 Welcome to State of the Pacific 2014. I'm James Guha, editor at the A&U College of Asian and Pacific. Today I'm joined by Professor Sinclair Dinnan and Dr John Cox from the State Society and Governance in Melanesia Programme here to discuss some of the major transitions taking place across the region. Gentlemen, thanks for joining me. Monty James. Sinclair, if I could turn to you first. Perhaps one of the biggest developments in 2014 are scheduled elections in Fiji and the country's seeming return to the democratic fold. What does this mean for the country itself and the Pacific in general? Well it's clearly very significant for Fiji having experienced almost eight years without an elected government and having sort of resisted quite a lot of international pressure over the years to return to democracy. We've also witnessed very recently a significant change in Australia's policy towards Fiji from a fairly sort of standoff, sensorious position to one of one of engagement and I think there's great expectations in Fiji as well as more broadly around the region about this prospect of returning to democracy. I think some of the bigger issues, I mean there's been a lot of fallout indirectly from what's happened in Fiji, including with regional organizations like the Pacific Island Forum which is based in Fiji and previously was certainly the premier regional organization for member states. PIF has been adversely affected I think by developments in Fiji and we've seen a growth of sub-regional organizations, most naturally the Melanesian spearhead groups. There's been a lot of movement that has been going on around the Fiji situation so its resolution I think will hopefully provide a clarity that has been missing. And more broadly speaking there's been a lot of major political developments in the region as well, Solomon Islands, Bougainville and New Caledonia. What do these mean for the region? Well there are other examples of fairly significant transitions in particular countries in the case of New Caledonia and in Bougainville there is the possibility of referendums which will determine their future political status in the one case whether independence occurs or it continues to be part of France and the case of Bougainville whether it it also moves on towards an independent political status or remains an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea. In the case of Solomon Islands what we see is the the first election following the drawdown or the transition from the decade long regional assistance mission to Solomon Islands and during that period there's obviously been a great deal of engagement in the area of working with government institutions in the area of trying to improve governance more broadly and service delivery. How is that going to be reflected in the voting patterns of Solomon Islands faced with an election later this year? In some ways all of these developments are separate but they do I think sort of indicate that the the the region doesn't stand still. It's a region of considerable diversity and the international actors who are engaging in that region are also changing the larger geostrategic environment in the Pacific sees the return rhetorically at any rate of the US after a long period away. We see relatively new actors like China taking a great deal of interest in the region and we see other actors engaging as well so the the geostrategic sort of shifts that are taking place I think are very significant. We'll have to watch how these play out. They clearly have implications for Australia for a long time Australia as an external actor has had this part of the world very much to itself. That is no longer the case in some countries notably Papua New Guinea the economy has been growing at an incredible rate on the back of a major resource boom and that has an impact on the leverage of external players such as Australia that traditionally have sought to exercise their influence primarily through aid. We see as a result of these economic developments considerably less reliance on aid in a place like Papua New Guinea. And John a range of new actors as Sinclair has just mentioned like countries like China operating in the Pacific in very different ways. What are they doing? What impact is this having on the region but also in terms of development what are the Pacific populace and people doing themselves? Yeah I think these are the big questions that our presenters are going to dig into in the course of the next two days in the State of the Pacific conference but they are really big questions and we just can't ever know enough about China's role in the Pacific and we have a number of scholars here at the ANU who are working on that kind of thing. I suppose I don't know how much the audience here knows about China and the Pacific but it's not necessarily a story about a threat to our interests as a country and I think some of the material that will be presented in State of the Pacific will show how China and Australia are actually cooperating on development assistance. That said I think Australia is used to being the dominant regional power and so there is a change in that dynamic not only at the government level but also in terms of private sector investments and I think one of the disturbing things that a few of us are picking up in P&G, Solomon Islands and perhaps in other places around the region is populace anti-China is activism so that's a matter of concern and unrest I suppose is a bit of a wake-up call to to some of us about you can read the economic statistics at one level and yet that's not necessarily how the population experiences economic growth or economic change and I think again in some of the the sessions that we're holding over the next few days we'll see how are people in Papua New Guinea or people in Vanuatu or people in Fiji responding to some of these changing economic dynamics what are they doing themselves to earn their livelihoods what are the some of the new opportunities we've got some people in from the Pacific Pacific Commission who do work on organic agriculture and free trade and that's really a movement about creating new markets for Pacific agricultural products in New Zealand and Australia and further afield so there are some very creative things happening it's it's it's not a story of doom and gloom and disaster although of course you know we have had some big disasters in the region this year I'm thinking of the Solomon Islands floods in March and you know we're still looking at what the longer term impacts of events like that are and and that'll be a little bit tested I suppose in the Solomon Islands elections this year which we we're also bringing in some experts to discuss so there's there's there's an enormous amount going on and it's sort of hard to to encapsulate it in a snappy answer but but it's a very dynamic region and there's lots of change and a lot of the change is quite progressive and exciting as well as in some cases a bit disturbing and foreboding and you also alluded to this notion of aid from the region rather than aid coming into the region earlier can you extrapolate