”Melanesia” is an anthropologists’ construct that has no economic and little other sense. In the arcane world of United Nations politics, it was promoted as a ”region” to create jobs for bureaucrats, academics and other consultants. A trade agreement covers negligible actual trade. Pacific islands export raw materials to more developed economies and import manufactures and services from them.
Small elites in governments and the public services, expanding into business, have become wealthy. They live in modern houses, travel and educate their children so they can pass on their wealth. But more than 80per cent of Papua New Guineans, Solomon Islanders and ni-Vanuatu exist at subsistence. Women work gardens, but most men are without income. Education is minimal. Women die in childbirth in the bush. HIV/AIDS rages in Papua New Guinea. It is almost the only country in the world where average lifespan is declining.
The Bainimarama Government, meanwhile, is reducing Fijians’ living standards toward subsistence levels. Vanuatu is relapsing after a brief boost from a US aid grant. Australia cannot be absolved from the disaster of which these four states are the leading edge. It played a major role in structuring post-independence parliaments and public services that have played a major role in the failure of development. It has been the dominant aid donor, but has subsidised international aid agencies such as the World Bank to lead programs that paid for the elites at the cost of islanders’ living standards. This is the cause of government dysfunction.
Most islanders have seen nothing of the more than $100billion of aid the highest per capita that has flowed to the Pacific. Aid has widened the gap between the living standards in the independent Pacific states and the rest of the world. Only a few countries in Africa have done as badly.
Australian aid has created multiple organisations such as the Melanesian Spearhead Group. Where one modest council would have sufficed, these organisations and their many offshoots provide hundreds of highly paid positions for skilled islanders, denying their services to their economic, health and other ministries. Their many meetings provide travel, hotel and shopping opportunities for politicians and officials.
