Oz new Foreign Affairs minister

from w
Bob Carr apparently relented and decided to take up a Senate position and the Foreign Affairs role after Rudd moved to the back bench. A good man, smart and popular I think, so I wonder what will be his relation to the people of the Pacific Islands, especially Fiji.

Former premier was ready to take the stage
March 1, 2012
OPINION


If Bob Carr had become foreign minister he'd have brought to the job extensive contacts, very firm views, and an activist approach to Australia's diplomacy. Carr would have been determined to make a splash, both in the Senate and on the world stage.

According to those with whom he has shared his views, he would have very likely closed down the Australian drive to get a seat on the UN Security Council.

The expansion of Australian activities in Africa would have been reviewed in favour of more representation in Chinese and Indian cities and the Gulf area.

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And the government would have been looking carefully at its guiding principles for dealing with the US-China competition in the Asia-Pacific region.

Carr knows personally a dozen members of the US Senate, and calls Henry Kissinger a friend. He has spoken to many in the Chinese leadership and is at home talking about Chinese dynastic history.

As he settled into the job, one of his first tasks would have been to consult those who had earlier run foreign policy, including former prime ministers Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard, and former foreign ministers Gareth Evans, Alexander Downer and Kevin Rudd.

In the Senate, the theatrical Carr style might have attracted a few more journalists to tune into the upper house's question time.

Although the NSW ALP and, it seems, the PM, were attracted to the radical idea of the Carr experiment, Stephen Smith and presumably some others were not. Smith had had to stand aside when Rudd demanded the foreign affairs job.



Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/former-premier-was-ready-to-take-the-stage-20120229-1u3fi.html#ixzz1nwAPxAyW
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and more recently
from ABC
Carr rejects talk of softening Fiji stance
By New Zealand correspondent Dominique Schwartz

Posted March 09, 2012 20:26:46

Foreign minister designate Bob Carr has rejected media reports that he is planning to soften Australia's hard stance against Fiji.Mr Carr was speaking in Auckland after holding informal talks with his New Zealand counterpart Murray McCully. Mr Carr said he had noted Friday's announcement by Fiji's military leader Frank Bainimarama about planned public consultation over a new constitution.

Both Mr Carr and Mr McCully greeted the announcement with caution and said time would tell if the Fiji's rulers were truly moving towards democratic elections. The former New South Wales premier also says he will be seeking more information from the ACTU about the human rights situation for workers in Fiji. Mr Carr says he wants to further investigate claims that any union official who speaks out against the interim government still risks life imprisonment.

"Certainly one of the tests we'd consider in the future is the right of organisation in the workplace," he said. "That's a fundamental human right. I'd expect to have more conversations with unionists, in particular the ACTU."

Mr Carr said his hour-long discussion with Mr McCully about the region was wide-ranging and helpful. He will meet prime minister John Key on Saturday morning.

It is his first overseas trip since being named the replacement for Kevin Rudd. He is due to be sworn in as a senator and foreign minister on Tuesday.

Is talking better than silence?

from w
The official relationship between Fiji and Australia is troublesome when we remember how it used to be. At least talking is better than silence and mulling over disagreements from a distance.

From the ABC Radio
MARK COLVIN: Australia has waived its travel ban against a senior member of Fiji's military-led Government. Fiji's Foreign Minister will now be able to travel to Canberra for talks tonight aimed at restoring frayed diplomatic ties.

Tit-for-tat expulsions late last year marked a low point in relations with the regime of Commodore Frank Bainimarama. Now, Ratu Inoke Kubuabola is in Canberra for what are billed as private talks with Foreign Minister Stephen Smith and their New Zealand counterpart, Murray McCully.

From Canberra, Radio Australia's Linda Mottram reports.

LINDA MOTTRAM: The downward spiral in relations between Australia and New Zealand on the one hand and Fiji on the other, hit a new low last November. That's when Fiji expelled the two countries' high commissioners, over allegations of interference in Fiji's appointment of judges, and Australia and New Zealand reciprocated, denying the claims.

