Cynics will be tempted to dismiss President Yudhoyono’s appearance at last month’s Pacific Islands Development Forum (PIDF) summit—the first visit by an Indonesian president to Fiji—as a combination of Jakarta’s seeking to neutralise Melanesian agitation about West Papua and Suva’s ‘I get along without you very well’ bravado directed at Australia and NZ. But while there’s something to that view, it disregards longer-term undercurrents at our peril.

Let’s start with a skeptical take on Suva’s ‘more Jakarta less Canberra claim’. Fiji created the PIDF, following Suva’s suspension from the Pacific Islands Forum, to address perceptions that Australia and NZ have undue influence there, while civil society, private sector, and non-traditional external bodies are underrepresented. Yet only a handful of leaders from the Forum’s 16 states attended. Without greater funding, the PIDF has little potential to compete with the practical functions performed by the Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s bureaucrats, let alone the vital fisheries, health, education and other services delivered by the Forum. Liked or not, Australia remains the region’s indispensable donor and security hub. The Bainimarama government’s detractors predict bodies such as the PIDF will fizzle out as soon as Fiji returns to democracy. Read more

In a recent op-ed I suggested that as we’re now normalising our relations with Fiji we shouldn’t just go back to the ‘same old, same old’ when it comes to defence cooperation.

The great advantage of military relationship-building is that much of it can be done without attracting too much political attention. The new Commander of Republic of Fiji Military Forces (RFMF) is a graduate of the Australian Defence Force Staff College, and he’ll likely be receptive to engagement with his Australian counterparts. Early resumption of places for Fijian officers at our training establishments, along with participation in joint exercises should be part of a normal Fiji–Australia relationship.

But I also suggested that one new idea we might consider would be ADF training courses in Fiji or Australia to prepare young Fijians to be, at the same time, Australian permanent residents and ADF recruits: after they’d performed sufficient loyal service, this would lead to Australian citizenship. Fiji would benefit from the remittances. Alternatively, if there were concerns we were ‘cherry- picking’ the best and brightest, they could go back under a return-of-service obligation and strengthen the RFMF (Fiji now allows dual citizenship). Read more

All change for Fiji. The Supremo is hanging up his uniform and becoming a civilian leader to give his New Order vision democratic credentials. For Canberra and Suva, this is the time to change the script as everyone prepares for elections. This series started by discussing the systemic struggle between Australia as the status quo power in the South Pacific and Fiji as the revisionist power.

My previous column discussed the sweet and the sour of the diplomatic goodies Australia is deploying as it pursues normalisation. Now I’ll turn to the range of mutually beneficial goodies on offer. Read more

Australia’s long experience of dealing with a New Order regime in Indonesia provides only limited insights for engaging with Fiji’s New Order.

The previous two columns (one and two) explored Canberra’s current headaches in trying to improve diplomatic relations with Suva and the nature of Fiji’s New Order. With that as prelude, the question to consider is what the previous New Order experience can offer to the future Suva game plan?

Let’s start with some of the differences. Indonesia will always be Australia’s most important relationship in Southeast Asia; Fiji will never be the number one country for Australia in the South Pacific.

Another difference—a problem as much for Fiji as for Australia—is that Suharto was smarter than Bainimarama. Suharto was far more corrupt, violent and cunning, and carried just as many cronies and carpetbaggers, but his regime was also served by some highly intelligent and competent experts (especially on the economic side). Read more

What’s China up to in our near neighbourhood? That’s an important question at a time when Australia has just declared that we’ll structure the ADF around just two of our Principal Tasks (PDF), the second of which is to promote stability and security in the South Pacific and Timor-Leste.

In this context, Jenny-Hayward Jones’ new Lowy paper, Big Enough for All of Us: Geo-Strategic Competition in the Pacific Islands, provides some welcome nuance on what China’s growing presence and economic clout may mean (and not mean) for regional countries’ interests and ours.

Although analysts have questioned the strength of the ‘causal link between the strategic theology of the initial chapters of the White Paper and the wish list of equipment projects further in’, Australia’s renewed security focus on the near neighbourhood is real. While the South Pacific contains less than 10 million of ‘the half billion souls that live between us and China’, the real estate and inhabitants of the region are important for reasons I’ve explained elsewhere. Read more