Aimee Rogers & Connor Donaldson (map) -
Australia’s history is largely defined by colonialism, but its colonial role in the Pacific is little discussed, especially by Australians themselves. Australian administration of Pacific states, slavery practices and rampant environmental exploitation are all but absent from the cultural conversation. And yet, if these were practices of the past, why does the Pacific still remain reluctant to accept Australia as a regional development partner? The answers to this question can be found in the modernisation of these practices, and the realisation that Australian abuses of the Pacific’s environment, labour and independence never went away.
‘Blackbirding’ is the term for the practice of abducting Pacific Islanders, specifically from the Solomon Islands, New Guinea and Melanesia, with the intent to bring them to Australia for contract labour. It was an extensively common practice in the late 18th and 19th centuries, with an estimate of over 60,000 islanders brought to Queensland alone. Blackbirding began to subside following the passing of the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901, which served as a part of the larger ‘White Australia Policy’ aimed at reducing the presence of Pacific Islanders, and by 1906 a forcible deportation of all Islanders from Australia was implemented. While the Australian government has done little to acknowledge blackbirding since, its memory is alive and well and the Pacific communities it affected, and for some is being resurrected by the PALM scheme. The PALM scheme, or Pacific Australian Labour Mobility Scheme allows workers from nine Pacific islands and Timor-Leste to gain work visas in Australia for unskilled labour if local workers are unavailable. According to the the Guardian, since the beginning of Covid, there have been 16 deaths linked to the scheme and extensive allegations of abuse, leading to workers being paid as little as AUD 300 (€180) for a week’s worth of 12-hour shifts, leading to criticism that PALM is little more than modernised blackbirding.
Additionally, another point of tension between Australia and the Pacific is climate action or lack thereof. As the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels globally, Australia has spent decades attempting to avoid substantial climate policy, continuously protecting its coal and gas industries. In fact, in November this year at a speech in London former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, called climate change ‘ahistorical and utterly implausible’. From 2018-2022, the Morrison government continued to approve the expansion of coal mines and gas subsidies, placing an economic focus on a ‘gas-lead’ recovery post-covid, despite already failing to meet emissions-reduction targets. But Australian abuse of the environment at the cost of the Pacific Islands is hardly a new phenomenon. The Nauru Island Agreement, created in 1919 between the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, allowed for the administration of Nauru, and subsequent phosphate extraction to be run by the British Phosphate Commission (BPC). In 1923, and again in 1947, Australia was given trusteeship over Nauru, with the United Kingdom and New Zealand as co-trustees. The Australian government used this mandate to allow the BPC to strip-mine Nauru for phosphate, and expand into Banaba, an island of Kiribati, and parts of Tahiti in partnership with French syndicates.
By 1964, the island was so irrevocably damaged that it was thought to be uninhabitable until the 1990s and the Australian government proposed relocating the population to Curtis Island and bestowing them with Australian citizenship.
Nauru declined the offer and gained independence in 1966, but the consequences of phosphate mining live on, as today an estimated 80% of Nauru and Banaba’s surfaces have been strip-mined.
According to Professor Ilan Kelman in the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs, climate change in the Pacific is no longer a future threat. Environmental damage has already caused irrevocable changes to daily life, acting as a looming presence impacting Islanders' mental and physical health, food supplies, economic stability and cultural continuation. In response, Island states, including Kiribati, have proposed a ‘Polluter Pays’ policy that aims to have polluting nations bear the cost for their impact on the environment. Considering Australia’s attitude towards climate response and presence in the region, it is not difficult to imagine who this policy may have been aimed at. Despite a more progressive administration under Albanese, Australia’s long-standing refusal to combat climate change has already irrevocably damaged their relationship with the Pacific.
These tumultuous relationships have led to an increased Pacific interest in finding regional partnerships elsewhere, and China has proven more than willing to provide them. In 2022 China signed a loan agreement with Tonga to help cover the damages of natural disasters and a security deal with the Solomon Islands, with the intent to continue expanding Chinese influence in the Pacific. To say all hell broke loose in Canberra might be an understatement. For much of the past year, Australian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Penny Wong has been focused on strengthening relationships with the Pacific Islands, attempting to paint the image of a new Australia that has ‘heard’ the complaints of the Pacific. But like most interactions between Australia and the Pacific, this approach only seems to further perpetuate past injustices. International Security Professor, John Blaxland, describes both Liberal and Labour governments as having a ‘start-stop, feast or famine’ view of Pacific relations, a view which has led to accusations that Australia feels an entitlement towards Pacific allegiance. The idea of Australian domination over the Pacific is baked into the founding identity of the nation itself. It has become an increasingly present narrative in scholastic research that Australian fear of German presence in West Papua in the 19th Century, and the national opinion that Britain had failed its duty by refusing to lay claim to the east, was a catalyst for federation. Though there are legitimate conversations to be had about Australia’s security interests in the region, the invalidation of Pacific states’ sovereignty that has occurred in the Australian media demonstrates that this mentality remains.
Australian Pacific policy is built on the colonial idea of Australia’s right to dominance in the region, hence its response is reflective of a fear of losing that dominance, and an underlying belief that it’s entitled to it. To change, Australia needs to acknowledge its colonial past to take active measures towards reconciliation that are no longer an act of good faith, but a necessity, if it wants to remain a major power in the Pacific moving forward.
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