It left particularly New Zealand with its strong ties to Fiji, but normally small diplomatic presence there, virtually unable to carry out vital consular tasks. Now, there's an attempt to get diplomatic ties back on track.

STEPHEN SMITH: Interim Fiji Foreign Minister Kubuabola will meet in Canberra with Minister McCully and I to discuss these diplomatic issues.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Australia's Foreign Minister Stephen Smith announcing the planned private meeting in Canberra, after he'd held a round of regular bilateral talks with New Zealand's Murray McCully. To make the private meeting happen, Mr Smith waived Australia's travel ban that applies to members of the Bainimarama regime as part of the sanctions imposed over the December 2006 coup, and continuing suspension of democracy in Fiji.

And both Murray McCully and Stephen Smith are emphatic the meeting in no way represents a change in their hardline views on Fijian coup politics.

STEPHEN SMITH: We are not proposing to discuss those matters which go to the Pacific Islands Forum's decisions in respect of Fiji, nor indeed the Commonwealth's decisions in respect of Fiji but to see if it is possible to put the formal diplomatic relationship between Australia and Fiji and New Zealand and Fiji onto a better footing.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Having had now a total of three heads of mission sent home by Fiji, New Zealand is particularly anxious. And just before Christmas Mr McCully flew to Nadi to meet Foreign Minister Kubuabola to try to make some headway.

They agreed to reinstate a consular position in their respective high commissions. But the nominee from Fiji was provocative some say, in key Bainimarama offsider Colonel Neumi Leweni, who's also on the Australian and New Zealand travel bans list. Murray McCully refers to him simply as an alleged nomination.

MURRAY MCCULLY: We don't discuss proposed diplomatic appointments.

LINDA MOTTRAM: As to what might be achieved by the meeting with Foreign minister Kubuabola in Canberra, Mr McCully spelled out a quite fundamental obstacle.

MURRAY MCCULLY: We need to get to a point with Fiji where we can maintain missions regardless of serious disagreements we have about matters of strongly held principle. And that is not something that is accepted yet. We are going to have to spend some time trying to get to that point.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Stephen Smith was also keeping expectations low. The significance of the meeting was that there was to be a meeting. A decision to have another meeting would be regarded as progress. So he saw no quick prospect of restoring full diplomatic ties.

STEPHEN SMITH: I think a lot of water will need to go under the bridge before those respective high commissioners can be reinstated.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Fergus Hanson from the Sydney think tank the Lowy Institute for International Policy met with Foreign Minister Kubuabola two weeks ago in Suva.

FERGUS HANSON: The sense that I got was that they were interested in restoring diplomatic relations between the two countries and that an approach of conflict wasn't in either side's interest. And I think also obviously they were very keen to get a softening in some of the sanctions that have been leveraged against the regime.

LINDA MOTTRAM: Other observers though say the Fiji Foreign Minister carries little weight in the Bainimarama regime and they caution Australia and New Zealand not to give anything to Fiji that could be used to legitimise the regime.

MARK COLVIN: Linda Mottram.

Australia not looking at Fiji, but China is

from w
from the Canberra Times journalist looking at the relationship between Oz and Fiji.

Poor links with Fiji part of wider Pacific problem
NICHOLAS STUART
7/10/2008 9:43:00 AM

The Pacific has always been our backyard, and a friendly place that we've used for restful holidays to ''get away from it all''. As a result we took the tiny island states for granted, even when they were beginning to fall apart from internal conflicts and violence. We're still doing it; sleeping in blissful ignorance, even though the old regional dynamic is dangerously threatened and about to change forever to our immense disadvantage.

The clearest example of how these secure regional waters have suddenly changed into treacherous ones can be seen in Australia's relationship with Fiji. A series of coups, and the current military-dominated Government (that we don't approve of) threw up a series of diplomatic challenges. How would it be possible to criticise the army for seizing power and still maintain a close relationship with the people of all ethnic groups on the islands?