on that a little bit more and explain what you mean by that premise well I mean there's there's lots of different ways of approaching it but I mean I think aid donors are always trying to find more effective ways of delivering their aid and they're always trying to generate more buy-in I suppose from their recipients more ownership more initiative and I think one of the things we'll be profiling is how people in the Pacific are actually taking that initiative themselves and in a sense are not sitting around waiting for Australia to rescue them from some terrible situation they're there they're selling Beetle Nut in the markets this is Papua New Guinea's biggest local commodity which aid donors have absolutely nothing to do with and a whole lot of livelihoods for well probably millions of people in BNG are connected to that trade so that that's that's sort of one example of of this kind of local initiative things that are happening outside the state things that are happening outside the regulatory frameworks outside the influence of aid donors and yet shape those the grounds of the kind of interventions that perhaps Australia wants to try out in stimulating economic growth in the Pacific fantastic and now if I could turn to both of you on this question and as Sinclair alluded earlier Australia seems to be retreating from the region to some extent particularly with major aid spending cuts by the most recent government how would you describe our country's future in the region and in particular does the region need us for its future I think it was a very big question and and again I mean the region is made up of lots of different countries with different needs different challenges Australia I think will continue to be a major player in the region for all kinds of reasons geographic historical and so on I think the the current sort of emphasis on reviewing the nature of aid relationships I mean this is something that goes on all the time so it's not necessarily something new and it's something that has to be done I think with significant changes some of which we've been talking about occurring within the region business as usual is no longer an appropriate way forward and Australia has to think very carefully in relation to particular countries how it can best assist processes underway in those countries and I don't think that there is a one size fits all approach that it can adopt I think I mean of the lessons of a very long history of aid being provided by Australia in the region one of the very clear lessons is that Australia needs to have a much better understanding of those countries with which it's engaging the nature of the the dynamics of work in those countries and to be able to tailor its engagement you know to those very particular contacts I think another thing and this alludes to what John was saying earlier on that a lot of the transformation that is occurring in the region has nothing to do with aid it's occurring because of economic change it's occurring because of technological change and also there are organic changes taking place Papua New Guinea is another good example where you have an embryonic middle class emerging which is not dependent on the state for its well-being and which is beginning to be quite vocal I think about a lot of the the challenges that Papua New Guinea faces including for example corruption and it's really when when people in the country's concerns start addressing those issues that I think we're going to see significant progress so another broad lesson from this much longer history of of aid in the region is that aid is only one relatively small part of a much more complex picture of transformation and change and that perhaps in the past our expectations of what we can achieve through aid have been unrealistically high but I think the the changing reality on the ground is that that lesson is is is becoming very apparent I think simply that in some ways our keynote speakers encapsulate those two trends that on the one hand we've got Amanda Dinegi who's a young businesswoman from Papua New Guinea she's a publisher she's put out this new women's magazine that is full of very empowering images of a whole range of Papua New Guinea women and one of our colleagues Kevin Spark has done some research analysing this but but this Stella magazine Amanda's magazine has this vision of empowered Pacific women it's not what you'd think of as a conventional feminist you know kind of tractor or anything it's something that gets a very wide readership and it's an intelligently put together magazine but and on the other our other keynote speaker Vera Cillipour and drama is perhaps more a traditional leader of a feminist organization of Fiji Women's Rights Center which has been established with the help of aid donors and has done an enormous amount of a world of good for women in Fiji and across the region in terms of changing those gender roles so I think we've got a mix of of both and I suppose we haven't mentioned gender really is one of the transformations that's going on in the region but I think that is also something that's a big focus of this conference is how are men's roles and women's roles changing in the face of all this economic change and is there a backlash against women taking you know more empowered roles within the economy we're tracking that through some research projects here at SSGN and but are there other kind of shifts in gender roles like the influence of sapendic cost of Christianity that's just changing the way that men and women think about themselves and their relationships to each other so we're getting a bit off track with the Australia question but I think too and I don't know what I don't know how keynote speakers personally but I think you know both of them are people who do their work in in relationship to Australia and we're very very pleased to have them here but they both accepted our invitations very quickly which we're very grateful for so I think if nothing else Australia will have a role in nurturing the talent in the Pacific in giving education in assisting people with skills and I suppose developing those person-to-person relationships is that have an enormous depth of time and they're often not visible to mainstream Australia but people who live in the Pacific all have Australian friends they follow Australian footy teams there's a lot of very very very close cultural connections and increasingly they have relatives who live here as well and I think that's that's also something that the conference will focus on is the flies of people between the Pacific and Australia and and some of the futures of things like greater mobility schemes and how they contribute to the mix of a sustainable and prosperous Pacific deep into the future great well thanks gentlemen for joining us today and giving us an oversight of some of the challenges opportunities but also change which is taking place in the region it's a pleasure thank you and you can check in with the ANU iTunes channel for podcasts from the conference from all our keynote speakers and panelists exploring these issues in greater depth