This piece was written while I was a lecturer in linguistics at the University of the South Pacific, Suva, Fiji from 1987 to 1990. Now it is 2011, but not so much has really changed in the Pacific for its peoples. Even inclusion into the new electronic universe of the World Wide Web remains a challenge. Fiji is the geopolitical capital of these states, a fact not widely appreciated outside of the region. Fiji, as predicted, has become enmeshed and stalemated in conflict between a quasi-reformist military leadership and the old colonial legacy of comprador-capitalism (a chiefly class getting kickbacks from foreign business interests) and at village level, religious paternalism of the kind that still constricts the Philippines and which locked down medieval Europe for a millennium . (Finding the true heroes in a mess like this is best left to history..). The nascent Melanesian power of the region, Papua New Guinea, has increased its population to 7 million, but accelerated its downward spiral into a poverty stricken, corrupt and violent morass since being pushed adrift from UN protectorate status by Australia in 1975. (for example, see the Brisbane Times, 3 September 2011, ” PNG exposed as a dysfunctional blob“). PNG is not a “failed state”. It never was a state in any meaningful sense. It is a land of extraordinary potential, but for cultural reasons there will be extraordinary grief along the road to finding that potential. For Australia it may morph into a serious security risk. China is now a much more active and sometimes corrupting player in the region for reasons both of geopolitics and resource gathering (for example see “China, Taiwan buy influence with secret payments to Nauru politicians” Brisbane Times 29/08/2011). Indonesia, which is described as a military dictatorship in 1989, has since made a significant transition to democracy incorporating a form of devolved provincial authority. The regional metropolitan powers of Australia and New Zealand are, if anything, even more blind in public awareness to the Pacific Islands states than they were at the original time of writing. The Pacific Island states are a “problem” that the Australian and New Zealand political classes simply don’t know how to deal with since even with goodwill, the cultural world-views of Pacific islanders and Westerners are so radically different. The observations below are mostly still as relevant as they were twenty years ago. [The original posting remains on my old website, here].
1. Introduction
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is where we all hope to be on that expansive Friday evening when the curtain comes down for the last encore. There they are, that motley collection from history, lounging over their drinks, singing, weeping, roaring with laughter, for what else can you do when there are to be no tomorrows? So this, Earth Mother, is why we put up with those damned foreigners for countless millennia : the privilege of a seat in Luigi’s Galactic Cafe on a spaceship escaping to oblivion.
In the meantime, a few tens of millennia back in Milky Way’s time warp, you and I still have to scheme for tomorrow. This discussion paper is one Australian’s unvarnished view of his neighbourhood. If it wounds a tender spot here and there, call the writer a fool and chalk up a debt against him for drinks at the last gasp in Luigi’s. But try to find an idea or two in here as well, for if we stop communicating this vibrant planet will be a dead planet long before the musicians take a bow.
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Preface: This little essay is a bit mischievous, and apparently politically incorrect enough to have sparked outrage in the minds of some sensitive souls from the polite dinner party set. Although it has no claims to academic decency, I have preserved it online as a stimulant to fancier research, since I think the metaphor the essay runs on captures some essential truths.