Achieving this balance has proved to be completely beyond Australia's capacity. Instead of redoubling efforts to find a new way of engaging with different constituencies, Australia is now perceived as a wishy-washy regional power, prevaricating between action and rhetoric, completely unable to decide how it should act. By trying to walk in the centre, and sticking to a delicately neutral line, it has managed to alienate everyone.

The biggest blunder was probably the heavy-handed military exercise that took place just off the coast of Fiji in 2006. This was gunboat diplomacy of the worst sort; farce that rapidly descended into tragedy when a helicopter was lost off the deck of HMAS Kanimbla. Two men died and another eight were injured. This terrible event vividly demonstrated if there was any doubt that Australia had absolutely no capacity to take any military action against the coup leader. But when Fiji's Prime Minister Commodore Frank Bainimarama visited China recently he didn't just intend to spend his time watching the Olympic Games. When he left Beijing he took a sensational present with him: a multi-billion-dollar soft loan that at one stroke has completely emancipated the islands from any reliance on Australian aid. Fiji has realised as have other Pacific islands that the emerging Chinese superpower is now ready to back its desires to engage with the region with serious money.

In a matter of weeks Australia has lost its once pre-eminent status in the region. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade was unable to provide even an off-the-record briefing about either the detail of the loan to Fiji, or how it might be spent. It would be difficult to find a clearer indication of just how we were blindsided by the Chinese initiative, which has left our own efforts in the region completely outflanked.

It is neither possible nor desirable for Australia to buy influence in the region as it cannot hope to match the large amounts of money that a superpower can throw at the island states. Nevertheless, where Australia has been able to shine in the past is by demonstrable goodwill, contact and genuine assistance over a long period of time.

The flagship of our defence program has been provided by the Pacific Patrol Boat program, which was announced with much fanfare by then prime minister Bob Hawke, at a Pacific Forum meeting in 1983. Originally the program was to equip eight countries with 10 patrol boats; it was such a success that 12 countries now operate 22 of the boats.

The vessels are small (just 31.5m long and operated by a crew of 19 sailors), but they're crucial for the islands. The boats represent the only way the forum countries can police their waters; by preventing illegal fishing and providing a presence for the fragile governments of the Pacific. The micro-states don't have a lot of money and as a result there have been difficulties with the program.

For example, instead of being at sea for up to 50 days a year, some of the boats have averaged less than 36 days. That's been caused by crewing difficulties and the cost of the fuel needed to operate the boats. Unsurprisingly, some of the micro-states find it difficult to obtain the hard currency required to achieve everything they'd like, but at least the program demonstrates that Australia does care for its neighbours. Instead of costing us about $12million a year, costs have blown out to nearly $50million a year.

This coupled with the fact that the program will come to its natural conclusion in less than a decade has now led to an amazing submission to a Senate inquiry. Despite the program's success, some bureaucrat has decided our military ''does not intend to recommend a Defence-led follow-on [Pacific Patrol Boat] program in the options taken forward to Government''.

This may save a few dollars, but the idiocy of this approach should be self-evident. The program comprises influence and access beyond its financial value. If Australia doesn't choose to maintain its links with the islands, they will quickly become the beneficiaries of Chinese aid and a crucial interaction with the region will be lost forever.

In a move that could have relevance for the way we treat the Pacific, just last week the United States military established its own new regional grouping. Africa Command will now join the three other US military headquarters that span the globe (in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific). The US military understands that the skills necessary to guarantee victory demand an understanding of the unique geographic and cultural factors in different areas. This is an insight that has seemingly eluded Australia's military which concentrates on teaching officers how to fight; they are meant to pick up the other equally crucial skills along the way. This might have been acceptable in the past, when the Pacific was just a backwater, but now that it has become a significant area of conflict, Australia needs commanders who have intimate familiarity with the region and personal contacts with the islands. Assuming the region will just look after itself is no longer good enough.

Nicholas Stuart is a Canberra writer.