Pacific ‘Solutions’ and Imaginaries: Reshaping Pacific relations or re-colonising the ‘sea of islands’?

Abstract

Asia Pacific Viewpoint. For much of the time in New Zealand and Australia, our journal’s name has little resonance with the bulk of the population in these countries. There are moments though, when events at home and abroad come together to pull the respective gaze of New Zealanders and Australians away from more parochial fascinations, such as the RugbyWorld Cup taking place in New Zealand as we write, and from the Western media geographies that direct attention to North America and Europe, with occasional glimpses of military activities in the Middle East. These moments can be revealing, in large part because of the glimpse they give us of the national ‘viewpoint’ towards the Asia Pacific and how countries in the region are scripted. Three recent events and trends give us cause to pause and reflect on where the current relationship between New Zealand, Australia and the Asia Pacific region is at, not just in terms of the diplomatic or economic form of the relationship, but also in terms of the imaginaries associated with the region. The raison d’etre of Asia Pacific Viewpoint since its establishment in the 1960s has been to improve ‘understanding of the changes that are transforming the Asian and Pacific scene’ (Buchannan, 1960) and encourage alternative viewpoints and perspectives. Our brief analysis of three contemporary examples suggests that we have a long way to go. Asia Pacific viewpoints are central to recent Australian debates regarding refugee policies. In 2001, conservative Prime Minister John Howard controversially refused to let the Norwegian tanker, the MV Tampa, dock at an Australian port after it had saved 433 mainly Afghani asylum seekers from a sinking vessel between Indonesia and Australia. With an election looming, and conservative voices manipulating widespread anti-refugee feelings that bordered on hysteria, Howard deployed military forces to prevent the vessel from landing before hastily devising the ‘Pacific Solution’. Rather than ‘process’ (a disgracefully dehumanising term) the asylum seekers on Australian soil, he looked first to Indonesia, who refused, then to more economically dependent states in Melanesia. The former Australian colonial territory of Papua New Guinea, which allowed Manus Island to be used as a ‘human processing zone’, and the tiny island state of Nauru (whose once bountiful supplies of phosphate had long since been diminished by Australian mining companies and used to enhance the New Zealand and Australian agricultural economies) became sites to ‘outsource’ and ‘offshore’ humanitarian responsibilities (see Rajaram, 2003). Midway through the stand-off, the Twin Towers were brought down, contributing to public anxieties and approval of Howard’s handling of the crisis, even as Australia’s international reputation floundered. For Howard and his supporters, the episode rejuvenated long-established anxieties many Australians hold towards Asian refugees and migrants, rekindling the ‘Yellow Peril’ fears that underlay the country’s notorious White Australia policy. In contrast, the Pacific was scripted as neo-colonial spaces where Australia could forgo its humanitarian obligations and Asia Pacific Viewpoint, Vol. 52, No. 3, December 2011 ISSN 1360-7456, pp233–235