Pacific pile-on is unecessary

What a nauseating pile on against the Federal Government regarding China and the Solomons. It is gross overreach, lacks historical context and completely incorrect.

Some facts will help to understand.

The Solomon Islands is an impoverished sovereign country loud on high octane talk whose aspirations outweigh their capacity. They are a sovereign country and are a corrupted “democracy”, a member of several world forums and importantly make their own decisions as they see fit. Sadly they have little understanding of the cause and effect of much of their decision making outcomes. Diplomacy, gratitude, trust, appreciation and respect currently does not define their domestic and international behaviour. The current Prime Minister Manese Sogarave as presently having his fourth crack at being PM having failed miserably on previous occasions to lead a united and respected government. Recently he was conveniently courted by the PRC who bankrolled him with the intention to ditch Taiwan and recognise the PRC.

Corruption is endemic there and the country is split down the middle on ethnic lines. So much so that it required Australia to mount a 14 year $2.2bn multi-nation peacekeeping operation alongside some smaller contributions from RAMSI partners NZ, PNG and Fiji. A low grade, noisy and disruptive civil war was going on there for well over a decade. Recently Australia generously mobilised immediately again at the request of PM Sogorave to save lives and property to suppress ethnic unrest again including attacks on numerous PRC nationals who predominate in business there.

We recently provided them with an undersea high speed communication cable linking the Solomons to the world. So much for regional family ties.

This background leads to the reasonable conclusion that the Solomon Islands is complicit in the subterfuge to maximise PRC political leverage to pour pressure on the only regional Government that has taken on China’s excesses across the region where it seeks to coerce the meek by economic strangulation. “Belt and road initiatives” across the world peddled by PRC snake oil operatives is part of their foreign policy of targeted assistance to many impoverished nations. The lure is money influence. The PRC has zero interest in first world philanthropy and trusted, targeted aid outcomes. Everything comes at a price. Hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels and patrol boats are rusting at wharves, run up on the beaches or sunk at their moorings. PNG for example is littered with numerous failed PRC aid and investment projects built by PRC imported labour who stay in situ at the end adding to the potential social powder keg ahead. This is familiar PRC playbook stuff. China plays the long game and this game is all about regional coercion.

Those who are encouraging of this recent pile on against the Australian Government from within as a FAIL in Foreign Policy are disingenuous. This Government has been extremely generous to Melanesia and the Pacific including extraordinary and gracious support to the Solomons who time and again demonstrate their incompetence. We are a geographic family needing to coexist in a free, stable and prosperous region. Australians are entitled to think that this is opportunistic chicanery of the

THOSE WHO ARE ENCOURAGING OF THIS RECENT PILE ON AGAINST THE GOVERNMENT FROM WITHIN AS A FAIL IN FOREIGN POLICY ARE DISINGENUOUS.

worst kind. We build, supply and service much of their national maritime fleets FOC, bring skilled and unskilled workers into Australia as well as providing scholarships programs for students and more.

We have long known the difficulties in rationalising the international and domestic behaviour of China. It is time to call this nonsense out.

1521

Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan is killed by Mactan natives in the Philippines during an around-the-world voyage for Spain.

1773

Britain’s House of Commons passes the Tea Act, designed to save the British East India Company by granting it a monopoly on the North American tea trade.

1896

Sir Henry Parkes, Father of Federation, dies of heart failure in Sydney at the age of 80. He was the dominant figure of 19th century Australian politics.

1908

A cyclone hits a pearling fleet at Eighty Mile Beach, WA, killing more than 50 people.

1933

The body of Bert Hinkler (pictured) is discovered in the Italian Alps near his wrecked plane after disappearing over Italy while attempting to fly from England to Australia.

1950

Prime Minister Robert Menzies introduces a Bill to outlaw the Communist Party. In 1951, the High Court finds the law unconstitutional.

1960

South Korean dictator Syngman Rhee resigns after scores die in more than a week of violent student protests against his regime.

1971

Yirrkala Aborigines lose their two-year legal battle for land rights at Gove, NT, site of a Nabalco consortium bauxite mining project, in a ruling by the NT Supreme Court.

1976

Darwin: The first of many boats carrying Vietnamese refugees arrives.

1985

Melbourne: the Nuclear Disarmament Party blows up as three senior members, Jo Vallentine, Peter Garrett and Jean Melzer, walk out of a conference amid claims it was stacked by Trotskyites.

1997

Margaret Thatcher opens the world’s longest road-rail suspension bridge, linking Hong Kong to its new offshore airport.