Pacific will need more than a reset
Jacinda Ardern’s whirlwind trip across the South Pacific is coming to an end. Henry Cooke travelled with the prime minister and analyses her mission.
ANALYSIS: It was close to the last stop of a gruelling trip, but Jacinda Ardern’s smile was as wide as ever yesterday, even as she acknowledged the school block she was opening in Rarotonga was funded by the National government, not hers.
As she finished her speech, host Emile Kairoua proclaimed: ‘‘It’s our job to make sure she is the longest-ever serving prime minister of New Zealand.’’
You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who met her on the trip who disagreed. Ardern’s weeklong mission across Samoa, Niue, Tonga, and the Cook Islands easily succeeded on the terms her Government had set itself: this was a reset, just as Foreign Minister Winston Peters had promised.
The locals treated her like a pop star, and the leaders all seemed to come out of their bilateral meetings with something approaching respect.
Ardern announced just over $36 million in aid - about 3.6 per cent of the total aid budget allocated for the Pacific for 2015-2018.
These countries are used to receiving aid money from New Zealand, and nobody expects any of this to fix all of the problems. It is part of a larger strategy to move away from that donor-recipient relationship that she needed to get right. An attempt to really listen to the Pacific, not just dictate what was on offer, was mostly achieved.
The bonds with the premiers of the tiny ‘‘realm’’ countries of Niue and the Cook Islands are naturally the strongest - especially given the huge pension portability announcement on Thursday, which will allow Niueans and Cook Islanders to return home from New Zealand earlier in their lives without putting their Kiwi pension at risk.
This was a real and important change, not just more aid, and these nations have been asking for it for decades.
Given its relative cheapness – maybe $4m a year, estimates say – it’s extremely hard to figure out why no-one had done this before.
In the larger nations of Samoa and Tonga, which are being loaned and granted money from China like there is no tomorrow, the politicians were a bit cooler. Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi could barely look at Ardern during their cramped press conference. To be fair to him, Tongan Prime Minister »Akilisi Po¯ hiva didn’t even hold a press conference.
Both Peters and Ardern were loath to mention the word ‘‘China’’ at their daily stand-ups – even as they arrived at Samoa’s airport, which was funded by a Chinese loan, and met the Tongan prime minister in a government building funded by a Chinese grant.
It is obvious the Government is wary of China’s growing influence in the region but it is also not really possible for us to largely fob off our second-largest trading partner.
Meanwhile, climate change is a huge challenge facing all of these nations but there was no major announcement in the area, just rhetoric from Ardern about ‘‘doing our bit’’ and the 2050 goal of net zero carbon emissions.
But 2050 is a long time away for these nations of rising seas.
Ardern was quick to point out in her final media stand-up that this was still in many ways a listening and promising tour, not a delivery one, other than with the pension changes.
Peters did allude to the biosecurity problems that stop us importing fruit from these islands, which he said was put in the ‘‘toohard basket’’ and needs to be fixed.
The metaphor is apt: plenty of the problems the Pacific faces have been chucked into the too-hard basket. For this reset to work, the whole thing is going to have to be emptied out.
The smiling assassin, otherwise known as Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern launched into my so called cynicism this week.
I described her cheque-carrying jaunt around the Pacific as a ‘‘charm offensive’’.’ How damn inoffensive but it hit one of her nerves.
How could anyone honestly be sensitive about that phrase? I mean, come on, it’s hardly original. Anyway, charm offensive it was.
Of course I hadn’t finished. I had remarked earlier in the week that this trip would see us carrying record amounts of aid and gifts into the Pacific following the absolute devastation wrecked by Cyclone Gita.
On that front, that’s our job, right? To act as good neighbours and international citizens. But then I dug deeper to find out that in just the last few years, New Zealand’s poured $1billion into the Pacific in aid money according to the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade. And truth be known apparently we don’t put in enough compared to others.
I knew we did our bit, but I had no idea we put in so much. That figure amounts to 60 per cent of our entire foreign aid budget.
No wonder they were up in arms in the wider Nelson area many there claim they’ve been forgotten in the wake of Cyclone Gita. And fair enough too.
As Nelson niggled and demanded heavy machinery, the PM was busy writing out cheques to the questionable democracies in paradise. About $3m for Samoa in the wake of Gita and $10m for Tonga for all that extensive damage.
You’d be a miser to be critical of that spend. That’s our job, to help those mates in need.
But. There’s always a but. Because that $13m combined is more than the last Government gave over four years for a regional tourism investment fund for the whole damn country.
No wonder we have a freedom camping problem with tourists defecating in curbs: and our answer is, Minister Kelvin Davis and his ridiculously named ‘‘working committee’’. What’s that compared to a ‘‘committee’’.
Anyway back to the Pacific. And there’s more, much much more for the Pacific than a working committee. Sorry Mangaweka. And sorry Nelson, wait your turn. Get in line, behind those holding other passports.
We generously invested in the private sector across the Pacific this week too. In Samoa, the business sector got $6m, a Nuie solar power outfit got $5m and in Tonga, a five year electricity project got $11m. And will all the money go into the right pockets? Or will someone lean on someone to get their slice, when they shouldn’t? And will we ever know? And for all the aid we and others send in, are the lives of locals improving? Do we even check?
Or will climate change ultimately swallow these countries in the end and are all these millions of dollars ultimately futile?
If so should we relocate everyone now? Because for every dollar spent propping up a tin-pot democracy there’s an opportunity cost.
Imagine if we spent that money here. We have underfunded our schools, we are 700 teachers short, we are thousands of builders short, we can’t find enough police officers, people live in cars and motels rather than decent, dignified housing for those doing it tough.
All our children should have a personal computer at school by age 7 but we’re not creative or flexible enough to think how we can do it.
We should have had a second proper harbour crossing by now in Auckland and we’re apparently so rich as a country we can keep national superannuation for all, no matter how rich or poor, at age 65.
Indeed we’ve solved so many of our own problems and we’re rolling in so much cash now that we’re allowing certain people in certain Pacific countries to draw the NZ taxpayer funded pension and we’re not requiring them to live in our country. Are we too kind? Are we way to soft? Are we fools?
Are we just being responsible for our backyard? Or are we ignoring the plight of those in our own street so we can feel good about a country or two three hours away.
It could be worse. While we give the Pacific these cheques, we could be spying on our citizens here at home in the wake of a massive earthquake. Imagine if we did that?
Sorry Mangaweka. And sorry Nelson, wait your turn. Get in line, behind those holding other passports.