa regime is apparently concerned that he will inform the outside world about what is happening in Nauru.

 

The silence of the Australian Government in the face of this “Lord of the Flies” descent into lawlessness and brutality is readily understood. Prime Minister Tony Abbott needs the Pacific Solution and he is fully aware that it cannot be made to work in a democratic country where the rule of law holds sway.

 

More difficult to understand, and harder to forgive, is the silence of our own government. The Nauruans and their phosphate may have made New Zealand rich, but that does not appear to have inspired a reciprocal determination on our part to keep them free.

 

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 25 June 2015.