GLOBALISATION, GOVERNANCE AND THE PACIFIC ISLANDS

A conference* to be held at
Old Canberra House, Australian National University

25th to 27th October 2005

AIM

The aim of the conference is to examine globalisation in the Pacific Islands as its impact deepens, and to conduct an audit of the good governance agenda in the region, as well as to explore the interaction between good governance and tradition.

The State, Society and Governance in Melanesia Project has invited 24 Pacific specialists, together with a keynote speaker from the Caribbean, to discuss these issues over three days at a conference to be held in Canberra from 25th to 27th October. Discussants and other participants will come from government and international agencies as well as from the ANU.

GLOBALISATION AND GOVERNANCE

Advisers have preached the virtues of globalisation in the Pacific Islands for years. Regional institutions and Island governments accept the conventional wisdom that in order to prosper, Island countries must privatise, deregulate and globalise. Island countries have agreed to future changes in trade arrangements. Yet only now are the full effects of globalisation beginning to be felt. Free trade in garments is shifting global production decisively to China, and threatens Fiji's garment industry. Free trade in sugar will radically restructure Fiji's sugar industry and may end it within the next decade, with enormous social consequences. At the same time other opportunities are emerging. Pacific Islanders are working in call centres, and Fiji has joined Samoa and Tonga as a remittance economy, with thousands of citizens working overseas, many of them in the Middle East.

To the west Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands have been grappling since independence with an older, more familiar kind of globalisation, one in which multinational companies exploit mineral and forest resources. Have PNG and Solomons suffered from a 'resource curse', which, it has been argued, destabilises developing countries in other parts of the world? Has the Melanesian route to development become a route to corruption? Or do the governance problems of Melanesia arise fundamentally from the awkward fit between the modern, democratic state and traditional ways of doing politics in that part of the world? Just as Pacific governments accept the need for globalisation, so they agree that good governance is desirable. In one sense 'good governance' is incontestably good: who could be against an approach to public administration that emphasises being efficient, honest, accountable, transparent and responsive to the public? In other senses 'good governance' is more contentious. Good governance is the product of globalisation and a market-oriented economic policy, and, from the point of view of aid donors, has the great advantage of placing responsibility for success squarely in the hands of the governments of developing countries. Then there is the cultural dimension: how much does good governance depend upon Western assumptions about individual interests and responsibilities?

SPEAKERS

The three keynote speakers will be:

• H.E. Ratu Joni Madraiwiwi, Vice-President of the Republic of the Fiji Islands.
• Dr John Rapley, Department of Government, University of the West Indies, Jamaica.
• Francis Hezel, SJ, Micronesian Seminar, Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia.

The other speakers, in alphabetical order, are:

• Glenn Banks, University of Auckland.
• John Connell, University of Sydney.
• Jon Fraenkel, University of the South Pacific.
• Kate Hannan, University of Wollongong.
• Elise Huffer, University of the South Pacific.
• Tarcisius Kabutaulaka, Pacific Islands Development Program, East-West Center, Hawaii
• Joseph Kanekane Kerowa, Journalist, Papua New Guinea.
• Joseph Ketan, University of the South Pacific.
• Helen Lee, La Trobe University.
• Nic Maclellan, Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University.
• Manoranjan Mohanty, University of the South Pacific.
• Warwick Murray, Victoria University of Wellington.
• Vijay Naidu, Victoria University of Wellington.
• Biman C. Prasad, University of the South Pacific.
• Avelina Rokoduru, University of the South Pacific.
• Orovu Sepoe, University of Papua New Guinea.
• Claire Slatter, DAWN, Wellington, New Zealand.
• Lau Leapai Dr Asofou So'o, National University of Samoa.
• Donovan Storey, Massey University.
• Mel Togolo, Placer Dome, Port Moresby, PNG
• Morgan Tuimaleali'ifano, University of the South Pacific
• Morgan Wairiu, UNDP, Honiara, Solomon Islands.