The Australia - Papua New Guinea relationship … time to lift our game

The decision by the Skate Government to establish diplomatic links with Taiwan may have been leaked to the Australian media by Foreign Affairs Officials, but in truth Australia has once again been caught "with its pants down" in regard to political developments in our closest neighbour.

The move by Bill Skate to embrace Taiwan has been coming for at least 18 months, yet Canberra seems to have been forced into a panic action in a desperate, and unsuccessful, attempt to stop PNG becoming the most influential country in our regions to "sign up" with Taiwan.

Not surprisingly, Port Moresby has reacted somewhat strongly to the "leak" and Australia’s concerns about a move which will unquestionably cause instability in our region.

I say "not surprisingly" because our views are simply not respected in Port Moresby in the way they used to be, or ought to be.

The high-water marks in our relations with our former colony were the immediate years after Independence - when Michael Somare was Prime Minister of PNG, and Andrew Peacock was Australia’s Foreign Minister - and the early 1990’s when Sir Rabbie Namaliu was PNG Prime Minister, and Bob Hawke and subsequently Paul Keating, were in office in Australia.

Both periods have a number of similarities, the most outstanding of all being the close, but robust, personal relationships between a number of leaders, and the quality of our diplomatic representation in Port Moresby.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the current state of relations is to record the fact that the most respected Australian politician in PNG today is not John Howard, not Alexander Downer, not Kim Beazley, but Tim Fischer.

Politics in Papua New Guinea is always robust, ever changing, but it is also based on personalities, and on the personal views and strengths of its leaders, and its alternate leaders.

Papua New Guinea’s leaders, and alternate leaders, are "big men" when they enter the regional and world stages.

They also expect to be treated as equals by their Australian counterparts, and reject "lectures" from Canberra on what PNG regards as internal issues.

The response to the Taiwan recognition decision, in which even Bill Skate’s strongest opponents have told Australia to "butt out", reflects the reality of our relationship with PNG today.

Our influence is diminished, and that is to at least some degree Australia’s fault, the fault of the second term Keating Government, and the Howard Government.

Until 1993, relations between Australia and PNG were handled by the Foreign Minister. After the 1993 elections, the Keating Government effectively transferred responsibility for the day-to-day management of the relationship to a Junior Minister, the Minister for Development Assistance and Pacific Island Affairs.

This was regarded by PNG’s leaders as an insult, coming from its closest neighbour, former colonial power, and major trade and investment source. Both Prime Ministers during the second Keating Government, Paias Wingti and Sir Julius Chan, were more than irritated with the change, believing it represented a down-grading of the PNG Australia relationship.

When the Howard Government came to office the relationship was downgraded - in the eyes of PNG’s leaders - even further when day-to-day responsibility was given to the Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Just how much lower could it get?

We need to "lift our game" in how we treat our relationship with our closest, and arguably, our most important, neighbour, and let the Parliamentary Secretary lick the stamps and sign the correspondence, but have our links with PNG handled by the Foreign Minister, as it used to be, and as it ought to be.

But to return to how we seem to have been taken by surprise by Bill Skate’s latest escapade. The PNG Foreign Minister, Roy Yaki, has made at least two attempts to get the PNG Cabinet to recognise Taiwan over the last 18 months or so, only to be rebuffed by the wiser heads in the Cabinet, men like Sir Mekere Morauta, Sir Rabbie Namaliu and Masket Iangalio.

When he tried again at a hurriedly called Cabinet meeting on July 1, Sir Rabbie Namaliu was in Australia for talks on the gas pipeline project, and Sir Mekere Morauta and Masket Iangalio were no longer Ministers, and were busily working to bring Bill Skate down.

If Australia had been "up to speed" we would have realised weeks ago that the increasingly desperate Skate Government would revert to the "Taiwan option" to try and bail itself out of the fiscal and economic crisis it faced.

Our panic reaction - a less than subtle media leak - bears remarkable similarities with what happened when the Chan Government brought in the Sandline Mercenaries in 1997. While that "leak" exposed the move, it did nothing for the Australia-PNG relationship.

We have a vital interest in seeing Papua New Guinea develop as a stable, economically and politically secure, democracy. That interest is best served when the relationship is handled by the Foreign Minister, just as it was between 1975 and 1993.